“This has west Cork written all over it, I think.”

MY FRIEND has an air of innocence, which sits at odds with what happens when she opens her mouth. Double entendres come out of nowhere and I’m never quite sure how artless this double entendre business is, precisely.

Like I said, her naïve, credulous countenance is bamboozling.

“Ooh, look at your knob,” she says this morning, to no one in particular, as she enters my kitchen. “Ooh, you’ve got a new knob. I like your knob.” Gamely, my husband tries to carry on making tea. After taking a covert glance down at his zipper, he follows her gaze and discovers that she’s looking at our kitchen cupboards, eyebrows raised appreciatively. “More than one knob, too! They’re everywhere,” she says, casting her eye around the kitchen. “Where did you get them?” Before I have a chance to respond, she interjects, “and your bush!” She exclaims this suddenly, swivelling round to face me, “I’ve never seen your bush before, it’s lovely.”

Now I follow her gaze; there’s a dull box hedge in need of pruning that I can see through the gable window but it’s hard to see how this could pique such excited interest. A split-second later, my eyes land with relief on my new Bush radio, a nice stout, retro transistor that sits next to the kettle. Got it: she admires my radio.

She’s just returned from visiting a friend in a remote part of Leitrim. Last night, she tells me, the friend with whom she was staying took her along to a dinner-party and parked her next to a masseuse. “A Tantric sex masseuse,” my friend clarifies, though I’m pretty sure that her knowledge about Tantric massage is only recently acquired; she looks a bit shell-shocked.

“It’s all about unblocking energy,” she says, big-eyed.

I’m squinty-eyed with suspicion immediately; rural Leitrim sounds a lot like west Cork.

West Cork has an unusually diverse social demographic, comprising many elements, one of which is an over-sized raft of alternative health practitioners. Some of these are highly skilled. Others believe they can cure any disease with dried orange peel.

The rest are Mad.

“What kind of energy does she unblock?” I ask.

“Sexual energy,” she says.

Right.

“How does she do it?” I ask.

“Well,” she begins, “she said she gets into a robe and the client does the same. Then they sustain eye contact for a long, long time.” Her eyes widen some more.

She looks impressed. “Apparently, this kind of eye contact can be very, very intimate,” she says. I’m unconvinced: personally, this would make me feel very, very sick.

“What happens next?” I ask.

“She gives the person a massage,” she says.

“Through the robe?” I ask.

“No, oh, didn’t I say that?” she says. “They both take their clothes off.”

“Both?” my husband asks. “You mean the masseuse as well?” His forehead is bunching up in disbelief — or maybe mirth.

“Yes,” she says.

“Why does she need to take her own clothes off?” he squeaks.

My friend isn’t sure why, exactly.

“Then what happens?” I ask.

“Well, then she massages them,” she says, adding uncertainly, “all over.”

“What do you mean by all over?” I ask.

She says that the massage includes the genitalia and explains that the woman didn’t say ‘genitalia’, herself but used a much cruder term instead. “I thought that was a bit odd,” she says.

“I presume she charges a fee for all this,” I say.

My friend confirms that there is a fee.

I think she realises that I’m about to say something along the lines of there being a name for this sort of thing where I come from because she says quickly that “it’s not like that, it’s all about awakening the Kundalini energy”.

Kundalini energy. This has west Cork written all over it, I think.

She says that there was another guest there, “a nice man who’d had the treatment and he said that he found it very healing.”

“I’m sure it’s a healing thing,” she protests. “He said he was nervous about trying it out but that afterwards, he was really glad he came.”

There it is again. How does she do it?

“I bet he was,” I say.