Today I received my first professional massage—a couple's massage with my wife—offered by the Andalusian hotel where we're staying. What an experience!

We were led down a softly lit hallway that smelled of lovely oil and sounded like whales. Maybe this is what brothels are like.

We entered an equally dim and atmospheric room that had two massage tables with nice white towels and things. The music was a kind of wooden alto flute, jungle birds and finger bells.

A lady gave us each a small plastic wrapper containing something that must have been pants. She told us to put them on and prostrate ourselves on the tables with our face through the holes and a towel covering our fanny (this word is for the American audience). Then she said, "I will be back in five minutes with another girl." A sentence I never thought I would hear in my lifetime. Was this heaven? Let's find out...

I had worn some fresh boxers for the occasion so was not prepared for having to strip in an unknown room, less so for what I had to change into: a navy paper posing pouch.

"Which side is the front?" I asked my wife.

She did not know so I had a guess and gathered my belongings into the grossly undersized crispy sack. I climbed onto the table feeling very much like the girls in that pornographic massage series that at least 50% of you have seen. (Thankfully I was not required to perform the kind of tasks demonstrated in those distracting vignettes.) I covered my fanny.

The harmony was almost broken by my wife suggesting we had had a massage together before. We had not. After a tense exchange, we moved on.

I peered through the face hole at a pneumatic mechanism with a spanner icon encircled by a red NO symbol. I began to think of my bladder, then the amount of coffee I had drunk at breakfast, then of cranberry juice—mentioned by Jack Nicholson as a diuretic in the 2006 film The Departed—then an article about Saddam Hussein, which I often think could be the basis of a novel, about the late dictator's time in jail where he displayed a heavy penchant for Doritos.

"What are you thinking about?" asked my wife. "Saddam Hussein."

There was a knock on the door. Two females entered and immediately got down to business. The table and my face rose away from the spanner symbol and I felt soft hands caress my shoulders and neck. Thoughts of urination swiftly abated as her digits worked their way to my thong and gently eased the strings down to nearly reveal my annüs. I briefly wondered whether my wife was ok with this, but those thoughts vanished as the the lady began to knead my buttocks. On the hi-fi a sitar was plucked suggestively, punctuated by a small gong.

This kind of thing continued interminably. There were pauses where oil was added to hands before being pressed into my fleshy unmentionables. It felt absolutely fantastic to be quite honest with you. Soon the towel was folded up to reveal a single leg and cheek that received dedicated attention.

Serenity was punctured by my wife asking for a deeper massage. This was meant to be a "relaxing" massage, so a short verbal contract containing the promise of a later financial transaction had to be agreed. As for me, I said I was happy with my lady's touchings, and the ritual continued.

Presently I was asked to turn over—something I had dreaded due to the reaffirmation that I was wearing a posing pouch. I was overjoyed to see that a modesty towel was held in front of the practitioner's eyes, which was then dropped over me whence I completed my revolution. This really was a remarkable establishment.

The rest of the massage passed with no incident. My limbs and fingers were given a good working over, and it ended with a few unusual but welcome depressions on my chest and diaphragm. And a short Indian head massage.

I was not offered a happy ending but neither did I need one.

★★★★★