Now that I have your attention - I noticed that my buddies Thorn and Reflex and have been going at it in the comments about the nature of The Business. Well there was one thing they brought up that I wanted to talk about.
You may have noticed that over the past year, I have tried to avoid the so called "legal" aspects of the erotic massage business. I did this intentionally since 1) I am not a lawyer, 2) I've always been uncomfortable debating what's "legal," and 3) I do NOT want to attract the attention of anyone interested in shutting us down. The way I look at it is that I provide relaxing massages and stress relief to customers who ask. That's it. I don't think there's any point in making any more out of it.
This is why I hate getting lumped under the term of "sex worker." On my left is a crack-ho and on my right is a stripper. I think I should be under "healthcare" since most of what I do is a form of therapy. Stay with me here... If I spend 40 minutes performing therapeutic massage, but only 5 minutes performing hand releases - then I'm technically 89% Therapist and only 11% Sex Worker. Heck - my services should be 89% covered by insurance!
Now there's something very important that I want to explain to all of you. I have never been paid for a handjob. Yes - you read that correctly. I have never accepted money in exchange for a hand release. I know that sounds contrary to everything I've talked about here, but that's what we are taught from the very beginning in this Business.
Let me explain... An Erotic Masseuse cannot accept money in exchange for a hand release. THAT would be prostitution. We can accept money for a massage and that's it. If you "tip" me for my services then I might get "more comfortable" in the room and remove various articles of clothing. And if I like you, then maybe I'll provide a little bit of stress relief in the form of a hand release at the very end.
I know that may sound like a load of crap, BUT that's our story and we swear by it. I remember at my very first job how my bosses sat me down and explained to me all the things we needed to do to cover our asses from a legal standpoint. This included:
The Speech
"If there's any part of your body you'd like me to massage, please indicate so by placing my hand there..."
The Release
We don't give handjobs, we provide hand releases.
The Happy Ending
Customers don't have to ask for it - we give them because we want to. I worked at this 1 place where we were REQUIRED to give happy endings to ALL customers - regardless of whether they tipped or not. So a guy could come in and just pay for a massage with no options, and we'd still have to take care of him. To make it worse, we didn't get paid for therapeutics, so more than once I gave hand releases basically for free!
Tipping
We don't get paid by customers, we get tipped. Some places also have weird rules about who handles money so there is never a direct exchange of cash with the masseuses.
Audrey has a lawyer (he's not just a lawyer, he's also a customer! LOL) who advises her on these things. He tells her what she can and can't say on legal documents, advertisements, logbooks, mail, etc. In fact, every place I've worked at had lawyers. You'd be surprised just how much paperwork is involved when running a business. Anyway, he also tells us what we can and can't say on the phone, in the rooms, etc.
Some of you are probably thinking that none of this matters if someone really wants to shut a Business down, and you may be right. But remember, we're not full service and if everyone sticks to the script then the neighbors won't notice us - and THAT's the key to staying in business. It's the full service brothels that get shut down way before the massage parlors. And that's usually because they drew too much attention to themselves, or they weren't keeping up with the payola.
So the lawbooks may try to lump all types of activity under "prostitution" but the reality is that some things are a hell of a lot harder to prove than others. I've never been in a place that got shut down, but I have left places that ended up getting shut down because I could see the writing on the wall.
The Business seems to be pretty safe at the moment, as long as Audrey and Trina don't do anything stupid. I kinda trust Audrey since I know she only does full service with some of her Regulars. It's Trina I'm worried about. I can see her saying the wrong thing to the wrong person and ruining it for all of us. She's kinda dumb that way, but that's another story...
CJ
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26 comments:
I didnt have a chance to read all of this but where should i go to get that free hand job?
Just wanted to let you I spent a good chunk of my Christmas break reading over your archives! Everything fascinated me, and it's nice to hear a little on the legal aspects. My favorite posts are the 'freak of the week!'
can't wait for more from you!
I want to know where the place you used to work is! lol.
Happy New Year!
I know I have been a little quiet lately but I have been practicing up on my flirting... wink, wink, nod, nod.
Sorry I couldn't resist.
I really like the legal stuff and it all sounds legal to me.
Dear Porter,
If I had a dollar for every time a guy asked me that!
I tell ya - is that fucked up or what? For over a year I basically jerked guys off for free. FREE!!! What made it worse were the guys who added insult to injury by "tipping" me a buck or 2.
You know what that felt like? At least the guys who tipped nothing you could just write off as cheapskates. But the guy who hands me a dollar after I spent 5 minutes jerking off his sorry ass is ALSO calling me cheap!
UGH!!!!! Now you got me started. I haven't thought of that shithole Business in a while. I think I'll share a few stories from there next time.
CJ
Semantics.
You can call an apple an orange all you want, you may even be able to convince a few people the apple really is an orange. But really its not, its an apple and you are calling it an orange.
Have you ever considered a post on FBSM and/or do you have any experience/contacts with that side of the massage industry?
