I met Marci Winters in the late ’80′s. I was still dealing pot and she was a referral from my first girlfriend, Val, in Hollywood. Marci was a cool chick. I liked her, and she reminded me of my kindergarten teacher, Miss Blackstone.
Marci was a kindergarten teacher, too, and she was very petite and cute. I always had a crush on her and hoped that somehow down the line I would get my chance. It never happened, though. She always had a boyfriend, or I always had a girlfriend, or even if we were both single for one reason or another, it just never happened. Hey, not everyone hooks up just because one party has a crush on someone. We were pretty good friends though, so that was better than nothing.
Marci used to come over to my recording studio on  Hollywood and Vine and buy pot from me and hang out while I worked. She always liked musicians and was always a good hang. I used to give her shoulder massages and she kept telling me how amazing I was at massage. I just figured that any knucklehead could give a good shoulder massage and that you had to be a retard to not know how to give a good shoulder massage. She made it very clear that I was way better than anyone she had ever met at shoulder massages.
After several weeks of coming over to buy pot and get her free shoulder massages, she finally said flat out that she would rather hire me for $70 an hour than use her regular massage therapist. I said I would have no problem accepting $70 an hour to get to massage a naked Marci Winters. I would have done it for free. Hey, it was her idea and who am I to turn down a request like that?
She told me to make business cards saying I was a massage therapist and that she would give them to all her model friends. So, that was the beginning of how I became a massage therapist. I figured, why not get paid to rub naked models’ long skinny legs and tired, aching backs?
I knew this girl in AA who was moving and she had a massage table she wanted to sell. I bought it for $100 and then I got some business cards that said, “Hands That Heal.” I was ready to rock.
I started massaging Marci Winters once a week and each time I got better at it. It just was sort of an intuitive thing for me, which came naturally. I basically just did what I always did except she was on a table and I did her whole body. I had always been good at massaging women because I had an actual interest in making them feel good. It just seemed obvious and natural to me.

That was it. I was now a massage therapist, along with my usual job of making music and teaching piano, not to mention my secret life as a Jamaican and my other 15 jobs.

I figured, hey, why not massage naked models for $70 an hour? It beats digging graves.
After a short while, I had a few clients and they referred more people to me and I just got better as I went along.
I only worked on women.
Every now and then one of them would get turned on and want to have sex with me. Since I only worked on pretty women, who was I to deny them their God given right?
I’d say, out of the 100 or so clients that I had overall, I only had sex with maybe two or three of them, and I always made sure that the massage was over.
The actual second the massage was over I’d announce that we were officially done and that anything that happened next was between consenting adults. I think that I had a pretty good record and that I showed a lot of restraint.
One of my clients was a pro singer and dancer. She sang back up for Todd Rundgren for 10 years on the road and sang on a lot of his records. She had fake breasts and requested that I massage them. She claimed that fake breasts needed to be massaged often because, if they weren’t, they’d get all hard and stiff, like a softball.
It was actually hard work and I would’ve rather massaged real breasts, but that didn’t happen that much. It was mostly women with the fake breasts who actually needed the service of getting them massaged for actual reasons other than for fun. It really was work, and not that fun, believe it or not.
This particular client also was a nudist and liked to walk around naked before and after our massage. I didn’t really mind and we never fooled around. It was just like hanging out with a normal person, except she was naked. I never hit on her and she never made a pass at me; it was just about the massage, and she thought I was great. I thought she was a pretty free spirit.
We recorded a song at my studio for one of her voice demos. It was a jazzy song called Waiting For Godot. I guess there was some play about a couple of old guys on a park bench that were waiting for some guy named Godot. They went into all kinds of scenarios and details and talked about how great it was going to be when Godot arrived. He never did, but they sure talked up a storm waiting for him.
She had this great older dude who played jazz guitar on her demo and he was amazing. I hired an upright bass player and they already had a killer jazz drummer. I still use that song on one of my producer reels because it came out great.

