Tales from The Massage Parlour
By: San Cassimally
Tags: Edinburgh Sauna, Short Story, Erotica, Friends Of Cowbird, Love Vs Sex

Tales from The Massage Parlour

(Gi)

Gi was half-Korean and half Scottish. Her slimness gave the impression that she was tall, but in fact she was the same height as me. Five foot four — or one metre sixty-two. I cannot remember anybody younger coming to work at the Blue Eden sauna. Any younger, we’d have been closed for selling underage sex. Magda told me that she was only nineteen, and she had checked.

‘Jodie will show you the ropes,’ Magda said after she had introduced us. She chose the simple name of Maggie as her working alias. Gi, Maggie!

The Blue Pagoda near Seoul (Brady Bell. Unsplash)

It is surprising how little tension there is between us, the working girls of the parlour. Our callers think that we boil with rage if they pick someone else. We do not. In my case I am slightly surprised when one of my regulars walk in, sees me, and picks a newcomer he hasn’t seen before, but I don’t bear them any grudge for that as I know that men like variety. The man is literally just a prick, and he is paying. I am not jealous. Rarely do I come to the parlour on any day and see less than four customers. Which is already a fair take-home pay, and I usually service up to eight punters. Wall to wall. This is to say that although Gi was a stunning colleague and the dirty old men who put bread on our table love young flesh, I did not feel threatened by her. One rarely finds a woman with such a stunning body. Like an alabaster sculpture of Michelangelo. Slender, with magnificent curves, a derrière to die for, a wasp-like waist, but albeit with rather smaller tits than she might have wished. But the, so had Julie Christie, and no one would say this did the slightest damage to the overall product. Her greatest asset (Gi’s, not Julie), however, was her face. If it was just slightly more oval-shaped, she would have won the Miss Universe title and would not need to sell sex for a living.

I quickly took to her, and she to me. She was talkative and cheerful, and within a week she had told me quite intimate details about herself. She was born in Seoul, where her father was an academic. When she was four, the family moved to Hong Kong, and she stayed there for six years, going to

Chinese dhow in Hong Kong harbour (unknown) courtesy Unsplash

school. Then there was a short spate in Singapore. At the age of eleven dad was appointed to a professorship at Durham, and the family moved again. Shortly after her parents divorced.

Famous landmark in Singapore (by Hu-Chen, courtesy Unsplash)

‘Don’t ask me why,’ she said, ‘it’s too painful.’

Dad stayed put in Durham but mum moved to Edinburgh, for reasons which her daughter did not immediately understand.

Edinburgh street by Jillian King (Courtesy Unsplash)

She was studying chemistry at Herriott-Watt university, and that explained why she did not wish to work more than one full day and one evening shift a week. She wanted just enough money to be able to live reasonably, although she saw herself making big money later. She knew that once she became a chemistry graduate money would cascade into her lap. Dad gave her a handsome allowance, but she had expensive tastes. She had only been at uni for one year, but she already had a good few ideas for making money.

We were sharing a coffee and a cinnamon bun at Soderbergh’s (ex-Peter’s Yard) in the Meadows one day when she suddenly said:

‘Jodie, I appreciate that you never asked me questions about my parents’ divorce-’

‘Aye, but you said don’t ask.’

‘I’ll tell you, because I trust you and know this will go no further.’ That was truer than she knew. Most girls believe that I am the soul of discretion and pour their hearts out to me, and I do not remember breaking a confidence in my life.

‘Only if you want to.’

‘Yes, I do. I think everybody needs a shoulder to cry on. Keeping a sad secret all to yourself can lead to depression, doesn’t it?’ I nodded.

She told me how her parents met. New to Seoul, dad’s Korean friends took him to a night club, and it was there that he met Nari.

‘If you think I am beautiful, then you need to see my mother.’ Even now, a punter walking in the sauna would pick the forty-year old chanteuse over anybody else at the Blue Eden. If she was working here.

Her dad had only told her that Nari worked at a club. Not even after they divorced had he said the least unkind thing about her to make her daughter think badly of her. It was her auntie Myeong who had told her the truth when she came for a visit last year. She was benefiting from Gi’s mother’s hospitality, but felt she needed to tell me the truth all the same.

‘Gi, you don’t know this, but your mother was a notorious whore, known to all the big shots in Seoul. Chanteuse my thumb! She couldn’t sing la, la, la if her life depended upon it. She waited at tables and was open to offers to spend the night with the men. Your dad first met her as a paying client. So that’s the truth which she never had the guts to tell you.’

