{This story is a short one, just an incident that happened way back. Lots of things have happened in my life, I happened to run into this lady named Cindy at the post office of all places. She smiled and said hello, it was interesting that she recognized me, after all, what I write here happened a bit over 40 years ago, in 1976. Also interesting, even with her being at least 70 years of age, she still looked pretty good. )
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As a young man, like so many others, I really had no idea at all of what I wanted to do with my life. Sitting in some office somewhere, or doing the Doctor/Lawyer/Teacher bit was just not my thing.
For one thing, I grew up on our family farm, which was best described as remote. Food was something we either harvested in the woods, grew for ourselves, or we killed something.
Because we were always broke, the rich people all lived in town and had jobs in the paper mill.
There was a tiny town just 9 miles away, the only way to get there was to take the boat. I was 14 years old when suddenly we were modern, we got electricity, a road, the railroad trestles that went by us down by the river got converted into bridges. Assuming 12" wide by 4" thick planks that had to be moved forward in stages to cross could be called a bridge.
By that time, I was probably as close to being a wild animal as it is possible to be. I could go out and live in the woods, and probably gain weight. Still could, in fact, except now I get cold at night and the ground is too hard.
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Having escaped from that as a young man, thanks to the military, I did my bit, until someone probably a mile away managed to get lucky. How they could even hit me at that range is beyond me, but it was not only once, but twice in the space of seconds.
Now I should suggest here that I got wounded while charging the enemy, blazing away with my rifle at the bad guys.
I was sitting in the damn latrine when the first one came in, it hit me high on the left side, felt kind of like a Bee sting. I let out a yelp, jumped up and got out of there. I made it maybe 10 feet when the 2nd one put me down, then I realized there were spurts of dirt kicking up all around me. Next came a bunch of racket as the guys all cut loose back at them, in the same general direction. They knew about where we were and we knew about where they were of course.
Kind of a typical skirmish, usually any firefights were at long distances, contrary to what some believe.
That was the end of my military career, I found myself home, with a wife best described as a bit wayward. My options were not good, I could go to work in the local paper mill, or look around for some low paying job working doing lord knows what, or go back to live on the big ranch which I am sure my parents would have liked.
To them, I would be cheap help, but I didn't like the 13-14 hour days, usually all seven each week.
Instead, I went to a local trade school, the plan was to do something in the medical field but somewhere in there I ended up learning the massage trade. In my head at the time was the idea of making around $10 an hour instead of the perhaps $3 or so the mill paid, and I could come and go as I pleased, work when I wanted.
That is what I thought, anyway. Besides, instead of hundred and hundreds of hours of training, massage school was just 75.
The military stipend let me rent an apartment, and covered the bare basics, barely. I still get that check today, 40 years later. Our government really does take care of us, sort of.
I got the idea of working with people as a therapist from the massages I got myself during my healing process, there was a period in there where I needed that. My left arm was messed up, in time it did work OK though. Plus, becoming a therapist was easy, 75 total hours at a place that taught massage and I was a professional, just like that.
I had been doing my best to build a clients list for a couple of years, and while I was probably doing better than most males trying to make it in that field, I was a long ways from being a raging success.
I did manage to get quite a few housewife types, it seems women love touch and far too many of you husbands just do not think of filling that particular need. That part it did not take me very long to figure out.
So, word got around that I was a guy that has no real objections to assisting when some lady was feeling in need, and I didn't mind that one bit. In fact, I enjoyed that, and the laws back then were foggy, it was not exactly illegal. The female "therapists" (not all of them mind you, but quite a few) openly offered the massage with what was called a hand finish.
Of course, as a male, had I hung up a huge sign like the massage parlors of the day did, I suspect that would have created quite a stir. Massage was NOT what one could call an equal opportunity type of business.
So, I ran polite ads, pretended to be a perfectly legitimate therapist. The surprise to some might be that that worked, and I found myself with a dozen regular clients and a few of what I called the one hit wonders.
Being young, cute, and in reasonably good shape was an asset. There was the problem of one lung that was at 50% capacity, but the human body compensates given time. The round that came in from the side as I was running for cover went through my left bicep into my chest, kind of created an intersection in there, one coming down through the damn latrine and the other coming in from the side. . At least that is what the military Doctors told me after they dug the metal out of me.
I was lucky, a whole bunch of the guys got sent home in bags. I admit to being happy to be headed home.
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I met this couple at the bowling alley of all places, several times during the season my team would play against their team. It was a mixed league, we had every size and shape and age you can imagine, and Cindy was easily the best looking one of the bunch.
She was about 5 feet tall, no more than that. One of those women that are blessed, might be the word. She dressed in snug slacks, which made it very clear that she had booty, although that term had not yet been invented. She carried about 10 extra pounds, and if I had to guess I would say she was a large "C" cup. She always wore a bra that I could easily make out through the tops she wore, heavy straps and appearing to be designed to control things, which they did nicely.
Always a huge smile, a flirtatious manner, her husband Jim would be right there and that never appeared to bother him one bit. Nice guy, he smiled a lot also, after seeing his wife I couldn't blame him.
Then one day, she showed up but wasn't playing, and I noticed she had a limp. Several times during the match I noticed her reaching back with her right arm to rub her hip and side. I mentioned it to Jim, he explained she had been weeding their garden, got to pulling on some weed that didn't want to be pulled, the weed won and something let go.
I guess it was just my instinct, but at one point I went back to where she was sitting, had her lean forward and I began to work her shoulders and down her back, right there in front of everyone. Cindy tensed at first, then she realized, soon she was leaning forward and letting out some soft moans. I had to stop and go throw my own shot every once in awhile, then I would go right back and work some more.
At first, people were looking at me strangely but soon no one was paying any attention, what I was doing somehow became normal. Quite a few of them knew what I did for a living anyway, it was no secret, although I bet eyebrows might have gone up if they knew all of what I did. Probably somewhere in the 10-15% of my female clients got very personal service, including a couple of the ladies in our bowling league. It was all just hands, but very intimate hands.
"Good lord, Danny. You are so good at that, thank you!" Cindy told me as we were putting our gear away.
That was it for that night, I never even thought about it. It was just my instinct at that stage of my life, I had massaged several hundred people by that time, and to me, helping someone made me feel very good.
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It was about 3 days later, I was sitting watching some TV show, Red Skelton I think, when my phone rang.
"Hi, Danny. This is Cindy, Jim's wife? I was wondering, how much do you charge for an appointment? My back and hip are just killing me." She said.
"It's $10.00 for a full hour, $18.00 for a two hour session. Would you like an appointment?" I asked.