{Author's notes . . . the following are edited verbatim transcripts from some recollections of some of her clinical cases and miscellaneous thoughts that she handwrote in a spiralbound notebook for me. Her thoughts tend to jump around a bit, so please bear with me.}

+++++++++++++++

After Dr. Helen Jones finished my impromptu training in how to use clinical massage to treat a wide variety of what were then euphemistically called "female conditions" under her and her doctor-husband's direction, almost ninety-some-percent of work within their infertility specialized practice became clinical massage.

My first patient was a new English war bride, can't remember her name, but I do remember her face and body. Her GI husband had married her in 1943 while stationed in England. Lots of English women did that, for lots of reasons. Some married GI's hoping to be brought to America, some were hoping their husbands would be killed in action and they could get their GI pension, some because they actually loved them. It was never my place to speculate on motivations why. It was my place to treat my employers' patients as best I could.

Oh, that's right, her name was "Maggie", just like mine, how could I forget that?

She had only been to a doctor once in her life before, when she was a child. She had never been touched clinically before, never had a routine gynecological exam in her life. I think she was twenty-four or five. She had come to Dr. Jones' practice because she and her husband had been trying to get pregnant since they first got married, with no luck of course.

Her first gynecological exam by Dr. Mrs. Jones made her very upset. I had to give her a shot to calm her down enough so the doctor could finish her exam.

In the room with me, this was a week later, she was calm. She didn't want to take off her bra at first but I explained why, I thought Helen had given her the spiel during her first visit but I gave it to her again anyway. I removed her bra for her and then massaged her breasts with Oster massager-clad hands. She relaxed. I pulled on her nipples some with the massagers going, she smiled. I cupped each breast with both vibrating hands and she relaxed more. I had her finish undressing and put on a gown and lie down on the exam table, feet in the stirrups. Using a standard exam drape that stretched across the table along her waistline she should couldn't see exactly what I was doing, this was standard gynecological protocol for decades until very recently, I took the massager off of my right hand as I stood next to the exam table and began massaging her with clitoris and vagina with my left hand which still had a massager on it. She relaxed more. I massaged her breasts more with my bare right hand as the Oster did its work atop my left hand on her pudenda, her legs wide open in the stirrups. She orgasmed within ten minutes, the first time she had ever had one in her life. I massager her for the full twenty minutes called for by Dr. Mrs. Jones, my patient Maggie having two more orgasms during that time. For the next three months, she became a twice-a-week patient of mine, and during the fourth month, she being "late" the third month, it was confirmed that she had indeed become pregnant, after trying as hard to become pregnant as she could with her husband for the past three years.

It was patients like Patient Maggie that soon spread word about Drs. Mr. & Mrs. Jones far and wife to the communities all up and down Long Island and into New York City proper.

I need to stress that clinical massage was only one aspect of the treatment protocols for infertility that Helen and Phil used. Let me discuss this a little further.

Typically, when a couple would first come in, the doctors would see them as a couple, Dr.s seeing them couple-to-couple. The very first question they would always ask was: "do both of you really want to have children right now?" A blunt question, almost rude, but necessary to ask. If the answer was "yes", then they would ask the following question, and I'm serious that they would ask it this way, asking the wife always first: "please describe how you and your husband have intercourse, in exact detail." This would offend many couples, but it's surprising the number of couples that didn't know that the man's penis needed to go all the way inside the wife's vagina during intercourse and stay there through his orgasm and for a few moments afterwards. This was the 1940's and early 1950's and many people, even married couples, were much more ignorant sexually than a lot of ten year olds are now.

They would give them a diary to keep a record of all things sexual, times they had intercourse, times they had oral or anal sex, times each one masturbated either alone or together, the start and stop dates of her periods, any douches she used and when, any medications they were taking, things like that. Then they would interview them alone, separately, with Dr. Mrs. Jones interviewing the wife and Dr. Mr. Jones the husband. It would be then that issues negatively affecting the marriage would often come out, such as one partner confessing they really didn't want to have children right then but that the other partner was really pressuring them to cooperate and have some. A lot of times, it was as much clinical psychotherapy as it was infertility treatments.

If at that point there were no issues that needed resolving first such as issues of sexual education or one partner secretly sabotaging the couple's efforts to become pregnant by use of tried-and-true birth control methods which often didn't work but often did such as Lysol douches after sex or secretly using an illegal vaginal diaphragm barrier, then the couple would be given a complete, and I do mean "complete", physical exam. This entire process would take several visits usually.

