The Hunger for Touch and Love
by Richard Crasta
Copyright 2011 Invisible Man Press
Published by Invisible Man Press on Smashwords
All rights reserved by the author and by Invisible Man Press. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced in anyway except for brief quotations for review purposes without written permission from the publisher.
Suggestions and Comments: If you have any suggestions or comments after reading the book, please contact the author at invisiblemanbooks@gmail.com . For more information on the books of this author, or to buy print versions, please visit the following website:
Brief Praise for the Author’s Other Books
(More Praise at the end of the book)
The Revised Kama Sutra
“Very funny”—Kurt Vonnegut
“Humorous and irrepressibly manic.”—The Independent, UK
“Hilarious and delicate.”—The Face, U.K.
“Indefatigable good humor . . . considerable charm.”—Publishers Weekly
“He may be our best humorist ever. Very, very funny.”—Business Standard.
Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex
“Classy humor. Get it.”—Femina
Impressing the Whites
“The reader laughs, squirms, recognizes his/her own hypocrisy and the blatant absurdity of most unquestioned social conventions. In this, Crasta succeeds in ways not unlike Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat character or Chris Rock race routines succeed, i.e., brilliantly.”—Frank Feldman, Amazon 5-star review.
Table of Contents
About the Author and this Book
PART I: FROM MASSAGE TO SEX, FROM LOVE TO PEACE
Masseuses: Goddesses and Associate Wives?
PART II: WESTERN MASSAGE FROM NUDE TO BLANKETED
Wholesome and Holistic Massages in America: 1986-1996
The Wall Street Tantric Massage & The Finnish Massage
PART III: ORIENTAL MASSAGE: THAILAND, INDONESIA
Thailand: The Breast Imperative
Will She Willy? The Happy Ending Conundrum
Thai Massage Variations: Joint Shower, Sleeping on Chest, Play With Hair, etc.
Indonesian Massage: Triple Massage and the Massage-free Massage
PART IV: THINK TWICE ABOUT SHAKING HANDS: MASSAGE INDIAN STYLE
The Handshake: or, The Milking of the Indian Male
Gents Fingers: A Dissection of Indian Massage
Male to Male: Indian Undercover Reports
Indian Massage: Female to Male, Dogs and Cats
PART V: SKIN DEEP PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLORATIONS
How a Masseuse May Save Your Life
The Guantanamoing of Penises and Nipples
The Zen of Balls and Masculine Maintenance
In Praise of Pretended Anatomical Ignorance
PART VI: MASSAGE ISSUES, RANDOM NOTES, AND ADVICE
Random Notes on the Massage Universe
Summing Up: Why Massage is Booming
Appendix I: How to Make Massages Better
Appendix II: The Al Gore Affair and the Dilemma of the “Ideal” Western Male
A Personal Message from the Author and the Author’s Other Books
FREE: An Excerpt from The Revised Kama Sutra
About the Author and this Book
Richard Crasta is the author of eight other books, one of which was published in ten countries and called “very funny” by Kurt Vonnegut. He may also be the second most massaged author on the face of the earth, possibly after Hugh Hefner; with over 3,000 massages from 24 countries under his belt, it may seem like a miracle that he can even stand up, or that he wasn’t too relaxed to bother to write this book.
This book is a humorous and open-minded study of massage, in the tradition of George Carlin, standup comedy, and of Henry Miller’s books, and believing, as Mark Twain wrote, that “Nature knows no indecencies; Man invents them.”
Some reviews:
• "Brave and fearless." —Mita Kapur, author.
• "Blisteringly honest, and above all, funny! I laughed out loud once every 3 pages!"—James Farley, Writer/Social Worker. He adds, “The whole book seems to be examining the interplay between the body, sex, pain, pleasure, emotions and identity - and how these things are not actually separate – it is a polemic against the wrong-headed belief that we can compartmentalize the experience of being alive. Blisteringly honest and self-revelatory.”
