Inner Thigh Business

Emerging Writer Series

Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “Inner Thigh Business” by Lauren Leonardi. Lauren is a writer and maker, a devotee of many mediums. Story is her primary craft and she does her best to honor that calling. She's currently seeking representation for a book-length work of nonfiction—a memoir of chemical intervention, botched salvations, the myth of wellness in a sick culture, and the ongoing choice to stay soft in a world that consumes itself with ever-increasing ferocity. For income, she happily lends her ill-gotten business acumen to a worthy cause: she serves as Managing Director of a mission-driven, heart-centered learning organization. She divides her time between a handful of cities and travels with a beloved, wiry-haired street mutt as her constant companion.

---

I was deep in the self-consuming brutality of the first few weeks after a breakup. The only things that brought me comfort were sleep and maybe, briefly, a bowl of something covered in warm soft cheese. I wasn’t doing a ton of discretionary spending at the time, which is to say, I was broke. But I wanted to do something loving for myself. A massage felt right.

I called a local day spa and made an appointment with the only massage therapist available that day. He was called Bastien, and this amused me, as it has amused everyone to whom I’ve told this story because it feels rakish and roguish, like the name of a shirtless lothario in a grocery store bodice ripper.

Later that day, disheveled and pathetic, I sat in the small lobby of the spa I’d chosen. It was tiled, clean and spare, a few tasteful curios, stuffed waiting room settees. I’d chosen the place from a quick search because it was owned by a Black woman, only 12 minutes from home, and affordable, with all good reviews. A blonde patron, early 60s, hot pink tank, floated out from the back, flushed and aflutter. She slammed an open hand on the reception counter and declared how good, how incredible. On the edge of a sort of pleasure-induced madness, arms waving, she pushed a couple of 50s toward the receptionist and left the shop still crooning.

“Excuse me, Miss. Am I seeing who she’s seeing?”

The girl behind the counter smirked and gave me a thumbs up.

Many of us were still wearing masks at the time, and Bastien appeared, face obscured, head shaved, in the black athleisure typical of massage therapists. He instructed me in heavily accented English to choose a scented oil from a small rack, then told me to follow him. In the dimly lighted room, he asked if I’d like to focus on any area in particular.

“My heart?” It was a half-joke. He nodded solemnly.

He left the room. I undressed completely, as I always do before a massage—I only keep undies on when I have my period—and got onto the table, stomach down. I pulled the covers up to my shoulders. He returned in a few moments with an air of gravitas and focus, his movements around the space deliberate and minimal.

He folded the covers down from my shoulders, exposing the length of my back, and placed a flat palm where the blanket had been. He did not move for several moments. His palm was not what you’d expect from a man covered eight hours a day in oils. It was leather and callous. A working man’s hand.

During the first weeks of breakup angst, my lizard brain had grown me a reptile’s skin made of scales and spikes, and as I’d lay in bed devouring myself, I’d wondered, in the distorted thinking stirred up by broken trust, if I might live out the rest of my days without ever again knowing the feeling of someone else’s lips on mine. I felt hideous. My usually volcanic libido had settled into a cool viscous stillness.

Yet here I lay, alive under someone else’s touch, surprised to discover myself to be a sentient human woman. The comfort, the simple intimacy of it, caught in my throat. My face, smashed into the donut-shaped headrest, issued a stifled hiccup in the direction of the floor. Bastien remained mostly still but applied pressure till he was very nearly rocking me, as gently as a man can rock a woman with a single hand on her back. He moved around me, never lifting his hand, and retrieved a tissue from somewhere. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, and he handed it to me. I dried my eyes. Blew my nose. Pulled myself together. He stood back and assessed me.

“I just broke up with someone,” I told him.

He murmured a wordless French-accented understanding and began the massage.

Hands now slick with some carrier oil, plus a few drops of the scent I’d chosen, he slid across me. He began where my wings would originate, if I were an angel, and concluded past the swell of my hips. Somewhere between the pace of his progression and the depth of his breathing, I felt between us an unstated appreciation of my particular waist to hip ratio. I felt more from him than the competent touch of a professional. I felt reassured, suddenly, that there might be men out there who would not behave in ways that would make me question whether I would ever want to be touched again.