On occasion I would be asked by Dr. Mrs. Jones to serve as a "model" so she could show her patient my genitalia up close. I didn't mind. Especially if a patient had vaginismus or otherwise had a vagina with constriction "problems" meaning it was hard if not impossible for her husband to actually penetrate inside her vagina with his penis, Dr. Mrs. would demonstrate the use of "clinical dilators" or a series of non-vibrating dildos of different sizes, from pinkie-finger size to "full size" on me, and the doctor would leave the exam room and I would do normally a clinical massage followed by further hands-on instructions to the patient with the set of dilators which we would give them for her to use at home.

The physical exams for husband and wife would be a typical thorough exam, with some special twists added. Almost without exception, Helen would examine the wife, Phil the husband, and I would often assist with both exams. She would check for any signs of vaginal trauma, vaginal bruising, vaginal adhesions, to make sure intercourse could be accomplished fully, a more detailed exam than a typical gynecological "grope". Of course she would do swabs and check for syphilis and gonorrhea, the two main sexually transmitted diseases of those days then. She would massage a patient's breasts and nipples, looking for "sexual flush" response, or have me do it under her direction. She then would place a bare finger inside the patient's vagina and keep it there for a while, not moving it, until she felt the patient become lubricated, and make a note of how long it took. She would often have a patient masturbate to orgasm under her watchful eye, unless a patient objected to doing that for religious or moral reasons. She would then check for vaginal "pH" or acidity/alkalinity, she believing that an important factor in a lot of cases of infertility, the wife's vagina needing to be slightly acid and the husband's sperm slightly alkali for maximum possibility of becoming pregnant, a too-acid vaginal mucosa definitely being a problem too with a surprising number of infertile couples.

For the husband, Dr. Mr. Jones would do a "finger wag" and massage the patient's prostate until he obtained the necessary involuntary ejaculatory response, at which point he would collect a sample of the patient's semen and I would "do a count" to make sure there was enough volume of sperm, that the sperm had motility required to make it to the fallopian tube and make his wife pregnant, and that there weren't many deformed sperm. I would also check for sperm acidity/alkalinity. He would then clinically masturbate the patient for a moment or two to make sure the foreskin was loose and flexible. He then would have the patient look at a collection of what would be called now "hard core pornography" while sitting there nude in front of him in the exam room, to make sure the patient exhibited an erectile response to nude female images, i.e., to make sure the patient wasn't homosexual by nature. Crude method, yes, but it was cutting-edge for its time.

If all things checked out okay, then they would be given specific instructions on how to maximize their chances of becoming pregnant. For the wife, it would be no douches, ever, also she was to wear loose-fitting panties, no use of tampons, masturbation whenever she wished but no less than twice a week either clinically at the office or at home, reduction of eating of red meat to ensure proper vaginal pH, drinking of lots of water and no caffeine drinks such as coffee or Coca-Colas. For the husband, they would try to make him quit smoking if he did since smoking always negatively affected sperm motility, he could increase his coffee and caffeine consumption, he was never to masturbate, ever, saving all his sperm reserves for intercourse, and since almost no couples back then ever made love during the wife's period, they were to totally abstain for sex during her period and for seven days afterwards, yes it sounds "Jewish" but that places first coitus for the month right at her mid-cycle egg release for maximum chances, and they were to have intercourse strictly with the husband on top and the wife on bottom, pillows underneath her elevating her tail high and she staying like for one halfhour after his orgasm so his sperm would "pool" at her cervix and hopefully make their way "home". There were some other miscellaneous things they would have them do but that's what I remember at the moment.

These techniques sound so primitive in light of today's medical knowledge, I know, but this was the late Forties and early Fifties, and when I left the practice to marry my husband and move to North Carolina, the success rate for Dr.'s Jones' practice was over twenty-five percent, I think it was closer to 29%, an astonishing rate of success that even more modern infertility treatment protocols don't usually equal.

I have to admit that an endless stream of women patients to clinically masturbate got pretty boring pretty soon, but by the time I quit to get married I was making about $115 a week, a truly astonishing salary for that day. I would have masturbated female horses for that kind of money! Of course, Phil and Helen were making money by the wheelbarrow full, and they earned every penny, they just were treating me fairly, considering how integral to the practice I was.

I've been trying to think of a couple of interesting cases to write about, and not many come to mind. I mean, once you clinically massage one female patient, you pretty much have done the same to all, the procedure is the same at least.

There was this one case. Ruth, who had been a patient of ours, she having seemingly become infertile after having had two children but it turned out to be a bad case of fibroids which necessitated an eventual hysterectomy, brought her twelve-yearold daughter Penny in for me to "educate" her about her coming menarche and selectively about sex and such. Again, not meaning to sound like a broken record, but this was a different time and place, and many mothers were very uncomfortable about discussing "the facts of life" with their own daughters even to the point where many never discussed a ten or eleven or twelve year-old's coming menarche with them. At least Ruth had the courage to send her daughter to Dr. Helen and myself. I think Ruth was a friend of Helen's, maybe a lover to her but at least a friend I think.