• "Fresh, witty, thoroughly enjoyable, and deeply human"—Alexander Von Prellwitz of the Eulama Literary Agency (Rome).
This book celebrates and describes the wide and sometimes wild world of massage, illustrating it with sometimes funny and intimate massage experiences, though in some chapters, the names of places and persons have been fictionalized to protect people’s identities. It is written with respect for the public’s Right to Information, to educate as much as delight. It also proceeds from the author’s commitment, in his writings, to tell the unblinking truth—because lies and euphemisms only serve the interests of the privileged classes, of those in power, and those with secret agendas.
The book is also written in the belief that informed and discriminating consumers will improve the standards of therapeutic massage by 200 percent, particularly in the West, but also in the East, while making them more affordable to the poor and the middle class. The author believes that this will result in more compassionate, peace-loving, and generous human beings.
Also, in countries like India, my birthplace and the birthplace of The Kama Sutra—the classic with its un-compartmentalized and relaxed view of sex and related arts—this book, by emphasizing the humanizing and compassionate aspects of massage, may reduce the victimization of massage therapists by the police, criminals, self-appointed Moral Guardians, and the unsavory, preying elements of society.
Above all, I write as one who considers himself a world citizen, and beyond racial and national categories: as a non-partisan member of the human race. My concerns are humanistic, and not to criticize any particular country or culture, but rather to be loyal only to literature, to humanity, and to my readers.
The word “masseuse” is used inclusively to embrace all givers of massages from conservative, highly trained professionals to amateurs in massage shops across the world. A similar book by a woman author and from a woman’s viewpoint is equally necessary and I would support such a book with all my heart.
And finally, despite the book’s categorization on the cover, which is required for trade and classification purposes, to categorize this book as purely Nonfiction or as primarily Fiction would be an act of fiction. It is a blend, and mainly so to protect the identities of specific persons. The “I” of this book moves from “real” to imaginative episodes without notice, and it is up to readers to make their own judgment.
This is not a book for the literally minded or those lacking an abundant sense of humor.
Epigraphs
What the boy had felt was something pure . . . the simple desire to reach out and touch someone, to be held lovingly in someone’s arms. Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so difficult to give up hope.—Michel Houllebecq, Elementary Particles.
Nature knows no indecencies. Man invents them.—Mark Twain.
Preface
All you need is love—so sang the Beatles, paraphrasing Jesus perhaps. While largely agreeing, I would add that we (I mean all of us, including powerful people like Al Gore) also need: massage, a woman’s breast, and lingam or yoni massages depending on whether we are fitted with lingams or yonis. Indeed, lingam and yoni massages ought to be the basic weapons in a pacifist’s armory.
But seriously, even without all the fancy or sensual extras that this book occasionally luxuriates in, I believe with all my heart that a truly good and honest massage is one of the highest expressions of love, a diluted and legal edition of love without registration requirements if you will—the love, the tenderness, and the healing, soothing, affirming touch that those of us who live in the prim-and-proper sections of the Western world often cannot easily obtain in the ordinary course of our serial monogamous, serial divorcing lives. Unable to obtain it through normal sources, we are willing to pay through our noses for strangers to touch and comfort us, and this touch and massage becomes an anodyne to the angst of modern living, the rush hour commutes, the terror alert upgrades, and the realization that we may have to slave for the rest of our lives to pay for the sins of Wall Street and political bandits.
And for nearly twenty-five years now, I have been in love with this manifestation of love called massage, even calling myself a hopeless addict (as indeed I may also be hopelessly addicted to love). At one point, this addiction was costing me so much money—for in New York, a massage addiction is far more expensive than an alcohol or marijuana addiction—that I decided to recover at least some of it with this eclectic and subjective guide and story of sorts. This book makes no claim to be authoritative, scholarly, comprehensive, or to speak for anything but a highly subjective male experience (the female experience would need another writer and a different book to do it justice), and is simply an honest and uninhibited door-opener for novices, a laugh-along guide to the bewilderingly complex and exploding world of massage which abounds in charlatans and rip-off artists whose only true intention is to make love to your wallet.