During that first massage, Bastien assured me I would find someone new.

He told me I had a special energy.

He told me I was beautiful.

Bastien managed to offer these utterances with the soft comfort of a lullaby, so that I experienced no discomfort, despite being naked under his hands.

When a friend later that day asked how my massage was, I answered, “I felt like a woman.”

“Skilled bodyworker,” she commented, because she knew like-a-woman was the thing I most needed to feel on that day.

I went back about six weeks later and asked for Bastien.

–

I knew the things Bastien had said—calling me beautiful, talking about my energy—were inappropriate. I also knew that in different circumstances, with a different person, I would have been uncomfortable; but I hadn’t been uncomfortable. I realized and appreciated that he’d walked right up to a fine line and toed it. He had mastered the subtlety of whatever his art was. I regarded him as a healer of a sort. A man who could receive a woman on his table, feel into what she truly needed, and provide it.

During our second session, the tone was similar. I’d arrived less disorganized, more settled into my post-breakup reality. With his big rough hands spiraling my upper thigh, Bastien asked if I’d found someone new. I laughed and told him not yet.

“You will,” he assured me. “You’re a beautiful woman.”

I didn’t mind hearing it.

As before, I knew it was incongruous. Unprofessional. It was the sort of comment that perhaps should have caused me to freeze up. If he were someone else, I might have asked him not to comment on my appearance. If he were someone else, I might have even mentioned it to the front desk on the way out, or left it in a mixed review online. Masseuse makes inappropriate comments.

If he were someone else.

But who was he?

Perhaps it was I who’d been someone else. Perhaps if I’d been a different version of me, more skin than scales, I would have stayed away.

But that version of me didn’t mind. The self immolation had slowed to manageable, as will happen with time. But I was still green, slit-shaped pupils.

If whatever Bastien was doing was flirtation, if it was medicine, if it was just between us, or if it was his unique professional approach, whatever it was, I liked it. I liked that I could walk into a room as a paying customer and be made to feel like a woman, by a man, and it was safe, there was no risk, and I could walk away.

After I flipped onto my back, Bastien spent a disproportionate amount of time massaging my inner thighs. The inner thighs during a massage are usually a connective path, not a destination. I lifted one corner of the eye mask and peered out at him. His eyes met mine, and they were innocent. As if we both didn’t know how physiologically unnecessary this particular line of massage was.

He brought up again something about me looking for a new boyfriend.

“I don’t think I’m ready,” I said.

“You are,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” he insisted.

I was innocent of his meaning at the time. I didn’t follow. But I do now. All that inner thigh business was designed with arousal in mind, and it was effective. The bed sheet placed for modesty during a massage is a bit of folly. Especially when your masseuse works his long fingers repeatedly into the crook where the elastic of your underwear usually sits. To him, my apparent arousal was a signal that I was somehow ready to go out into the world to find love. As if a wet pussy has anything at all to do with a woman’s ready heart.

–

During my third visit, another month into the future, Bastien asked again if I’d found someone.

“Yes, actually,” I told him.

“Already?” he said.

“You told me I would,” I smiled into the donut.

“Yes, but I thought it would be me,” he said.

I said nothing in response, assuming his rejoinder to be a silly gesture at friendly flirting, nothing more. His flirtation, though more overt, had less of an effect than in times past, possibly because I’d entered by then into a tumultuous rebound with a slender, Cuban, poetry-reading firefighter. It was intoxicating as well as toxic, and I knew it would be. The me the firefighter was drawn to was plenty scaly, still hungry for my own flesh. He wouldn’t have recognized me in human skin, nor would he have been drawn to me. I walked in with my slit-eyes wide open, and the flame burned hot and fast. By the time I returned to Bastien a fourth time, it was over.

“Already?” He didn’t seem surprised.

“It wasn’t meant to last,” I explained.

During each session, Bastien spent longer and longer kneading the flesh of my inner thighs. What began as two or three minutes became five and six. He made circular rotations with his fingertips that were decidedly not the chaste therapy of Swedish massage. I thought often of the older blonde woman who’d come out of the room fawning. I wondered if he did this with her. With everyone. I imagined him stroking her bikini line, the insides of her tanned thighs. I felt a bit foolish that I had allowed myself to feel at all special.

