While we were last together in LA in the winter 1995-96, Lauren organized what she believed was my first massage, or what I admitted was my first experience of the kind. Annie, a nice woman in her late thirties came to the Malibu beach house owned by Lauren’s stepmother, Lynne. It was not far from the place Lauren’s father had found for us for the winter vacations. Lauren had massage before me. I cannot be sure about this any longer, but perhaps Lynne preceded both of us. At any rate, I was the last in line. Annie was pretty good, but the whole thing was quite uneventful, at least by the standards of massage parlors and even respectable hotels in Southeast Asia. However, when Annie was finished and I got up from the deployable cot she had brought with her, we fell into each other’s arms. As I was hugging and kissing her, and as she was a bit reluctantly responding in kind, I remember mumbling about the confusion inherent in massage: afterwards, one was simultaneously so close and so far from the person who had just touched you where few people ever touch you. In return, Annie mumbled warm words of support. She understood me perfectly well, I could tell. Besides, it was obvious that things would have gone somewhat differently had my introduction to massage not been organized by my wife in her stepmother’s house. We waived at each other for a long while as she got into her car and drove off back to LA.