Along the way, the book is also a massage travelogue taking the lay reader along on a tour through various countries, cultures, and massage experiences, some very rare. And above all, it is a book written from the heart, in the Panglossian hope that massage one day becomes a basic human right, provided for in your health plan (as it already is in Canada and in a few European countries) and endorsed by the United Nations.
Part I: From Massage to Sex, Love, and Peace
Massage No Boom Boom
I am no saint, and long ago gave up any illusions that I would ever become one, after having failed miserably at it in my childhood years; nor am I or ever will be a spectacular sinner like Dubya Bush, Dick Cheney, Mick Jagger, or Genghis Khan. I am what I am—and I just try to be as honest as I can be most of the time.
So, despite my knee-jerk tendency to be defensive and moralistic at times, a habit arising from having lived so long in a hypocritical society and having internalized its Inquisitors and Tormentors, I was never as straight as I thought I was, or pretended to be. Maybe it was God’s plan for me, maybe it was my dharma and karma, that I should be a sinner so that the Pure and the Virtuous may have someone to compare themselves with and feel superior to.
Still, for nearly fourteen years, beginning in America around 1986, I fooled myself into believing that massage and sex existed in separate, watertight compartments: I received my massage on massage tables from professionals, and I received my sex at home in bed from my wife (well, a few times on the sofa or on a rug too, but never on the kitchen table). With rare exceptions, I responded scornfully and disapprovingly whenever someone tried to offer me massage and sex together in various creative, “combo” packages. (Except for one hilarious accident, it was relatively easy not to get confused. If the massage cost significantly more than forty-five to sixty dollars an hour, or if the advertisement used overly suggestive language or had illustrations of panting, semi-undressed women with a few loose buttons and parted lips, it was probably going to be something other than.)
Still, excluding half a dozen mainly accidental episodes, my 1500 massages up until 1999 were all 100 percent “legitimate”, though a handful of these masseuses rather sensibly didn’t bother with towels. But around the turn of the millennium, things began to change when something cataclysmic, apocalyptic, and traumatic happened in my life.
It was more than that I ceased to have an official wife. It was that my whole life started to fall apart, and from that point on, needing comfort from wherever I could get it, I found myself quickly surrendering my hauteur and morally righteous disdain for sensual or ecstatic massage. It still didn’t happen too often, but I slowly realized that my religious and fanatic insistence on Pure Unadulterated Massage was partial bullshit. For the spirit wants what it wants, or needs (and sometimes the spirit wants just spirits, and massage is beyond the thoughts of a man whose insides are drenched with distilled spirits). Therefore, no absolutist and Big-Brotherly moral code of one section of society should Nazi-boot out one of the most salubrious and life-giving —and sometimes, life-saving—pleasures in other people’s lives.
What a slow learner I was, for it took me twenty years of being massaged by about possibly 500 different masseuses young and old, a total of 2,000 times, before I realized that massage and boom boom were simply two points in a continuum, just as much as eating and boom boom, or politics and boom boom, or money and boom boom are. Boom boom (as the charming natives of Cambodia and some of their neighbors so delightfully and merrily term sex, pronouncing it halfway between boom boom and bum bum) is the sun around which the other planets of human life, such as politics, history, economics, spirituality, trigonometry, art, and yes, massage, revolve.