After a little while, I started putting out ads to get more clients, just to see how far I could take my massage business. One lady called me and wanted to know if I would work on her and her husband. She was rich and lived in the Pacific Palisades and so I just figured I’d give it a shot. I mean, I prefer working on women, but men are pretty much the same thing, so what’s the big deal?
They had a gorgeous mansion up in the hills. The woman was very pretty and half-Asian or something, around 30 years old, and the husband was in his 50′s, probably, and in fairly good shape, but certainly not in as good a shape as she was.
She was probably a mail order bride.
Anyway, they were in their bathrobes and they were very nice and I set up in their living room and started with her. Everything worked out great and she loved the massage.
Then, I had to do her husband and it was a little weird at first, but only for a second and I just did what I always did and gave him a great massage. He didn’t tell me what to do or complain or give me any feedback. I guess I just did a perfect job and there was nothing really wrong. Sometimes people would give me instructions on what they liked and didn’t like, but quite often I would just do my thing and they pretty much just loved whatever I did.
My massages were always a little different. I used to improvise quite a bit. It was always so easy and no matter where I started I always figured out a good way to get to everywhere I needed to get to and end in just the right way.

I worked on that couple for several months. But after a while, the wife would start complaining to me about her husband and tell me personal stuff about their relationship. I always listened, and at first, I tried to stay out of it and just do my thing. But I have to admit that I would answer her when she asked for my advice and it didn’t take long after that before the husband put an end to the whole thing. I guess he was just a control freak and didn’t like her telling me personal things about how lame he was. I told her to bail on him, that she didn’t need his money, but a lot of people stay in bad marriages or “arrangements” just because it’s too much of a pain to go out and look for a real relationship, or worse — to have to find an actual job. Most people just get complacent.
About six months into my little massage career, I decided to take a few courses on some advanced techniques and maybe get a license. Technically, you aren’t supposed to do massage in Los Angeles without a massage therapist’s license. Believe it or not, each and every section of L.A. requires a different license. There are about 40 different parts to L.A. and NO ONE ever gets a separate license for each part.
The city of Los Angeles has so many scams and this was just another one of its bureaucratic red tape nonsensical rules that I certainly was not going to get scared into following. Most massage therapists just get the one license for all of L.A. and go wherever they want in its general vicinity.
Anyway, I took a class with a lady who taught a seven- week class in her apartment in Park La Brea. She was pretty cool and taught me a few interesting things. I already was great at massage, but she had some nice methods for where to start and how long to be on each area and how to end. She was very organized that way, and I suppose if you did massage all the time that it would come in handy to have a nice routine. I think it would be cool if most people knew how to do massage, just to be a member of the human race, but that’s probably never going to be the case.
I also took a class at the Taoist Institute in Burbank. I forget exactly how I ended up there, but it was a cool place. The class was taught by a kung-fu master, who was also a priest, a meditation teacher and a Chinese healer type — sort of a master craftsman who knew how to do a lot of interesting things.
His name was Carl Totten, and I would say that he was probably one of the coolest guys I ever met. He certainly had his act together and was a very wise, humble and extremely talented and nice person.
I took a class from him called Tui Na, which, according to him, is the oldest form of massage, and he claims that all massage came from Tui Na about 5,000 years ago. Then, again, how could he prove that? For that matter, how can anyone prove just about anything? Let’s just say that Tui Na probably is a pretty old massage technique and that Carl Totten could say whatever he wanted to and the odds are that he was probably pretty close. Even if he was making up the whole thing, it didn’t really matter, because, quite frankly, who cares where Tui Na came from? It’s here now, and that’s all I cared about in my stupid class.
Actually, it wasn’t all that stupid.
