a close one....

So, yesterday I was waiting in Krabi Town for KatieQ to make it across the country. I was kinda stiff from all my traveling (watching a man crammed next to me on our bus cleaning his long, long finger nails), and I decided that I could use a Thai massage. Since the painful experience at Katie's school, I have come to appreciate them more, particularly in touristy areas where they are not so violent. Anyway, I wandered around for a bit and found a place that looked well lit and clean. I get escorted in and the lady assigned to me takes me upstairs. She is probably thirty-something, she speaks very little English, but is chubby and jolly. It starts normally enough, she asks me how old I am, I try to answer in Thai, which seemed to give her the false impression that I am fluent. The first clue that something is off is that, unlike other massages I have had, she keeps making eye contact with me while she is rubbing and poking. Then she asks if I have a girlfriend, and I stupidly tell her the truth. In Thai massage there is lots of leg kneading, and a fair amount in the upper-inner thigh, but this lady seems to be visiting that area more than I am used to. She says, "Do you like oil massage?"
I am not really uneasy yet, and though I do enjoy it, I do not want it right then and her english isn't so great, so I just say "no." More rubbing, more looking, some random Thai I do not understand. Crazy giggling. Then she says, "Do you like special massage?"
As this happens she pokes me in quite a personal area. I gasp, give an uncomfortable laugh, and say no thanks. She gives her crazy giggle, says some stuff in Thai and keeps massaging (not there!). I laugh to myself about the ridiculousness of the situation and wonder how I ended up in a brothel, but the massage is actually pretty good and I decide to stick it out and the massage goes on in a rather normal way. I breathe a sigh of relief and decide that I have dodged an unsavory and uncomfortable situation.
Well, I was wrong. She was kneading out some knot and I made a sound like it hurt, and she asked, "It hurt?"
I say yes, and she touches me there again and asks, "It hurt?"
I had to swat her hand away. She laughs and speaks to me in her fat Thai baby talk voice. Thank god it was time for me to roll over, but unfortunately I still wasn't safe. I got poked two more times, and then cupped once at the end. Given her surprise, I must have been one of the first people to turn down the special.
The weirdest part is that, besides the sexual assault and stress involved in swatting her hand away, it was one of the better massages I have gotten in Thailand. I guess that is why I didn't run. Also, she sometimes sounded as if she were half-joking and anyway, I am not such a confrontational character.
I returned back to the guesthouse and decided to read some of Disgrace, an entertaining novel I am engrossed in right now, in order to try to block out an entertaining but somewhat traumatic experience. Minutes later I encountered this quote, which made me feel better about myself. "That is what whores are for, after all: to put up with the ecstasies of the unlovely."
Hopefully I still ain't unlovely.