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Massage with unhappy endings
By Alex Au for Fridae.com
In this article from Fridae.com Alex Au points out
that sometimes massage does not always have a happy ending!
Think again before you accept a
"special" to round off a massage session – even if you've got
"protection." Alex Au, who loves going for massages, explains why.
"You want? I have condom," he whispered.
"No, definitely not," I said, for the umpteenth time slightly horrified.
"Your hands are full of oil. My body's full of oil. Oil no good for
rubber condom."
I'm a massage mole; I love going for massages. And there is no better
place for the sheer variety of offerings than Bangkok.
Some days, I choose the highly
skilled professional massage places complete with burning aroma, rose
petals, ginger tea and staff bowing so frequently you fear they'd soon
be hunchbacked. Other days, I want the friskier places.
The frisky places are where the dangers lurk. The price of the massage
tells you that the establishment cannot quite afford to pay the masseurs
decent salaries and they have to depend on tips. Naturally, the way to
maximise tips is for the masseurs to offer "special services" to round
off a session.
But massage, to mean anything, has to involve oil, and especially since
these boys aren't professionally trained, they tend to slather on the
oil like one might baste a pig for roasting. And then after all that
oiling, to still expect condoms to provide a reliable barrier... well,
wake up. (Oil and oil-based lubricants such as hand creams, baby oil and
Vaseline can damage latex and cause latex condoms to tear more easily.
So use only water-based lube such as KY Jelly, Astroglide, Wet.)
How many other customers do it nonetheless? "It" being penetrative sex
lubricated with oil, for surely that is what they're going to use as
lubricant since I have yet to see water-based lube in a massage room. I
fear many do. Or worse, many do without – the condom!
The HIV prevalence rate among men who have sex with men (MSM) in
Thailand is getting very serious. A survey conducted in 2007 found that
nearly 31 percent of MSM were HIV-positive, a 3-percentage point
increase from an earlier survey conducted in 2005.
With these numbers, it would be foolish if you did not assume that the
partner you're having sanook (meaning "fun" in Thai) with is
HIV-positive, and take appropriate precautions.
Nor is this just a Thai problem, since tens of thousands of
Singaporeans, Hongkongers, Taiwanese, Japanese and Malaysians make
annual "pilgrimages" to the City of Angels on the Chao Phraya.
Given all this travelling, let's not imagine we are safe from the
growing epidemic in the country we love.
The more crucial question is: Why aren't the proprietors of these places
ensuring that their staff know what not to do?
One possibility is that they wish to maintain deniability; they don't
want to acknowledge officially that sex takes place on premises, so the
less they raise the subject with their staff, the better. But as we all
know from years of experience in other countries, denial is one of HIV's
best friends.
Do the Thai authorities create problems for these places unless they
maintain deniability? I don't know, but it is a distinct possibility. If
so, then, it is extremely short-sighted of the authorities.
On the other hand, it is hard to imagine that this can be the reason.
After all, the condoms are neatly slipped under the orchid, and the
manager goes out of his way to remind customers that the tip for the boy
is 500 baht (US$14), but "if something special happens, then minimum tip
one thousand baht." If he's saying that openly, what's stopping him from
being frank with the employees about risks?
One can't help but conclude that if the masseurs are still uninformed or
unconvinced about the seriousness of the risk, it's just negligence. Not
enough effort has been made to get the message through. And it's a
really shameful reflection on the gay community, since most proprietors
of these establishments are gay, and virtually all the customers are
too. And none of us are taking responsibility for the lives of these
working boys... and ourselves?
Source:
www.fridae.com
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Photos by Boxer
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