However, the relationship between massage and boom boom is more than philosophical or theoretical. It is not just that boom boom is simply the farthest and most intimate point in the continuum of touch and human connection that starts with a formal handshake and progresses past a hug, a clothed massage, a minimally clothed massage, a totally unclothed massage, a mutually unclothed massage, a mutually unclothed body-to-body massage, and then on to boom boom, which is arguably the essence of life, the alpha and the omega of existence. In real life, if you were to conduct a sample survey of 20,000 massage establishments the world over, you would realize that in many parts of the world, the more relaxed and tropical and Buddhist or Shinto-Confucian countries especially, massage and boom boom are Part I and Part II respectively of an organically connected whole experience. Part I is when the body is kneaded, awakened to life and good health, its circulation improved, its glands begin to secrete the juices they should be secreting, its pleasure nodes buzzing. And as these variously aroused parts begin to shake off their former alienation, rebellion, or dysfunctional states and connect with each other, their synergy ignites Part II, or the most sacred and most vital act of human existence: sex.
But a deep and enduring puritanical streak arising from my own West-influenced ideological bent as well as from the modern Indian civilization in which I was initiated into life, kneaded as a baby, and thus made a lifelong addict of massage, had made me think of massage and sex as totally separate worlds (and there’s no better definition of Puritanism than H.L. Mencken’s: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy”—to which I would add an attitude I have sometimes noticed: “and not be paying good money for it.”). So I would often demand that I be given only massage, unadulterated even by dreams of boom boom. For every improper suggestion or indecent proposal the masseuse made, I mentally deducted five percent from my planned tip.
What a puritanical stick-in-the-mud I was then, I now think! For at some deep, secret level, all of us pine for the touch of our mothers, and of female relatives, which was so forthcoming and generous in our childhood, especially in Eastern countries, where children below the age of five, sometimes barebottomed, are picked up and cuddled and carried and placed on laps by every woman and prepubescent girl in the vicinity, and consider it their birthright—these are often the best moments in an Asian child’s soon-to-be blighted life. And oh, the bathing and massage rituals. Sometimes, a woman will combine her bath and that of her child (or the child she is taking care of), and part of this ritual may involve a kind of intimacy that the child cannot hope to enjoy as it grows up. I have seen, for example, the baby stretched across the naked thighs of a woman who will shortly have her own bath—ah, what a feast of love as the baby inhales the smell of soap and woman, and is enveloped by her warm skin. But this birthright gradually vanishes as the children grow older, and adults and women (if you happen to be male) begin to keep their distance (in puritanical and schizophrenic India at least), and the Inner Child never forgives, and is never reconciled, to the loss of this birthright.
Thus you are always secretly and perhaps even unknown to yourself hungering for those intimate, uninhibited, and ungrudging touches and that closeness, and when you are touched tenderly by a masseuse with soft hands, you are aroused with warm feelings for the whole world, for all of humanity. And if your masseuse, the most immediate, breathing, perfumed, and throbbing representative of that humanity, is even passably attractive, your attention gradually turns to her, especially once the major zones of pain have been taken care of. The nicer she is to you, the nicer you want to be to her, and this feeling sometimes spills beyond the realm of verbal thanks or gifts of cash, goods, coupons, or white elephants. Her gift of touch and acceptance sometimes provokes a desire to respond in kind (in the ultimate examples, to return love by making love).
Acknowledging this yearning to touch and to return affection (which was never consummated), one of my best Upstate New York masseuses, Lisa, the one who would whisper into my ear like a lover, “The massage is finished, thank you,” would always give me a deep hug after I had dressed up and was about to leave.
And yet sometimes, especially when pain dominates your mind and overpowers all other feelings and thoughts, when unbearable aches or tension are a stumbling block to daily living and to each moment, or when you don’t wish to ruin a long-term professional relationship with the masseuse whose destiny and yours have intersected, you need to pretend to accept this artificial, manmade distinction between massage and sex simply to avoid being preyed upon for large amounts of cash or being cheated of the therapeutic massage your muscles need. Many a time has a lazy or incompetent masseuse tried to milk me (of my money) by offering a quick sexual climax, often of the hand-assisted variety (and sometimes of the orally assisted variety), hoping thus to escape from the hard work that a full therapeutic massage is. (And as for escaping the real work of a massage, there are often so-called licensed massage therapists in the U.S. who will try to do this.) Rarely, and in my post-marital years, when the formerly therapeutic relationship progressed into mutually enjoyable sex, the therapeutic portion deteriorated and shrunk until I was forced to start a long and often painful search for a new masseuse: and to firmly spell out that what I was looking for was “massage no boom boom”—the only unambiguous term that the local taxi drivers, bellboys, guides, and touts clearly understood and that left them little wiggle room for their tricks and surprises.