I inquired about this. “Do you do this with everyone?”

He feigned innocence. “Do what?”

The next time he said something off color, another suggestion he thought he’d be the next man for me, I seized the opportunity.

“This,” I said, “Do you do this with everyone.”

“You’re different,” he said.

I laughed my head off.

If fuckboi gaslighting could be distilled to a single phrase, it was this. You are different from all the other girls, cherie. You’re special.

He asked why I was laughing, earnest as ever, almost wounded-seeming by my reaction. I told him his game had crossed from subtle to preposterous.

Unsmiling, he said, “Do you not believe your energy is different?”

In this way, clever Bastien made me question whether my awareness of his demeanor might be a manifestation of self-doubt rather than clarity as to his intent.

–

“I believe he’s offering me a happy ending,” I told my friends, mouth full, wiping a bit of mango salsa off my chin with a paper napkin. We’d gathered for tacos at a truck in the parking lot of an antique shop after our weekly meditation group.

There was much giggling and inquiry. One friend, Tia, lithe and mermaidy, shrewd and whip smart, had an allure of raw sensuality that never failed to draw the attention of male strangers. Despite this, she was secretly quite inexperienced sexually and just a few weeks earlier had asked me to demonstrate—using an empty canister of OFF!—how to give a proper hand job.

“What very specifically,” she asked in her throaty tenor, “does he do to make you think he’s offering you a happy ending?”

I borrowed the crook of a male friend’s elbow and instructed everyone to imagine it was my crotch. I fingered it, circularly.

“I just came,” he said, deadpan.

Our laughter was a release, a welcome break from the oddness of the topic. Discomfort and taboo were generally welcome among this group of peers, but there was something palpably rigid in the discourse. Like, let’s make space for this but not too much. Curiosity edged by fear, for the women. Curiosity edged by excitement from the men. They wanted to know, was this a standard massage place? It was, I assured. A day spa in an affluent neighborhood, not a massage parlor in a run-down strip mall. Was he offering everyone the same thing, they wondered aloud? I had that same question. I wasn’t even sure he was offering it to me.

I continued to visit Bastien about every six to eight weeks, and each time he grew increasingly flirtatious. On one occasion, Bastien asked if I wanted my abdomen massaged. I did, as I’d had terrible menstrual cramps that month, worse than usual. I thought a belly massage might do me good. He moved to lower the sheet in a way that would have left my breasts exposed. I had to ask for something to cover up with. He seemed irritated. I bristled at his umbrage. Wondered about the entitlement I perceived. Entitlement to access that had not been earned, much less granted.

“You’re shy,” he accused.

“I am anything but,” I told him.

“You are,” he insisted.

“Modest isn’t the same as shy,” I countered, and quickly realized we were in a territory of subtlety for which Bastien might not be cut out, linguistically or otherwise.

I realized, too, that I didn’t care if he believed me to be shy or modest or anything at all. I realized, in a gust of relief that blew through me like a welcome wind, that I couldn’t have cared less what Bastien thought of me. I hadn’t especially cared all along, but it was this act of entitlement that highlighted it.

Had I felt done exploring this dynamic with Bastien, his act of entitlement could have served as cautionary. The manipulation inherent in his accusation. You are shy. Like a dare to prove otherwise. As it was, I was not yet done exploring the dynamic.

–

Time passed. I returned to Bastien again. He continued to escalate ever so incrementally. Once he even asked for my number, but in such a way as to make it seem guileless. Almost like a joke. I had no desire to offer it, nor to be asked for it. I wanted the balance of our vibe to stay exactly what it was. Massage therapist and client…with a kick.

In reality, the vibe had changed already, with his increasing flirtation. I wished he would have kept it to a more subtle minimum. Still, I had become intrigued by the idea of allowing him to get me off. I didn’t want Bastien sexually, not really. I was not especially attracted to him. I was drawn to the real-life roleplay of it, and to the mechanics of the catharsis. I was increasingly aroused during each of our sessions and would dress quickly to run home and masturbate before the heady fog of arousal wore off. I’d begun charging my vibrator before appointments, in anticipation.

