nuda

She slips through the door, "I'll be back in a few minutes", she says, smiling on her way out and dimming the lights. I take a moment to look around the darkened room; candles flicker along the skirting board, also here and there on the shelves, and in the corner, a compact, ultra-modern hi-fi glows a gentle neon blue through fissures in its chrome casing, the slow beats of Enigma - the mood music - setting the tone.

I drop my robe onto a chair, and stand, dressed only in my boxer briefs, alongside the raised bed. The room is very warm, but cool air is washing down onto my skin from somewhere above me; in seconds, the plane of my chest rises with goose-pimples, the concomitant tingle sending a shiver down my spine, making it even worse; I muse that my nipples would punctuate a fairly thick jumper, right about now, and run my fingertips over my skin as I have always done when roused this way.

I love getting goose-pimples on my chest; it reminds me of my earlier youth, when we'd make occasional trips to a golf-club in the Malaysian highlands. There, my sister and I would splash around in the pool, whizz down the water-slide, do whatever it is that we were supposed to do as kids, all the while trying to stay in the water for as long as possible; heck, the air was freezing, hovering somewhere around twenty degrees centigrade (I told you I hated the cold), falling even lower when the clouds came in like a heavy, rolling fog, which they always did by mid-afternoon. And there, trying to keep the cold fabric of my trunks away from my skin, I would break out in goose-pimples. All over. And nowhere was it more impressive than across the flats of my pectorals, which I would smear with the palms of my hands until they went away.

I lie down on my back and close my eyes. A few moments on, and she re-enters the room; I hear her moving about behind my head, and then her hands are on me. Hot, hot hands, with a strong grip made fluid by scented oil, the smell of which I can't place, but certainly feel a reaction to; as she drives her hands deep into my musculature, I literally fly down that steep slope between anxiety and total relaxation.

This is, if the hands of lovers can be discounted, my first proper massage, and hot damn. In times long past, I may have presented a couple of minor symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder - a usual early-teen afflication - but have felt, for the greater part of a decade, entirely comfortable with my body. This doesn't stop me from feeling a little reluctant to get my kit off in front of people, perhaps a matter of my own perception of what is modest, but though I was quite aware of this today, it was little more than a niggle.

And so she asks me to roll over. Eyes closed, I start to imagine the inevitable - the hands pressed against my shoulder blades are as strong as any gorgeous man's - and just as quickly become aware of the potential embarassment that this might lead to. I take it down a notch, and really start to enjoy. Her hands run up the centre of my back and, suddenly, reflex sees me purring as deep and throaty a rumble as I can muster; above me, I hear an exhalation of mild amusement; as many times as she's done this, I'm sure that the reaction she gets must be fairly universal; it's all a question of when.