I went to my doctor when I started getting lower-back pain. In a nutshell, he told me it was my age, and I should get more exercise. He offered to refer me for physiotherapy, but the waiting time was likely to be forever. So I decided instead on cream cake therapy, and lunched with Pam, my very bestest old friend, and bored her with my complaint.
Pam recommended a nearby osteopathy clinic, citing their successful curing of Pam's husband's boss's brother's wife's frozen shoulder as surefire providence of their efficacy. So I went. Pam never mentioned how expensive they were.
Mr Jones-Anderson had an alphabet of letters after his name, so I assumed he would be competent. He also looked like an ageing Cary Grant, which was a sort of plus, too. After scaring me silly with X-rays and diagrams of nerve bundles squeezing through spine cavities, he suggested some remedial massage to relieve the sciatic something-or-other from the pressure of the pelvic something-else-beginning-with-o.
When one has such treatment, one is required to strip off down to one's knickers, and don a rather shapeless gown. Which is no fun, by the way. At least, not compared to trying on a Dior gown knowing you can't afford to buy it. But I digress. Flat on my front, Mr Double-Barreled soon reduced the tension in my shoulder blades and the immediate pain at the top of my right buttock. Flat on my back, Cary Grant's double also started to massage, then bend and stretch my legs. That's when the trouble started.
My husband had passed away some years earlier, and I had downsized, regrouped, survived the menopause and generally moulded a comfortable new lifestyle. I had come to convince myself that the advantages of not having a man about the house and under one's feet far outweighed the advantages of having one. And I hadn't particularly missed the sex -- it was never everything it was cracked up to be, and I was knocking on a bit in age now after all. Hence my alarm when the man with the dimple-chin massaged my left thigh.
Easing my leg upwards and pushing it towards me had caused my labia to open and secrete vaginal lubrication. I hoped to hell the wetting didn't show on my panties. But worse, I felt sure I had filled the room with my aroma, emitted as though squirted from a high-pressure aerosol can. Well, if my hard-working masseur had received a faceful of pheromones, at least he was professional enough not to show it.
I paid the bill, still entertaining the improbable fantasy of a dimpled chin pressing onto my naked vulva, and booked up a further session, as recommended.
I wasn't looking forward to the possibility of embarrassing myself again, so I was quite relieved when I was informed in reception that the star of the silver screen was unavailable, but Dr Zavadi, a qualified lady osteotherapist, would stand in. My relief was short lived. I had never had sexual leanings towards my own sex, but my treatment under Dr Z, Natalia, an attractive 40-something, had an even more dramatic effect on me than the initial session with Mr J-A. Maybe it was the eroticism of a situation even more taboo, given the moral conventions of our society, than at the initial session. Or maybe it was her close-fitting uniform. At least Natalia would have understood, with a degree of empathy one would have thought, my involuntary predicament. Or maybe she was not blessed with a sense of smell.
After the end of my course of treatment, and with my back problem much improved, I felt able to attend the dental check-up which was long overdue. I was used to dental appointments, and was comfortable with Mr Khan, the practitioner. If it was going to be a nervy occasion, it was simply for the reasons most people have about going to the dentist. However, mid-way through my examination, I was under attack again. This is impossible, I thought. My mind told me I was strapped in the torture chair of the monstrous Docteur-de-Pain, who, abetted by his beautiful, but wicked, young female assistant student nurse, was about to indulge his despicable perversions using his terrifying range of chromium instruments.
Oh no. I felt myself creaming again. "Open wide," said the evil doctor. Not your legs, Trina, I kept saying to myself. Not your legs.
Although encouraged slightly by the possibility I had invented a way of making scaling and polishing easier to endure (that procedure whereby a needle-pointed high-pitched whining scraper tool searches out exposed nerve-ends in the base and gaps of one's teeth), I was approaching my wits end regarding everyday situations making me feel randy. So I dragged Pammie out to lunch again.