There was also this SUPER hot blonde chick in the class that just happened to end up being my “partner” in class for a few of the experiments on different body parts. It’s funny how I end up with the hottest chick in class at a Chinese massage school in the middle of Burbank. Her name was Candy and she was an “L.A.10.”
An “L.A.10″ is basically like taking all the hot girls from all over the country and then being the hottest one from that group. In fact, an “L.A.8″ is like a “Minnesota 10,” or an “Indianapolis 10.” Then again, there probably are “L.A.10′s” in some parts of the country who haven’t made it here yet. Don’t worry, not ALL “L.A.10′s” make it here, but certainly a high percentage of them find their way here.
This town is FULL of “L.A.10′s” and I’ll tell you, they are HOT. Problem is, most of them have been hit on so many times that they become nasty, mean, self-centered, fear-based, and only interested in one thing: money.
Some want fame and fortune, but it really comes down to flat-out money.
If you break it down, it’s like this: a lot of “L.A.10′s” are looking for the richest guy and a lot of the richest guys are looking for the hottest “L.A.10.” It’s a match made in heaven. The problem is, most of the richest guys are older and not very good looking.
So, this “L.A.10″ is sort of stuck with a dilemma: should she go for the rich ugly dude or hang out with the poor, cute musician dude?
In this case, my “L.A.10″ chose me – for a short while, that is.
I knew my time was going to be limited with this particular “L.A.10″ because it was just a matter of time until she had to go find a dude with a lot of money. I guess they just can’t help it. Maybe she was just taking a break from the rich, powerful, mean, ugly guys. Either way, I was grateful that I got to be with a bona fide “L.A.10,” even if it was just for a couple months.
Candy was 5′ 9″ with beautiful, long, blonde hair and a gorgeous figure with a super pretty face and sparkly eyes. She looked like a Goddess that da Vinci would have gotten in a fistfight over in order to get to be able to sculpt her image. She was so pretty and sexy that if she were walking down the street there would be car accidents and men tripping on the sidewalk and literally causing a scene. Her beauty was like out of a movie where there was a wake of trouble following her wherever she went because it couldn’t be helped.
She had nice, full C cup fake breasts, but I couldn’t really tell until later when I was able to examine her more thoroughly. She kind of dressed in a way that made it difficult to tell unless you were an expert in fake boobs.
Let’s just say that she looked real good in a tight sweater.
At first, she was my massage partner in class. She was very serious about her Chinese massage class and she told me that she was a healer. I told her that I was a healer, too. In fact, just looking at her made me feel better. She was a natural!
So we had that in common. Then, she told me that she lived in a multi-dimensional reality and was able to be in three different places at the same time. Without blinking I said that living in a multi-dimensional reality sounded like a lot of fun and that maybe she could teach me how to do that someday. She told me it was easy and went on and on about physics and math and stuff that she read in some way out books. But she sounded pretty convincing and the truth is, it didn’t matter to me what she thought because she was so damn good-looking and sexy.
If she told me that she was a squirrel farmer from Kentucky I would have said, “Hey, man, I think squirrel farmers are the coolest.” I also would have said that squirrels have always been a passion of mine and that I was amazed that she had taken her interest in squirrels so far. I would have gone on and on about how some squirrels have evolved into flying squirrels and how I have always been interested in the squirrel culture as a whole.
Anyway, Candy also told me that she lived on a spaceship and that she was a Pleiadian. I’d heard about Pleiadians and I’d met people who had said things similar to this, so it was no surprise to me that she thought she was one, too. Hey, I couldn’t prove that she wasn’t, so, really, it was 50/50 to me.
So, what if she was a Pleiadian? What’s wrong with that? I’ll tell you one thing, though: if she wasn’t super hot and an “L.A.10,” I probably would’ve told her that the odds were she wasn’t really a Pleiadian and that whatever crack she was smokin’ was getting to her head. I mean, who isn’t delusional in some ways? I don’t know anyone, and I mean ANYONE who doesn’t think something weird about themselves and is thoroughly convinced about a certain thing being right, which just happens to be flat-out wrong.

I know I have been delusional in the past and looking back on that moment I can tell that I was positive at the time, but now I can tell I was TEMPORARILY out of my mind. That’s the operative word: TEMPORARILY.
For me, I was lucky. I snapped out of it. Some people never do.

