Zen and the Art of Sensual Massage

When did textbooks get so damned expensive? Fifty dollars for spiral bound photocopies?
Seriously?

I blew into this sleepy little college town with just enough money left for a Walmart dresser
and a jar of peanut butter. Okay, I exaggerate. But not much. Boxes everywhere, the cat
pan tucked into a corner of the kitchen, the familiar pang of hunger coupled with fear in
my stomach. Two weeks before school starts. What's a starving grad student to do?

When all else fails - including my own worst attempts at budgeting and planning ahead - I
turn to craigslist. Dot com. "Erotic Services" having long ago been deleted due to a series
of unfortunate killings, one gets creative. Man Seeking Man? Barter? For Hire? I got creative,
which is easy for me when I'm desperately poor. I gotta eat. And those textbooks won't buy
themselves. (I thought the graduate assistantship covered everything, dammit!)

It all makes sense, ultimately: that my higher education would involve my lower, survival
skills. It's a good opportunity to feel superior as well - toiling away on less fit, more or less
successful men than I. It's easy to reconcile "bodywork" as healing touch. Therapy. And
it is... The fact that the man beneath me is usually grinding his hips into the mattress I
can generally ignore. He's aroused; good for him! I'm just here to knead out these, uh,
tense muscles. Hey! That's my dick you've got in your mouth - what the? Oh, allright...
just don't strain your neck.

An admirer of Joe Orton's titillating diaries, I promise more details to come...