CJ, first off let me say I see nothing wrong in what you do. I am a client of many such MPs and I don't see that as a bad thing either. I live in the real world though and I know that fact that *I* don't see them as bad doesn't mean the the aggregate vision of society is the same. In fact I know it to be the exact opposite.
I am also a realist. I know that because society's views on this aren't the same as mine, and society has more authority and power than I have as an individual, push comes to shove their views win and mine lose. That applies to EVERYONE, yourself included.
I don't care what Audrey's lawyers say, I arrested people for a living and I am point blank telling you that taking "tips" for "hand releases" is legally accepting money for a sex act. Taking off your clothes to the point where you expose certain parts of your body, like your breasts, is an act of prostitution in PA [as well as NY, NJ, CT]
Even if they guy can leave without paying a single cent over the hourly rate for the massaged, you and he have still committed a LEGAL act of public lewdness you can be charged with. Yes, I know its behind close doors. The law still defines your work area as a public place.
As a member of the community of people who seek out services such as your own I am not going to let bad information stand so that people make less than informed decisions on their behavior. There is enough bad information out there already.
People like you and I, who partake in the things you and I do, should NOT go around with blinders on. We need to be MORE and BETTER informed in order to cover our proverbial asses, not less.
Do what you do and be happy doing it. Make LOTS of money and save it so when you can't do it anymore you have something to show for it. There is nothing negative in the following words I say to you: Don't be foolish enough to think that because you believe something to be true that it will impact, in the slightest, the possible implications of being caught doing it.
If the place you work at gets raided, and they scare the poor john [and we, the guys who are getting hand-jobs, are JOHNS because the LAW defines us as such - no matter how much you or I feel we are doing nothing wrong - and for my part at least I don't think I am but again its not *our* opinions that matter where the law is concerned] knuckles under to the pressure of the investigators who will ask him if he paid the nice lady giving him the massage to give him a hand-job and he says yes... YOU ARE GETTING ARRESTED AND IT WILL STICK.
I know how it works. I did it for a living for 25 years [though I managed to avoid the hypocrisy of doing it in the vice unit].
Ignorance of what is possible to happen to you if caught up in something society has deemed unsavory is not an affirmative defense in a court of law.
So intelligent people who do what you and I do learn the realities, throwing fantasy out the window in the process. We learn the laws of what we do where we do it, and we do what we have to so as to be as smart as humanly possible about staying out of trouble while doing it.
Common sense is the best weapon against society's lack of tolerence for people like you, who does what you do, and people like me who like what you do and don't mind paying for it.
BTW, pardon my typos please. I type fast and don't tend to proof read past the point of making sure the ideas are clear enough to get through to the average reader for this type of publishing. Of course if it was professional product I'd be far more exacting.
ReFlex, since you won't be able to poke holes in the logic of my statements, feel free to fire away at the spelling. [sorry, I simply couldn't resist :) ]
wishing well to All...
BTW, as a public service for anyone who wants to look it up [please CJ you be one of them so you can see I am on the level with this] the specific PA state Statutes [and there may be local ordinances involved as well] are CS 5901 for lewdness; CS 5902 B4 for solicitation [which is what you are doing when you ask a customer if there is any part of him he wants massaged and he touches his junk] or CS 5902 B3 "encouraging" if it won't fit exactly under B4 [the catch all - in the law there are these catch all statutes that are meant to be used whenever the state wants to charge someone and they can't get specific enough under other law they use the "catch all" statute] and the owners would get charged under CS 5902 B1 for "owning/controlling/managing" a house of prostitution.
If its a game then it has rules and if you want to play you ought to know them.
And again, wishing well to All...
well, I'm glad you made _that_ perfectly clear!!!
Thorn,
I understand that "technically" taking my top off and touching a customer's dick comes under "solicitation" under PA law. BUT, there is a huge difference between being charged with something and being guilty.
Off the top of my head I can think of 4 girls who were busted locally and nothing stuck. One girl got busted by an undercover cop for giving him a HJ. A year later when it finally got to court, the judge threw it out because there was no actual evidence that she asked for $.
A friend of mine at another business got busted for actually asking an undercover cop $50 for a HJ. She was never arrested or charged with anything, but her Business ending up paying a fine.
And finally, this mother/daughter team got busted for prostitution at a local business, but it never even made it to court and that place STILL operates!
So you see, there's nothing black and white about this. It's all about who you know, who you've ticked off, and who you've paid off (and in OUR case, how many cops are actually paying customers!).
Ya wanna know who around here gets in trouble? The full-service places - both asian and american. Where there's full-service there's drugs. And where there's drugs, there's street crime. And THAT'S what brings in the cops.
Like I've said before, true massage parlors are "nuisance" businesses. We exist by not drawing any legal attention to ourselves, and just not making it worth the effort.
CJ
Dear Jenny,
But when you paint an apple orange and tell people it's an orange, then you might keep your fruitstand from getting raided by the cops! ;)
CJ
Anon,
What is FBSM?
CJ - Good response. Thats what I've seen around here now that I've known what to look for. The only places that get raided are the Asian places, when clearly a few other places are also offering services judging by what you have said to look for.