After each visit to the day spa, I’d review with my friends the increasing intensity of my encounters. They did not express concern about it being unethical or unsafe, and though the questionable nature of my dynamic with Bastien was obvious, it had never felt out of my control. He’d had every opportunity to slip across a boundary into all sorts of problematic territory, but he didn’t. He kept himself contained. This implied if not a certain level of respect, at least a certain degree of safety.

My male friends encouraged me to go for it.

“But you have to make the move,” they said.

I knew they were right. If I wanted Bastien to cross the line, I’d have to indicate with absolute clarity that I was ready. He’d walked as close to that edge as professionalism and legality would allow. Anything more, I’d have to instigate.

“It’ll be transactional,” they assured me. I took this to mean, it would carry an air of professionalism. It would be curt and clean, which is what I wanted.

“What if I can’t come?” I wondered aloud.

“Then you can’t,” the elbow friend said. “Who cares?”

There was freedom in that notion, too. If we crossed a line, I wouldn’t owe him anything, not even the completion of my own pleasure to satisfy his ego. I sank into the chorus of over-confident, unburdened male voices offering me counsel from the vantage of their own experiences with such matters. I breathed for a moment their air, unpolluted by the miasma of consequences considered.

My female friends regarded the consideration with openness. We let each other live. But not one of them could imagine themselves wanting an experience like the one I described. They couldn’t relate to wanting an orgasm at the hands of a man I wasn’t especially attracted to. Though they did understand the fantasy of the interplay. Professional lines crossed, rules broken in lustful urgency and all that.

“How much extra do I have to pay?” I wondered aloud.

We batted it around for awhile.

“A lot,” was the general consensus.

—

More than a year after I’d first met Bastien, more than a year after I’d first broached the idea of a happy ending with friends over tacos, I found myself on Bastien’s table ready to make the move.

Until it happened, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d do it. He’d done his typical routine–spent an agonizingly long time on my upper and inner thighs, took great care with the parts of my body framing my vagina. He was about to throw the blanket back over my right leg, to move onto head and neck. It was now or never.

“Okay,” I said aloud.

I reached down, under the sheet and the velvety blanket, and took his hand. I moved his fingers a half an inch to the left and without hesitation, he slid two fingers inside me.

–

Here’s how I imagined it might pan out: I believed Bastien would finger me with the same line-toeing brand of professionalism he’d used to massage me in times past. I imagined he would masturbate me till I had an orgasm, or until I wanted to stop. I imagined, once I was done, that he would finish my massage with the hair, head, and neck stuff he always left extra time for because he knew it was my favorite. Afterward, I imagined I would lay several extra twenties on the pillow and say goodbye.

What actually happened was this: after only a few moments with his fingers wiggling around inside me, Bastien reached up with another hand to find my nipples. It was unexpected, but I allowed it. Then, Bastien threw the covers back, pushed my knees wide, and without pause or consent, lowered his mouth to my vulva. He was already tongue deep before I had fully considered whether I actually wanted oral sex. I imagined him with his tongue up the vagina of the blonde in the pink tank, countless others perhaps. I felt disgusting in a mortal-terror-of-venereal-disease sort of way, but the cat was out of the bag. It was happening. I didn’t hate it. It isn’t what I would have chosen. It’s not how I would have designed it. But by then, I had officially been permissive. I had given consent through inaction. At least five or ten seconds had passed, and then twenty, thirty. I was still deliberating, but it was still happening, and so I gave myself over to it. Decided to try to enjoy it.

After a while, unable to relax or sink in, I felt done. I didn’t want any more. I couldn’t finish. I pushed him away.

He lifted his head and said with a tenderness that reminded me of the flat of his palm on my back that very first day, “Take your time.”

He then resumed his ministrations, which were all around too forceful and without the nuance or skill of his vocational touch.

