It was a gloomy, cloudy day in Februari when I first entered the physiotherapy clinic. The clouds matched my mood that day. My life was getting more and more overshadowed by an annoying medical issue. I had no idea what was lying ahead and tried to imagine the best while fearing the worst.
I am a man in his mid-thirties, pretty good-looking, as some of my friends tell me. I am not exactly a health freak, but I try to keep in shape by bicycling to work, where I spend too much time sitting in front of a desk. About a year ago an annoying pain started developing in my upper thigh, and this slowly got worse. Then I started having difficulties walking. My left upper thigh started hurting, and the pain radiated towards my buttock. It was time to see a doctor. He sent me to a specialist, an orthopedist.
The specialist diagnosed an inflammation, prescribed some anti-inflammatory drugs, and told me I should have ten sessions of physiotherapy. He told me that my injury was quite unusual for someone like me. "Usually I see this in women above 65," he said.
I was not happy to hear that. So young, and already getting older women's problems. "Why me?" I asked the doctor. He mumbled that there is always a chance you get something unusual. After asking me some questions, and discussing some possibilities, he speculated that perhaps it was caused by a minor bicycle accident I had a year before, that I unwisely did not seek treatment for.
I bought the drugs and located a physiotherapy clinic nearby. When I called them I was told that they had a therapist who was specialized in this kind of problem. Her name was Dr. Sarah Nichols. I could make an appointment with her for the next day at 4 pm.
I have had no previous experience with physiotherapy, so I had no idea what to expect. But I have a somewhat dirty mind, probably like many guys. When I hear "physiotherapy," my mind thinks "massage" and when my mind hears "massage," it thinks "happy ending."
The fact that the therapist was a woman triggered my imagination. I started getting images of a sexy babe, caressing my buttocks with soft feminine hands. Then she would accidentally touch a naughty part of my body that was not really under treatment.
Then she would say, "I am very sorry."
My reply would be, "Don't worry, you may touch whatever you need to."
Then these thoughts would evolve into various scenarios.
So that day in Februari I entered the clinic with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, there was the prospect of a lengthy, uncomfortable, and possibly painful recovery process, but on the other hand, I had my weird and implausible fantasies. I knew that these daydreams were never going to be realized, but I also knew that entertaining and developing these wishful thoughts cheered me up, so I consciously let them permeate my mind.
In the waiting room of the clinic, I felt a little out of place. There were mainly older people. Just after 4 p.m., my name was called, and I entered the treatment room. Sarah Nichols turned out to be a woman in her early forties, wearing a white lab coat.
I introduced myself, and she said, "Well young man, that is a nice change. Usually, I treat older women."
I told her, "I am glad you like what you see."
She smiled professionally at me and ignored my remark. She was of course not the sexy babe I was fantasizing about. She was good-looking, nothing more and nothing less.
The treatment room was very large, with separate areas for four patients. These areas had massage tables or beds separated by curtains from the rest of the room. She was treating several patients at the same time. Many of them received infrared treatment. This needed just to be set up, and then she could leave the patient under an infrared lamp for half an hour. Others appeared to be doing exercises under her guidance. There was not much privacy in these treatment areas. The semi-transparant curtain reduced most visibility but did not stop sound.
After closing the curtain she told me to remove my pants, and lie on the massage table, face down. I made a gesture as if I was also going to remove my boxer shorts, but she said, "No dear, I am sure it looks very nice, but I do not need to see it."
After I lay down she pushed the lower edge of my boxer shorts up, until it was just below my buttock. Having exposed my thigh, she started massaging it.
She said, "You really have some very tight muscles here," and then started kneading them like they were bread dough. It was extremely painful, and I screamed like a pig about to be slaughtered. The whole room must have heard it, but she was unmoved by it. So much for feminine empathy. She just continued until all tight muscles had been softened. She did not accidentally touch my balls, as I had hoped.
She prescribed a set of exercises I had to do at home. One of them was to lie on my back and fold my legs so that my feet were just behind my buttocks. I had to lift my buttocks and then slowly go down again, and relax. This had to be repeated twenty times.
We made an appointment for the next session. Now Sarah focussed on my back. I had to remove all my clothing except my underpants. She pushed the upper elastic band of my underpants all the way down below my buttocks. Since I was lying face down, I could not see myself. They forgot to cover the walls of the room with mirrors. But I knew she had a full view of my buttocks, and started massaging from the bottom of my buttock to the top of my back.
This started getting closer to my fantasy of soft feminine hands caressing my buttocks, but alas. What she did had nothing to do with caressing. She isolated a muscle, pressed very hard on it, and then pushed her hand up from my buttock to my shoulder. I felt my penis being pressed against the massage table within my underpants, but her action was so painful that no erotic thoughts entered my mind. And of course, her hand did not accidentally slip between my buttocks.
I asked "So what do you think of my buttocks," a somewhat ambiguous question that she could in principle answer in a purely medical way.
She replied, "Your muscles are much too tight. You should exercise more. But esthetically, you have a very good-looking bum."
That was a pleasant surprise, and I thanked her for it. She was not scared to make the occasional risky remark. There was still hope...
After the back treatment, I heard the somewhat disturbing sound of rubber gloves being put on a hand. Sarah asked me to turn around, face up, and then she put her hand in my mouth. She started massaging the inside of my cheeks. At least that did not hurt as much as the thigh and back massage.
When her hand was out of my mouth I asked how this procedure could possibly improve the pain in my leg, and she said, "We have many procedures in physiotherapy that may seem counterintuitive. But everything in our body is connected to everything else. This is called the holistic approach. I happen to be a strong believer in that, but admittedly some of my colleagues are more skeptical."
In the subsequent massage sessions, the beginning was always very painful. She found tight muscles that needed fixing, and even knots, which were even more painful to massage away. But after about fifteen minutes she switched to less extreme massage techniques. During these periods we started chatting a bit, just to make time pass more pleasantly.
We covered a variety of topics of mutual interest, such as hobbies, favorite films, restaurants, etc. We also talked about our personal situations (we were both divorced), and about her profession. I asked if it was not very tiring to knead muscles all day. She said, "Yes, at the end of the day I am exhausted, and it ruins my hands."
Then I moved the subject subtly to the dangers of physical contact and the risk of accidentally touching private parts.
