Today the topic on the table is erotic massage parlours. Now I and Bill decided to talk about this after a mate of ours told us he had gone to one after work. He told us this casually over dinner, as though he was telling us he had stopped off at the dry cleaners on the way home. On the other side of the table, he was surprised we were surprised, and even more so surprised that we had never gone for one before.
But then Bill said something which surprised me and something that I agreed with completely. When we constantly associate our own actions with our life narrative we let ourselves become afraid of doing some new, something that could corrupt our narrative in any way.
This is of course nonsense; we act in a series of different and erratic ways all the time. So why do you trouble yourself with the shadow of this former self, judging yourself on who you once were or might have been?
I suppose the unknown is always scary, perhaps young men feel just the same. I asked Bill if there was anything that could persuade him to take the plunge. He thought about it and came back to me with the idea of a guide, a sort of erotic massage for dummies. Some kind of information that would help a first timer navigate the erotic massage parlour. A guide that would prevent a fresh face from being scammed cheated or in danger of saying the wrong thing. So that gave us the idea. Over the next week, we set about learning as much as we could about the erotic massage industry alive and thriving in London town.
To do this we trawled websites, sourced information about different services, gaged typical prices. We even called the reception desk of a number of the most refutable parlours and asked their receptionists a bunch of questions.