Nevertheless, I did relax then and did, after awhile, climax. The orgasm was forced, but no less gratifying for its urgency. The whole thing unfolded in a flurry of whispers and shuffling, the walls thin, others elsewhere in the space receiving their above-board hot stone and aromatherapy massages. Once I finished, I truly was done with the encounter. I pushed him away again, and again he resisted my request. This time by holding on tight to my hips, and pressing in deeper with his face. I allowed him to try another few moments longer, and then tapped his head to indicate the round was really over.

I was more interested, at this point, in the hair, head, and neck stuff than I was in a second orgasm. The urge had been utilitarian for me. Sexy because it was taboo and illegal, because I got off on the role reversal, because I’d felt at least relatively in charge. But unlike the gooey affection I feel after sex with someone I care for, I wanted the touching part to be over. I wanted to put a period at the end of the sentence. Begin a new paragraph.

I wanted the male experience: a proficient hand job delivered with a cool vacant professionalism. This was how my male friends had assured me it would play out.

Instead, Bastien walked around the table, stood with his hips near my face, and asked, “Now what?”

“Now you finish my massage,” I said.

I was fully naked, the covers lost to the floor somewhere. He reached forward and massaged my breasts, my neck, everywhere I felt vulnerable. I reached for a corner of a sheet and tugged on whatever loose fabric I could find. I covered myself to my neck.

Bastien asked when we could continue. We were not on the same page.

“Next time I visit,” I said.

He complained that I only come in for a massage every six months, which was far from true.

“I’ll take your number,” he said.

“I’m not giving you my number,” I said, my naked body still in his hands, under the sheet.

For the first time, I considered the possibility that I might really be the only one. All this time, I assumed he was some kind of secret gigolo peddling diddles in this otherwise legitimate establishment. Now, I wondered if it really had been all about me. If my energy really was that different. I realized that Bastien thought I liked him. Like, like-liked him.

“You can take mine,” he said.

“I don’t want your number.”

He suggested he come to my house later.

I told him I didn’t live alone.

It was true, but the bigger truth was that he wasn’t invited. I chose this more or less irrelevant fact because I thought it might allay him more effectively than my inconsequential female lack of want.

“To your parking lot, then,” he said.

Wait a second. “You want to come fuck me in a parking lot?”

Not only was I now in the position of fending off a pursuer who was coloring way outside the lines, I was also offended. Is this what Bastien believed to be my worth? Is this how he had assessed my level of self respect?

“How many times did you come?” he asked.

Christ.

I held one honest finger into the air.

I glanced at the clock. Mercifully, our time was up. Bastien had to leave the room. It could arouse the suspicion of his co-workers if he overstayed any longer. As soon as he was gone, I more or less leapt from the table. Dressed quickly. I was not dissatisfied, nor was I exactly afraid. I was sticky with oil and high on the adrenaline of broken rules and an action finally taken after a year of contemplation. But I wanted to get the hell out of there.

Bastien knocked. Opened the door.

“We’re alone,” he said.

He meant there were no other patrons or masseurs, no receptionist. We were alone in the building. I took note of the hour. Early evening. I must have been the last client. I turned away from him. Continued to dress. My urgency to leave, and soon, ticked higher. He moved into the room. Positioned his large body, which now seemed larger and stronger than it had before, behind me. He put his hands on my hips, his face near my ear.

I stepped away. Bent hurriedly to pick up my shoes. Sat on the other side of the room to put them on.

He did not move toward me, thank goodness. He looked at me with curiosity, and confusion. Guilt rose in me. He’d been mistaken. He believed I saw him as a sort of suitor. I realized this in the same moment I realized I might have treated a civilian like a sex worker.

I wanted to correct this wrong in whatever way I could, but the immediate reality was more pressing: I was a woman alone in a room with an aroused man who had the wrong idea.

“Can I call you?” he asked pathetically.

“That’s not what this is, Bastien.”

“What is it?”

“It’s two adults, in the context of this room having a professional exchange,” I used two fingers to convey a container in the shape of a square, “and nothing more.”

“When will I see you again?” he asked.

“When I decide to come back,” I told him.

“I guess I’ll have to wait, then,” he said.

He looked defeated.

I stepped forward and placed a fan of twenties on the rumpled sheets.

Then I left. In haste.

In the car, I locked the doors and drove away without putting my seat belt on.

