When I lived with my sister in Oregon, she had an older gentleman co-worker whom I called "Habib". This was incredibly racist yet also incredibly innocent on my part. In my defense, his real name was "Hussein" and, being that it was 1995 for some reason I couldn't remember/slash/didn't want to call him that. He took a shining to us because we were young and alone in the big city and perhaps he felt he needed to father us. He was constantly cooking us dinner and dropping it on our doorstep and we'd come home to a yummy casserole. I digress.
Hussein considered himself to be somewhat of an expert massage therapist and one afternoon I considered myself to be quite in need of one. I was fresh out of massage school, and very used to trading massage with whomever felt like ponying up their end of the bargain. I set up the living room floor with pillows, went into my room, disrobed and wrapped up in a towel. Hussein massaged my back and it felt pretty good. It felt. Normal.
Until he started massaging my legs. He started with both hands on one side of my right knee and in a very normal massage-therapist-action, he moved them up towards my butt. Only he didn't stop where massage-therapists-normally-stop. In fact he bumped into the side of my no-no-special place. My eyes opened wide. Surely there had been some sort of mistake. Close eyes. Bump. Open eyes. He wasn't being creepy...Bump. No. It couldn't possibly...Bump. Bump. Bump. Then he moved on. As if nothing had happened.
Did I scream for my sister, working there at the kitchen table? Did I *cough* (the universal sign for "stop doing that")? Did I tell him what he was doing was making me uncomfortable?
NO! I wouldn't want to hurt his feelings!
We moved to Minnesota three days later.
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