But trying to keep the massage nonsexual or not openly erotic is easier in certain countries and cultures than in others, and indeed may be easier for Western societies that, like Bill Clinton, are able to compartmentalize emotions, sex, and work. True, in Thailand, a culture of therapeutic traditional Thai massage attached to students, temples, massage teachers, and massage schools exists quite apart from the world of sex—or at least as far apart as medicine and banking. Respectable family men and women, mothers, fathers, and grandmothers, get themselves massaged, sometimes in Buddhist temples, or in establishments attached to temples, sometimes in their homes, sometimes on the beach on a blanket or sheet, and sometimes in a studio or a salon on tables or mats, sometimes separated by screens. These traditional Thai massages are mostly conducted clothed, or in loose pajama-like pants and top provided by the establishment, and are 100 percent legitimate (as most prudish Westerners would term them), and are often very cheap—though in private studios and salons they can sometimes be made illegitimate and sensual to accommodate your desires, usually for a hefty yet reasonable extra fee.
But in certain other countries, it is relatively harder to find massage that is purely and nothing but massage. You may discover that the massage you are paying for is either a teasing massage designed to make you a horny wreck begging for boom boom or one of its abbreviated relatives; the Thais are masters at this, and the late-arriving Chinese, for whom 60 years of often brutal and godless Communism have left them with few religious or moral scruples, are more than a match for them, or so I have heard from tourists returning from the Chinese towns around Shenzen. In a few cases, it is organically and officially “massage boom boom”—a package deal, take it or leave it, and the only item on the menu. You are at liberty to pay the price, and then request that the masseuse keep her hands off your erogenous zones. But quite likely, she will try to play around with your instructions, and you will be aroused in any case. If that does not happen, she will find some way to attack your ego: “What’s wrong with you?” the laughing and sometimes genuinely horny and hopeful women will ask, for they too sometimes would not like to leave an attractive prospect untended. Can’t get it up? At which point, even if the masseuse’s fire has not lit yours, you may find your offended ego doing your thinking for you.
Massage in this part of the world is an aphrodisiac aid to boom boom, a preparation and a provocation for boom boom, the ultimate assertion and expression of life, love and health. I imagine this un-compartmentalized view comes from an earlier and less moralistic time, when kings and princes, faced with a revolt from their underfucked multiple wives, had to be massaged so they could perform again and again, and the prestige, virility, and stability of the kingdom ensured, its populace sleeping soundly in the assurance that the Royal Member was a Member in Good Standing. And why should I, with my “superior” Western experience and indoctrination, condemn these cultures as decadent or inferior for this reason?
It is this journey, from innocence to experience, from a naïve acceptance of my brainwashing by didactic and over-scrupulous American massage therapists to a gradual understanding of my body and the perspectives and practices of massage therapists in less stuck-up parts of the world that I wish to record here. For it is a rich journey: my over three thousand massages (at this point in 2010) were received in over twenty countries of the world, from Canada to Czechoslovakia, from Thailand to Scotland. What’s more, I may have seen the only three-nippled masseuse in the world; she showed me her special endowment after only our second massage. What it was in me that sparked this special kindness, this intimate sharing, I shall never know, and I even forgot to ask if, maybe, she had triplets; though I do admit trying in a few Asian countries to pick up a bit of the local languages. And as I spoke to them like a fellow human being, an equal who was concerned, interested, warm, and grateful for their generous touches, and spoke to them in their own language, they bared before me their secrets, one 39-year-old masseuse suddenly asking me if I could find her a boy friend. (And I don’t ever remember telling her that I worked for a dating agency.)