Which reminds me of a funny story.

I had a good friend, let’s just say his name is Clarence, who went to an experimental college where there weren’t any teachers, classrooms, or grades. But, as he described it, it was more like a project school. You got to do projects. He probably learned more that way, but I’m sure a lot of stoner rich kids just smoked a lot of pot with their projects.
Anyway, my old pal told me that he was dating this chick from another school and she was into harder drugs and what not, and somehow he ended up partying with her and got sort of shanghaied into being her little drug pal. Clarence ended up at her school and was living in her dorm with her, but he was so high all the time he thought he was still at his own school. So, he would go to class and hang out in the quad and go to the cafeteria and everything was going just fine for about three months, while Clarence just cruised through the alternative college life.
One morning, he was hanging out in the cafeteria and had a puzzled look on his face. He turned to someone and asked what state he was in. They looked at him like he was joking and said, New York.
He realized for the first time that he wasn’t in Massachusetts any longer and was like, wait a sec, I’ve been going to the wrong school for three months but it all sort of looked like the same school and everyone seemed to be going along with the whole gag.
That must’ve been a rude awakening for sure. So, Clarence packed up his stuff, broke up with the wacky girlfriend, cleaned up his act a little and got his skinny little white-trash ass back to HIS school, just in the nick of time, too, I might add.

When Clarence was in college he saw a video about an experimental performance art group in San Francisco that made giant diesel-powered vehicles the size of dinosaurs. All of the vehicles were remotely controlled and didn’t have any people driving them. Some of them had giant ten-foot circular saws in the front of them with a giant arm swinging a blade around trying to cut the other vehicles. Others had flamethrowers spitting out 50-foot walls of fire that looked like giant dragon dinosaurs. Another one had a 500-pound hammer that was eight feet tall in the front, pounding randomly up and down.
All of the vehicles had a theme and they all were designed to destroy each other. The idea behind this performance art group in San Francisco was to have these giant diesel-powered, dinosaur-like vehicles with flamethrowers and hammers and saws go out in a parking lot somewhere and rumble. I guess whoever was left moving was the winner.
A big crowd would gather and stand around in a big circle with just a little rope keeping them away from the crazy vehicles, watching the chaos unfolding. That’s all there was controlling the crowd, a little, skinny rope and nothin’ else. No security team, no police, no ambulance, no nothing. Just a little rope.
Imagine a parking lot with about 50 massive dinosaur- sized diesel vehicles with giant saws and jack hammers and wrecking balls and metal and steel arms flailing in the air, all trying to destroy each other in a frenzied, crazy fight with a bunch of skinny, techno geek computer rich kids with their little remote controls running the whole thing.
All the while there’s a guy dressed in an Evel Knieval suit, looking sort of like fat Elvis back in his Vegas days; you know, the suit with the big gold belt buckle and the cape and all. This guy is strapped in a rocket-powered go cart and he’s got this big 30-foot jump set up right in front of the giant, rumbling, remote-controlled vehicles, and I guess he’s thinkin’ about going for it right then and there.
Imagine this guy, who looks like the fat Elvis, in his little rocket-sled thingy flying through the air — with no helmet, I might add — right over the top, just barely missing the flailing arms and saws and jack hammers and wrecking balls of steel and metal and fire and hybrid metals and alloys of all kinds, smashing and grinding and cutting and mooshing and spazzing out all over the place with a huge crowd of stoned, alternative lifestyle people standing around in a big circle with nothing but a skinny -and I mean SKINNY- rope keeping all the chaos away from them.
I guess it was a cool video, especially if you like stupid, San Francisco performance art.

