My Time as a Booker for a ‘Sensual Masseuse’

From the onset, it was perfect: minimal work, maximum reward and a hint of the illicit that would keep me on my toes.

Like most adventures, it started with a Craigslist ad.

I was jobless and broke in that desperate, freeing way that happens in college, where every week is a trial in scrounged change, panicked phone calls to my dad and overloaded dining hall trays full of apples to squirrel away for midnight snacks and french fries to eat as if preparing for hibernation. The particulars of the ad are less clear now, but I’m pretty sure it was vague enough for me to think nothing of it. It fell into my lap like a tiny gift from above, a whispered promise of quick cash and flexible hours. It was perfect.

The job was simple. Mary was a licensed massage therapist making money to put herself through nursing school. She was doing this by providing “sensual massage services”— her words, not mine — to clients and she needed help. This included booking and scheduling clients, arranging hotel rooms and coordinating the transportation of a variety of things, including a massage table and a new masseuse named Anna who was based in Spain. All I needed to do was answer some emails and make some phone calls—simple stuff, really. I’d get a 10 percent cut, in cash, of every job she booked.

From the onset, it was perfect: minimal work, maximum reward and a hint of the illicit that would keep me on my toes. I’m not sure what I thought the job entailed, but I know that it seemed easy enough for me to maintain my very important sophomore year schedule of writing very bad fiction, smoking cigarettes and crying on the phone to my boyfriend, who lived in San Diego.

It was the easiest job I’ve had to date. I met Mary in a cafe to pick up the computer I would use to set up appointments and book hotels. The pricing for her services was basic, starting at $200 for an hour and climbing to upwards of $1,000 or more, depending on services rendered. The nature of these services were never clear to me and I never asked because doing so seemed out of place. It didn’t matter, really. She was getting hers and I was getting mine.

What followed was a few months full of a strange responsibility. I’d check my work email — a Yahoo account full of spam, mostly — in the library when I was supposed to be doing research, honing the skills I would later use in the long, yawning stretch of desk jobs in my future. I was writing these emails in her stead, and so I peppered them with the occasional smiley face and more exclamation points than I prefer to employ. After every night she worked, she’d call me and I’d dutifully transcribe the names of these men into my day planner, along with the times they were booked and the money she made. This, as always, was the most satisfying part: performing the neat calculations that let me know how much money I was going to make. Work is nothing more than a means to an end: money.

I spent my spring break that year housesitting for her uncle, who lived in a tiny studio on St. Mark’s. In exchange for lodging, I washed endless piles of white sheets of questionable provenance and ate a lot of falafel. One night, after walking around the block for hours, I realized I locked myself out. Embarrassed and close to tears, I tried the door handle in vain, jiggling it every which way, until a neighbor asked if I was okay. We had to call her uncle, who seemed confused as to who I was; eventually, a locksmith came and grimly inserted thin tools into the deadbolt until it sprung open. I don’t remember who paid for that transgression, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me.

All things must inevitably come to an end. I finished spring break at my father’s house. One day, when I was aimlessly replying to emails and scheduling appointments, I got a call from Mary with an urgent request.

She was running late. Here is a man’s number, she said. Here is his name. Call him, but remember, you’re me. Make your voice a little breathier, a little higher pitched. Sound inviting. Be nice.

From the safety of my dorm room, clutching a flip phone to my sweaty cheek, this would’ve been fine. From the comfortable torpor of my father’s living room, watching the “Barefoot Contessa,” this was less than ideal. He was already suspicious of my new employment, only privy to the dribbles of information I shared, and I only revealed the nature of the job after insistent prodding. He knew what my boss did for a living and he knew my role in the operation. Any other information I kept to myself.

I made the call because I needed the money and because it was my job. I rushed through a script I had written down on an index card, effectively stalling and saving the appointment. I made the call from our house phone. When I turned to leave the office, my father was standing in the hallway.

“Who did you just call,” he asked, his tone similar to the one he used the first time I came home stoned when he was still awake enough to ask me what I did that night.

“It was for work,” I said. “It’s fine.”

A week later, my father called me, expressing vague concerns about the phone calls I was making for work. Maybe the work she was doing was illegal. Maybe the cell phone I used to make these calls, like the call he heard at home of his daughter pretending to be a sensual masseuse, were being tapped. He is a man who worries, a trait inherited by his children. For some reason, nothing about what I was doing felt worrisome. Imbued with the hubris of the very young and relatively stupid, I talked him down, but hung up the phone understanding that I had to quit.

All I had to do was get my money. I met her in the penthouse suite of the Westin in Copley Square. Because I wanted backup for whatever foolish thing I thought might happen to me — kidnapping? indentured sexual servitude? — I insisted that two friends come with me and wait in the lobby. In the penthouse, Mary was waiting for me, dressed in a robe, perched on the edge of a chair, counting a stack of money.

“I have to quit,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

She understood, or at least pretended to. After five minutes and an uncomfortable farewell, I left with $457 in crumpled bills, stuffed hastily into a paper bag. My friends and I went to lunch. I paid.

Megan Reynolds is an associate editor at The Frisky. She lives in New York.

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