When they moved to Edinburgh, Nari had never explained the reason. Gi had no reason to disbelieve her story that she was now working at the South Korean consulate in the city. She had her dad’s trusting nature, she explained, but after Myeong’s hateful tale, she began asking herself questions, and discovered that her mother was working as an escort. It did not surprise her when Nari suggested that if she was finding it difficult to live on the allowance dad gave her, she could do much worse than make money on her back.

‘After all, that’s what I did, and as you now know I still do; so do you think you’re better than me?’ Nari had said. Gi was used to the good life and did not need too much convincing. Which was what led her to make that phone call to Magda. She would laugh when later I told her that the illustrious Sarah Bernhardt, who got a lot of money and jewellery by opening her legs to the rich and famous, was also encouraged in this direction by her courtesan mother Joule. I had only recently read the book Sarah Bernhardt: My Erotic Life by one San Cassimally. However she promptly reminded me that after making money as a chemist she had no intention of selling sex, although she planned to have a lot of it with people she fancied.

Gi soon became the most sought after girl in the parlour although she usually worked one and a half day a week, spaced in such a way that many of her callers popped in twice. I was surprised to hear that she was often rude to her callers.

I have known Peter for a number of years now. He is a professor at the university here. He usually visits me twice a week. He tells me he has a healthy sex life at home, but he is over-endowed. And he has given me every reason to believe him. He would only go with other girls when I take time off, and only with those I recommend. As I was planning to take my little lad to Italy for 10 days, I said that he could check out Maggie.

When I came back, Peter booked me soon after and told me how Gi had asked him to take a shower once they were in the room downstairs. But I took one already, Peter had said. You still stink, she told him. Poor Peter had to take another one.

‘Why do you do this?’ I asked, ‘it does not pay to be nasty to clients.’ She laughed. She protested that she did not do this to be nasty, but to show who was in charge.

‘Once the punter’s in the room with you,’ she explained, ‘he will do anything to dip his dickie in you. A little bullying tells him who’s boss here.’

‘A power game then?’ She nodded.

‘Please don’t be unkind to dear Peter,’ I said, ‘he’s a sweet fellow.’ She promised, adding, ‘I quite like him actually, he reminds me of my dad. And I gave him a real good fuck. He’s a good fucker too and made me come. He promised to come for me again.’

Soon enough, Peter only had eyes for Gi.

‘He’s such a good kisser,’ she confided. I was surprised, since most girls here draw the line at osculatory contact. We often quote this little piece to our punters: You pay, we fuck, You pay more we suck/ Pay even more we piss, but sir we do not kiss. It must be because the kiss is a much more intimate act than even sexual intercourse.

‘You actually kiss him?’

‘I don’t kiss anybody else.’

I discovered that they had exchanged phone numbers. I was greatly alarmed when she told me that she often called him to ask for advice.

‘Advice? About what?’

‘About anything. What shoes to buy … why’s that important to you?’

Inevitably they started meeting in town, for drinks, for a meal. He took her to the opera, which she claimed to love.

Obviously what happened next was on the cards. They went to Paris for a whole week after he had told his wife he was going to a conference.

Paris Street by Guiseppe Mondi (Unsplash)

Gi no longer needed my company any more now, although we were still friends. Not that I minded.

I wasn’t at all surprised when she told me that Peter was planning to leave his wife so the two of them could get married. I knew that he had been married for twenty something years and that he had teenage daughters. When I was seeing him, I learned that his straying into our den of vice notwithstanding, he was devoted to his family. An affair with a work colleague, for example, is a danger to family life, but a whore just provides relief to the oversexed man. Many sauna girls maintain healthy relationships with husbands or partners, as in much the same manner, did the married men who visit our saunas. We do not like it when we cause marriages to break.

‘Are you sure you want to do that?’

‘Well … I am in love with him. I think.’

‘Isn’t it a case of Oediphus complex? I mean you must have missed having your dad in your life. After all you yourself told me Peter reminded you of him.’

‘What d’you mean? I never said anything like that.’ I said nothing.

‘You’re not in love with him, are you?’ she challenged me.

‘No,’ I answered more vehemently than I meant. We stared at each other for a while.

‘What about your chemistry degree? Your ambitions? Surely you’re not going to give all that up?’

‘I want Peter’s babies,’ she said merrily, ‘plenty of them.’

I was very dubious, but said nothing.

But there was a happy ending to this story. Gi told me that she made the greatest mistake of her life when she introduced Peter to Nari.