Prologue
In my professional life as a Clinical Virologist specialising in sexually transmitted and blood borne infections I worked closely with what were then known as Genitourinary Clinics β now called Sexual Health Clinics. The basic premise of this story is therefore based on actual fact, although as far as I am aware there is no health spa or clinic like the one I describe.
What are advertised as saunas may be found on the high streets of many of our towns and cities. Although some may be genuine, many are really establishments where clients can pay for an erotic massage or more intimate sexual services. In other words they are brothels although keeping a brothel is illegal in the U.K. They are generally owned and managed by a woman, and the masseuses are usually much older than the girls who ply their trade on the streets. Many of them are single parents struggling to make ends meet; they often suffer from depression and may have an alcohol problem, though few use hard drugs.
This is Rachel's story, a story which has a happy ending. As the reader it is up to you to decide whether Rachel actually worked as a prostitute at all, depending I suppose on your opinion about erotic massage. She does eventually enjoy a lot of sex with both men and women but never for material gain, unless you count a free Mediterranean holiday on a luxury yacht as the guest of a wealthy man payment for sexual services.
Part 1 of the story introduces Rachel and creates the scenario out of which her story of liberation into a life of uninhibited sexual pleasure develops. It concludes with her first experience of erotic massage. Those readers who are only interested in explicit descriptions of sexual activity may wish to skim through the first two chapters or skip them altogether, although I believe they are important. Those who have the patience to plough through the first 5000 or so words will, I think, find the sex more arousing β suspense and suggestion being important factors in erotic stimulation. The story of Rachel's experience as an erotic masseuse and her subsequent sexual relationships with some of her colleagues and clients will be described in Part 2.
ooOoo
Chapter 1 β Rachel's Dilemma
Rachel was at her wits' end. She was nearly forty with two children at primary school, without a job, and no income other than benefit ... and the government was planning to cut that. There were days when she was forced to go without food just in order to feed and clothe the children, and pay the cost of heating and electricity.
It was all the fault of that low-life of a husband. When they had got married they had both kept on working so that they could buy their dream home in the leafy suburbs. She had a well paid job as a physiotherapist at the large hospital in a nearby city, but when they eventually decided they could afford to have children, she retired from her senior post to become a full time mother. She thought that everything was okay until the day he buggered off to live with his floozie in a loft apartment in a smart development in the city centre. She had always left all the financial matters to him, but she quickly discovered with a shock that they had fallen into serious debt because of his extravagance β the fancy car, and those so-called business trips to America, and unknown to her, the mortgage on his apartment. It turned out that the bastard had been cheating on her for years.
They sold the house, but after settling all the debts there was virtually nothing left, and she was forced to move with the children to a two bedroomed flat on a run-down estate of what had been social houses until the government forced the council to sell them. If she could have got a divorce he would have been forced to pay maintenance for the children, but she couldn't even afford the the cost of a lawyer, and he couldn't be bothered. She couldn't even go back to working at her profession. The hospital had outsourced physiotherapy services to a private company, but with the financial cutbacks in the health service β the government called them efficiency savings β and even they were laying off staff, starting with the those on the highest grades. She didn't even have the option of setting up in private practice. There was no way she could afford the expense of renting somewhere which she could fit out as a treatment room, let alone the cost of equipment and insurance; and childcare was prohibitively expensive.
ooOoo
Rachel really didn't know what to do, but one day when she was on her way back to the bus stop with two carrier bags of groceries from the cheap supermarket she saw a glossy poster in the window of the new wellness clinic which had recently opened on the high street. It was an advertisement for trained masseuses who could work for a few hours each week. She thought she might as well apply since that was at least something she could do. Massage was one of the skills that she had most enjoyed learning when she was at college, although she had rarely had occasion to use it in clinical practice, and it was no longer part of physiotherapy training. She was wearing her usual pair of well-worn jeans and a faded tee shirt so, knowing the importance of first impressions from her experience of interviewing job applicants, she decided to come back the following day dressed in a more appropriate fashion.