First visit, I sat down with Penny in Phil's office and we read some pamphlets about menstruation, the old "What Every Young Girl Should Know" series by Kotex I believe, and we also read some of Phil's marriage and sex manuals from his étagère that were full of line drawings of sex and sex organs and a few photos but not many. She seemed interested but not excited.

Second visit, per Dr. Mrs. Jones' request but not order, I took her to an exam room where I showed her how, with me as a "model", to properly use a Kotex and belt, had her undress and used a Miss Deb belt and napkin set on her on, how to insert a Tampax when she got older of course, inserting it in my own vagina while I let her watch up close, and then with my own naked self as model showed her how I masturbated with my fingers and then had her do the same to herself. I did not touch her that way, had her do herself only.

This was the only time this was ever requested of me by the doctors, and to this day I find it odd. All of our patients were adult women, wives. I can only recall a handful of women patients eighteen or nineteen, and they were all married women.

It did get to the point where I was secretly enjoying clinically touching my patients in a lot of cases, even though the canons of medical ethics tell you that you're never supposed to let that happen, you're supposed to shut your feelings off and be "professional" only, keep everything as non-emotional and sterile as possible. Of course, by then Phil and Helen had moved into their new mansion and I had moved into a nice rental house not too far from the office with my female lover who was also a clinical nurse and worked for the Jones' practice with me and was dating men occasionally though I was still giving Phil monthly blowjobs and Helen and I were also still lovers each month too.

When a woman patient is very attractive and you're bisexual if not lesbian, as long as you don't break the canons of medical ethics and express attraction towards them while they're a patient, waiting for their treatment cycle to end before possibly telling them of your attraction to them, doesn't it do more harm than good to you personally to deny your feelings to your own self, even if those feelings are never openly expressed to the other person?

That brings me to Zelda. I will tell you about this case. Zelda and her older husband by twenty-some years had been married for ten years, she was thirty-one, and had been trying for all that time to have kids. The problem was his, not hers, his sperm having no life at all, very few of them and no vital motility at all, but he wouldn't hear of it, didn't want to admit that was why they couldn't get pregnant, so he kept sending her back repeatedly for more clinical massage treatments.

She was tall, long and leggy with a head full of hair that smelled like gardenias always, not sure what kind of shampoo she used. I was attracted to her from day one. After about two months, knowing the specifics of her and her husband's case, after I had clinically massaged her to her usual two or three orgasms, desire got the better of me and I kissed her fully on the lips. She kissed me back. I gave her oral and she gave some in return. We could have made love right then and there all day but my schedule was full. She told me she loved me and wanted me but her husband was so jealous and possessive that she knew he often had private detectives follow her around but she still wanted me so badly so could cry. I told her not to worry, that I really liked her a lot too and would figure something out.

That afternoon after work, I went to both Helen and Phil and told them what had happened, what I had done, halfway expecting to be fired but they were surprisingly sympathetic. This was around 1951, after we had been working together as a team for about four years or so. Helen told me she was surprised that it hadn't happened to me before now. Then, much to my shock, they admitted that both of them occasionally "dabbled" with patients after a patient's treatment cycle was through. I didn't and don't see how. I knew them too well and just had a hard time believing it, but they insisted that it was true, and it was okay for me to have occasional dalliances with patients as long as they were longer-term patients I knew well and knew would be probably amenable to the first pass I would make at them. Could have knocked me over with the proverbial sledgehammer at all this.

For the next six months or so, Zelda would keep her twice weekly appointments for her "infertility treatments" and she I would just go at each other like animals for the hour-long "clinical massage" sessions behind closed exam room doors. Damn, I loved that woman, even more than Jean, my female lover whom I lived with at that time. Then one day, Zelda simply didn't show up and I never heard from her again. Her phone number had been changed to an unlisted one. Her house when I would ride by always looked dark and unoccupied. I'm not sure what happened to this day, but I suspect her jealous husband may have figured out what was going on and put a stop to it.

Jean knew of my more or less required but always consensual times with Phil and Helen. I tried to get her to join us, knowing that both Dr. & Mrs. Dr. would enjoy having her there, but Jean was just too straight-laced for any three-way action with either of them, Phil and his wife Helen never being with me simultaneously as a triad, well, not usually, and I knew that both of them would love to have an extra female present to play with during our infrequent but regular "visits".

I'm racking my brain but just can't think of any other interesting experiences to mention here.