–

I do kiss and tell. In the days to follow, I regaled different groups with the tale. Among women-friends, we batted around ideas of male and female experiences, the imbalance of our status as humans. We discussed what would have indicated reasonable amounts of same-pageness. We wondered whether he had the capacity to have understood what was actually happening, and decided that absolutely, yes, if he’d been a bit more thoughtful, he might have considered that our intentions were not aligned.

Among the men, there was much more laughter.

You got him fired up, they said.

“He got me fired up,” I corrected.

“He was horny!” they insisted.

I looked at these men born in the final breath of the twentieth century, raised on Mister Rogers and Little League, and wondered what happened.

“His arousal was not my concern,” I said.

They had a hard time with that.

I felt unclear about whether I owed Bastien an apology. Did I rope him into something beyond his awareness?

My female friends balk at this.

“He spent a year getting you wet,” they say.

As if I were not also a willing and permissive participant.

Over the course of our year, I returned to Bastien because as massage therapists go, he was good. He had learned my preferences. I no longer had to specify where I preferred more pressure or less, where my chronic little aches and pains bothered me. He knew. I also liked the boundary-pushing arousal dance; the power, control, and surrender I felt in the dynamic. The good massage and the taboo of inching closer to crossing a line made for a nice cocktail: the adrenaline of breaking the rules, plus the oxytocin and endorphins from the massage.

I also liked that I could solicit a certain sort of male energy from Bastien without swiping on dating apps, which I’d disavowed. I liked that I didn’t have to paint my eyelashes in tar or dab paste over the purple patches at the corners of my eyes, or flash false interest over a cocktail; that I could imbibe a bit of touch and appreciation without any effort at all beyond the cost of the massage and a generous tip. I lay there and allowed myself to be pampered with hands and oils and words, and all I had to do in exchange was pay my dues.

I live in a world—you might recognize it yourself—where despite myself, despite decades of work and therapy and care, I am nearly constantly and perversely concerned with what men think of me. Especially the men whom I allow to put their hands on me. I am pummeled by the relentless barrage of woke girl-power on social media (yas, queen) that comes sifted in the same feed with cool contour tips on how to “snatch” your face with the illusion of shadow, because god forbid your face just be the shape it is.

I am drunk on the words of Mary Oliver (“Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.”) and Nayyirah Waheed (“i love myself.' the quietest. simplest. most powerful. revolution. ever.”) I have processed the six summers of fat-camp, the 30-some years of dieting, the anti-diet revolution, the gift and miracle of my body. I once lifted a window from its sash to toss a scale out, watched it shatter to bits on the pavement below, wiped my hands clean, and never bought another.

Through this learning, these acts and expressions of self love, I had come to believe that I’d found a way to stop caring about what men think of me. Not only what they think of the skin I’m in, but also how they perceive my comfort inside of it, because that too is a measure of value. They call it confidence, but really it’s a measure of how well I’ve shut out the incessant scream. How masterfully I’ve chosen deafness in defiance of the cacophony that works to make sure we’ll hate ourselves at least a little. Something about Bastien’s table, and the absolute absence of my desire for his approval, was a profound unburdening. I had unlocked a new freedom in myself. A fresh barometer with which to measure my own comfort in rooms with other men. If I found myself in discomfort in the future, I could draw on this memory. Step into the flesh of this freedom like a hero’s jumpsuit.

But the gift of flirtation and freedom had a cost. Whether Bastien was trying to get me horny is not in question. His motives as to why were the question. I remembered him looking down at me in the dim light of the room with the words, “Do you not believe you are different?” on his lips. I wondered then, and again in retrospect, whether it had been unctuous customer service, a veil for his hope to bed me (be it on a table or in a car), or whether it had been sincere. I realize now the three were not mutually exclusive.

I had to wonder, too, whether I had been the manipulator. I came to him seeking relief from a breakup. In the end, I was left wondering if I’d caused harm. In my own state of hurt, had I been irresponsible with him?

The fantasy was a clean, uncomplicated pleasure. It was meant to be a physical release, devoid of attachment or responsibility. The fantasy did not come to life, and I should have known better.