Anyway, back to my main story about the Pleiadian, “L.A.10″ hottie, who was in my Chinese massage class, who lived in a multi-dimensional reality, and who was a spaceship captain who knew all about double helix D.N.A. molecules and stuff.
She was so ridiculously hot, man.
She used to wear these great little high school girl outfits, like the cheerleader kinds of tight sweaters, with the little pleated short skirts and the high knee socks and stuff.
Man, was she hot.
Who cares if she worked on a spaceship and was good at reciting dribble she read in a science fiction book, like I really care?
I’ll tell ya, the POWER I got from going out in public with this chick was unreal. I mean, it was like we would go to the movies and walk down the street and there would be car accidents of guys staring at her crashing into stuff. It was almost like that. I would get these REALLY nasty looks from older rich guys who couldn’t get her and I didn’t have a dime, man, not a dime. I would even make her pay for the movies and the popcorn and the Raisinettes. I knew we wouldn’t last, but I was going to ride that wave as long as I could. Yup, it was worth it, too.

I never really wanted to do massage full-time; it was always just a supplemental income thing, and I preferred working on attractive, healthy, affluent women. But, poor, attractive women were fine, too; I had a soft spot for them and gave them deals just because it was fun working on them and, quite frankly, I would have done it for free anyway, so getting paid ANYTHING was always a nice bonus.
During my time with Candy I had a really cool AA sponsor who was a musician and just a great human being. This was all around the time that the big earthquake happened in Northridge, and my sponsor got a gig working as a building inspector for FEMA.
One night, Candy was telling me that she met with a FEMA guy to inspect her apartment so she could get some cash because of the damages and stuff, and she told me how rude and inappropriate the FEMA guy was to her.
I told her that my sponsor was a FEMA guy and that I’d hook her up with him because he is a super cool guy and not rude or inappropriate.
She asked me what my sponsor looked like and I described him to her. She said he was about that size and that my description was pretty close to this guy.
I said that was totally ridiculous and impossible and that the odds of my sponsor being the same guy as the one who inspected her pad was pretty close to non existent. But still, I was sort of curious to see if it was the same guy, even though the way she described his behavior was nothing like my awesome and amazing sponsor.
My sponsor was a totally stand up guy and NOT some random loser who would hit on a poor, helpless, defenseless “L.A.10″ hottie who was in a jam.
We rummaged through her paperwork, searching for the guy’s name but we couldn’t find it. We went through her closet and looked through boxes and sifted through a bunch of crap until we finally found the work order and stuff.
I couldn’t believe it: it was my sponsor after all! How bizarre?
I confronted him the very next day when I saw him at a meeting and I told him about this girl that I had been dating and that he had randomly inspected her apartment.
He said he totally remembered her and that she was crazy and trying to scam the system and that hardly anything was wrong with her place and she got all mad at him for not buying into her scam and that she was a hustler.
But, he did say she was a damn hot chick, and that it was too bad such talent had to go to waste by her being such a crazy chick.
I pretty much had the full story now and understood how two people can have two VERY different understandings of a situation. I had to go with my sponsors story, because you know how the saying goes, “bro’s before ho’s.”
I didn’t tell Candy he was my sponsor though, ’cause I’m not stupid. But I knew our time was short and it would be just a matter of time before she had to move on and find a sugar daddy, which, by the way, she very much deserved. It was a fun ride while it lasted and certainly well worth the trouble.

I had another interesting client for a little while. I met her in a 12-step program called Business Owners Debtors Anonymous, and she was a stripper. She had a big house in the Valley and would go to Vegas and strip part of the time and make a big pile of cash to pay for her life back in L.A.
She hired me to massage her big, fake breasts. No joke. It was an actual job. She told me that they needed constant massaging to maintain their shape or else they would get all hard like a bowling ball and she needed them to be worked on. It was actually really hard work and not at all fun like you would think.
After a while, I realized that I was using too much energy in the massage world and getting off track from my music. I also wanted to reserve my energy for just one woman and not spread it out.
Massage was fun while it lasted. I still have my table, and whoever the lucky woman is who ends up with me will be awfully glad she found me. I’m just that good, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Hey, some people are good at baseball or cooking, or basket weaving, or war. I’m good with my hands. Always have been, always will be.