Some women want casual sex and feel safer with a negotiated service. Others want a sexpert who might better understand their needs. Happy ending” massages that include being stimulated to orgasm are not usually associated with female clientele. But there are indeed women seeking out this type of service from male masseurs, and their rules of engagement might surprise you. I think something weird happened,” she said, then described the vigorous butt rub. “Do you think that he was trying to do more?”

I am in the mind there must be some women who get propositioned for beyond professional services within or outside work hours for more money. And I would think most would not appreciate the offer. This may not have been what massage school had taught him, but it was a lot more fun than kneading a lower hamstring. So, he put an ad on Craigslist offering massage with a picture of himself: buff and beautiful. Like, on my genitals for an hour? I don’t know how that’s gonna go,” Cookie responded incredulously, glancing at the Hitachi Magic Wand. But her goal that day was to have an orgasm, so she was game. Stewart is one of 116 licensed sexological bodyworkers worldwide. Their work straddles the lines between sex work, therapy, and massage. Dr. Caldwell says the sex-as-therapy trope helps “reduce stigma” for women because women are less likely to openly state they want sex. “A woman who told me she bought sex for therapy might tell her best friend that she bought sex because she was curious or horny,” says Caldwell, “and both of these motivations might be true.”

It was at that point that I made a great decision. I told my wife that I had just remembered a meeting I needed to go to and would have to leave. I asked what his fee was and gave him the money, plus another twenty, and told him to "do whatever she needs". I never acted upon it in case I overthought things, and I didn’t want to make her feel awkward if that was the case. T anya, a white, 34-year-old mom, is one of the many women across the U.S. risking arrest for a happy ending. According to the Association of Certified Sexological Body Workers, this therapeutic method involves, “active receiving, anal touch, internal and external genital mapping, breathwork, scar tissue remediation, and orgasmic yoga coaching.” And yes, much of it involves bringing clients to orgasm. Stewart says that one of the keys to sexological bodywork is one-way touch: the therapist touches you and you don’t reciprocate. In December of last year, Tanya entered a strip-mall massage parlor in a ritzy Houston suburb—the same parlor she’d been going to for 11 years for traditional massage services, sometimes with her ex-husband. As she stood at the counter, the receptionist assigned her a male massage therapist. A 30-something woman waiting behind her piped up and said, “Oh, you’re getting him! He’s wonderful!” Tanya didn’t think much of it.

Some were high very quality massages with a great happy service, down the spectrum to a make believe massage with varying quality handjobs. After having a free, 30-minute Zoom call in which Stewart led her in breathwork and explained that his bodywork “can bring up a lot of hormonal responses that can confuse us into feelings,” but that there would be no romance, Cookie booked a three-day retreat. A month later, she was on a two-hour ferry ride to Victoria to meet Stewart.After the dinosaur role play, he explained the massage that he’d be giving her that afternoon. “My goal is to try to use this vibrator on you for 45 minutes to an hour,” Stewart said. Tanya walked to her car. She was the last client of the day. As she was sitting in her car, her masseur came out of the parlor. He looked at her for “half a second,” then “darted his eyes downward,” and continued walking to his car.

Stewart is married to a man, something that his client Cookie tells me is appealing to her. “It just makes it feel so much safer for me,” she says. I met one of Raine’s masseurs, Simon, at a coffee shop. A former breakdancer with an engineering degree, Simon made his way into massage after getting laid off in 2008. “I’d tried massage parlors before, and I thought, ‘Why can’t women do what men do and take ownership?’” he tells me. “The next thing I did was print up business cards.”So why would a woman pay for sex? Despite the stereotype that ladies can get laid whenever they want, the truth is more complicated. “Women buy sex because they want sex that they can control,” explains Caldwell. “Some women want casual sex and feel safer with a negotiated service. Others want a sexpert who might better understand their needs. Sex workers are unlikely to reject, belittle, or harass their clients, and many women who previously tried online dating prefer the convenience and consistency that commercial sex offers.” She’d learned from Reddit that when men are at a parlor, they don’t really have to ask for a happy ending. The masseuse would ask them, make a gesture toward their penis, or sometimes, “the men would have an erection and that was the indicator for the masseuse to offer it,” says Tanya. “It seemed so simple. But as a female, I was like, ‘How do I indicate? And do I even want that?’ And then part of me worried, ‘What if I get one and then I get arrested?’” She and I exchanged glances and my message to her was that it would be okay for this man to give her a massage. She asked what she should wear and he said "As little as you feel comfortable with, preferably nothing!" Again, after exchanging glances, she started taking her clothes off, while the young man prepared the table and his oils. Then she stretched-out, naked, on the table, face-down. I tend to agree nothing sexual happens with an actual massage clinic. There can be exceptions but I have been to a few places before and nothing ever happened other than the professional massage. I just bawled my eyes out, like I had never cried before,” she says, recalling that he held her as she cried for 10 minutes. “I realized that the work that we were doing was actually much, much deeper [than sex]. This was attachment work, like having-an-emotionally-neglectful-father stuff.”

What made it so erotic for her, she says, is that “it was somebody just making sure I got off. And that was all they wanted. They didn’t have any other expectations. And then I didn’t have to talk to them after.” Whereas, when she hooks up with her boyfriend she has to worry about his feelings, and the experience always ends in full penetration. In the massage parlor, “there was no penis causing any discomfort, and I didn’t have to deal with condoms or birth control.”One of the guys I used to work with got a couples massage with his wife while on vacation in Cancun. The masseur got the wife pretty worked up during the massage and asked her if she wanted to do more. She said ask my husband. Apparently he was pretty trashed and enjoying his massage and supposedly said OK so she got her happy ending. Stewart told her that he was going to take her close to peak arousal, then bring her down, and bring her up again, until she finally climaxed (a technique also referred to as “edging”). Cookie laid on the table as he worked the Hitachi all over her body. After about 45 minutes, with his gloved fingers inside of her, she came.