What happened if you got aroused? If you grabbed him and started kissing him, did you have to pay extra? Were there condoms on hand just in case you wanted to take your steamy shower to the next level? Who applied for these jobs anyway?! I tried to wrap my head around the idea of getting a sponge shower by a beautiful naked stranger. After he soaped you up and rinsed you off - an erotic ablution that was included in the rate (1,300 baht for one hour, or about $43) - the pressing and tugging would begin.Īt this point in the conversation, I felt like I was listening to a porn storyline even less likely than the ones on the porn DVDs I would win a few months later for coming in first place in Sircuit’s Bear Chest Competition in Melbourne. (Actually, that last one wasn’t one of the choices, but it did seem to come up in pretty much every conversation in Bangkok involving gay men.) Once you took your pick, the two of you got undressed and hit the shower. You got to choose: short or tall, muscular or lean, top or bottom.
That’s not to say I didn’t find the concept intriguing, particularly the beginning, which included a lineup of beautiful Thai guys. But considering how I had felt about the female massage therapist fingering my private parts from outside my shorts several weeks earlier, I wasn’t so sure that I was ready to take them off for a nude masseur. Now, I was willing to try everything twice, and I sometimes welcomed extremely awkward situations because they provided excellent storytelling fodder for perking up stalled conversations. The two French friends of the Belgian Etihad Airways flight attendant from the night before, were telling me about a special Thai massage - a naked Thai massage! - that I just had to experience. I was having yet another five-star-on-a-budget Bangkok lunch, this one in a hospital cafe, of all places, when I heard something that made my jaw drop so far that it nearly landed on my curry chicken and rice.