Thorn - As usual none of what you said means a hill of beans. So what if everything you said is true, I don't think CJ is quitting, so who cares if she is 'fooling herself'. She knows the risks, she chose to do this anyways.
A mother/daughter hooker team?!?! sweet!!! Were they hot?
CJ - Very much along the lines of what you do, except without necessarily being in an official place of business ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fbsm
myredbook.com also has plenty of listings/ads
CJ - Don't misunderstand. I am NOT suggesting that getting caught means getting convicted. [Hell, you don't have to explain the revolving door concept of the US justice system to a retired cop :) ]. For the average person getting busted is bad enough. Your name in the local paper. Everyone knowing what you were accused of. A permanent NCIC/SCIC-CJIS record of the arrest and what it was for so any time you get that, "Were you ever arrested?", question on an employment application your potential employer can ask for a CCH [computerized criminal history] check and see it, bold as life.
No, for most of us an arrest is quite enough to ruin us. The actual court case, when it finally comes about, is just the cherry on top of the sundae.
BTW, FBSM = Full Body Sensual Massage. Most of the time it means body to body contact during the massage phase. I can also imply things like Russian and, occasionally, faux genital to genital contact like fake cowgirl [very bit in the Russian places] where the provider straddles the client in a position that looks like female superior insertion but actually is giving him a hand job behind her back or rubbing the client against the crack of her ass. [Hey, you asked. :) ]
Reflex: I'm not remotely trying to get CJ to quit. Hell, I'm in the Lehigh Valley myself and the next time I'm out that way I may very well stop in and get happy myself.
I am just an advocate for people like us making INFORMED decisions. To make informed decisions one needs accurate information. I try to help by putting what I know, from my experiences on BOTH sides of this equation - LE and client - and people will do, as they always do, anything they want with that info. Including ignore it or bash it if they wish [we all know which one you seem to have chosen].
Wishing well to All...
A PS on the FBSM thing: I meant to suggest the most intense use of the acronym as I have seen it used [you know, like in CL listings, Russian houses, etc.
I have also seen it used to mean as little as an "all over soft massage" aka " full body sensual" or "erotic" with happy ending ["full body"] as opposed to theraputic.
Thorn - No, your not an advocate, you are an advertiser. Big difference.
ReFlex: Wrong again.
I have nothing to do with any site other than Utopia Guide [where I am an unpaid moderator] and I only mention sites like SpaHunters, BGFE, etc] where the info on them is DIRECTLY pertinent to what is being discussed.
I include the site of UG on my sig line because there is a space for it so why not? UG is free for users of it and the info on it is recent, usually accurate, and covers the area we are discussing. In other words, it is germane.
{sheesh} :)
You ought to visit it, you'd know more about what you are talking about. [sorry, just couldn't resist] :)
Posting sources to promote informed consumerism is NOT shilling, it is SPECIFICALLY advocating, just as I said it was.
BTW, why don't you do something useful like actually post some info of your own, instead of simply commenting about ME and what you think I'm all about. :)
All your posts seem to be either of the 1) Nice post CJ or 2) something about me.
I can well understand your fascination with CJ. It just seems I loom way too large in your field of view though. Almost makes me a tad uncomfortable. :)
Wishing well...
Sorry CJ, I'll knock it off. I respect that its your blog and this back and forth between ReFlex and myself can be distracting [please note for the record though I only respond to him - I don't instigate - that's been his job].
The guy *is* funny, I'll give him that, so the temptation is too strong when he gets all up on his high horse and all not to highlight the irony of the pot addressing the kettle as Black.
At least my motivation isn't trying to get brownie points from you [almost creepy in the 'White Knight" thing going on there]. {shudder}
As the kids say, "Anyway..." [insert sarcasm emoticon here] :)
Wishing well to All...
I have to say, between CJ, Thorn, and Reflex, or whatever, this is the most entertaining post I've seen. Informative, innovative, and hysterical - espeically when mom/kid hookers are tossed into the center!!!!
Well done!
Wow, Thorn's exposure of CJ's delusions was spot on. Takes a cop to cut through the fog of denial, jailhouse lawyerism, and blind, fanboyish praise, I guess.
I don't want to look that up, but many an escort website repeats the same nonsense as CJ, almost verbatim. And many massage parlors also post that stuff in the reception area and the rooms. "Any sexual interaction between therapist and customer is strictly forbidden by management and would only be the result of an agreement between consenting adults". Something like that. Mumbo jumbo that will throw off charges like prayer cures cancer (fat chance).
I have the exact same attitude toward the massage business as Thorn. I'm all for it and resent that a hypocritical society outlaws it. But for crying out loud, know the risks and quit deluding yourself about what you do (john AND provider). You're a whore, CJ, "not that there's anything wrong with that!"
What a deal! Great post! Hahaha
www.thetruthaboutamway.com
I'm going to say that you are in fact a sex worker. I am a stripper, and I feel the same way about being therapeutic. I am basically a naked therapist. I sit and listen to customers about all of their problems, then I rub my tits in their face until they feel better. No shame in the game, sweetie! :)
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