“God, that feels so good!” she sighed. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
Now, he was pressing his thumb, into some previously unknown hard place outside her shoulder blade and was holding it there. “Release!” he commanded her softly. All she could do is grunt. She hoped she didn’t sound like some porno movie…
Meanwhile, he kept on pressing, while his softly accented voice sounded grave and concerned. “You have the tightest upper trapezius I have ever felt. I noticed that last time. If you don’t learn to relax you will certainly be at the doctor. Your whole body is filled with stress…”
Photo: Joel Goodman
Her eyes were closed, but her shoulders still felt as though they might be attached to her earlobes. This was her third visit to the chair massage station at the health food store on Broadway, next to the green market where she often stopped after work to pick something up they needed at home. Who knew what pleasure lay beyond the doors where healthy, wholesome, totally unappealing food was sold in bulk? Where wheat grass, CBD oil and seventy-five dollar vitamins were displayed like diamonds were at Tiffany, with pomp and gravitas.
Like before, she began to feel her stiff shoulders melting, her arms felt liquid, her painful neck relaxing as the handsome youngish masseur dug his fingers into her upper body; a body no one had touched since her husband officially took off some months ago. Not that he had done a lot of touching in the year before that, or even the year before that one. Though he had hugged her when he told her he was moving in with Phillip and that he would always love her as a friend.
“That’s a little better…” he said softly and then began, as he had on previous visits, crooning something operatic. He had a good voice, maybe even a trained voice. Was he Italian? He looked sort of Italian with his thick wavy hair, and feet too small and wide for an American man. She tried to identify the melody so she could say something intelligent and show him she was more than just a high tipping businesswoman with a briefcase and a tight whatever. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a name of a single opera. She’d been to the opera of course, she’d even seen the three tenors years ago. Not that she could remember their names either.
I’m forty-eight years old, once upon a time I was a hot tamale, and now my closest relationships are with the chair massage guy and my vibrator.
It being the dreariest time of the year in the city didn’t help matters any. Just after the holidays, the decorations were down, the sky was grey, everyone’s coat sort of smelled fusty. Pretty soon it would be Valentines Day, and the whole city would be studded with hearts and flowers, jewelry and cashmere and all the considerable love money could buy.
“You’re still holding …let it go. Breathe!”
“What’s it called again? My tight?”
“Trapezius,” he seemed to be scolding her. Why was it her fault she was a single mother with two snotty daughters, a high monthly maintenance on the coop, and a job with a huge title—and the insecurities that came with it.
She breathed in and smelled the paper condom where her forehead was resting, and the faint whiff also of lavender from something he was using on her neck. She exhaled. At least the long holiday vacation was over. Spring break they were going off with their father and Phillip somewhere skiing and she’d get to stay at work as long as she needed to.
Maybe she could get the tenor here to come to the office. She’d spring for chair massages for everyone on her team. Team tight trapezius, maybe she’d get T-shirts made up. Placida Domingo? Well that was one… was he dead or was that someone whose name she couldn’t recall?
Tonight before she went to bed, she’d finish filling out her online profile.
Hobbies, special interests: chair massage, vibrators. Favorite foods: chocolate fudge ice cream. French fries… cheetos.
“Your twelve minutes are up. Would you like to extend?”
“Sure, why not?” She thought she’d paid for fifteen. Everything was a little less than it used to be. Shrink appointments, exercise classes…
The tenor was shaking her gently. She’d fallen off to sleep in the middle of her massage. It was, she realized, the first un-drugged sleep she had experienced in several years. The paper condom was wet; she’d been drooling like a baby. Still, even with the gift of sleep, she felt slightly cheated not to have experienced the last few minutes.
She sat up and turned around, her legs straddling the front of the chair. “You fell asleep,” he said sweetly, kindly and he was smiling at her too, like a proud father, of a proud somebody. Her husband, she realized now had never been proud of her. Were the girls?
She fished through her purse to find her wallet. She always carried a hundred and today she had a fifty and a twenty as well.
She handed him a fifty. Quite a tip, but he deserved it. And anyway, why the fuck not?
He was smiling down at the fifty. Then up at her again.
Without thinking she asked him, “Would you like to get a bite to eat sometime? After work?”
His smile vanished, like the sun sinking down into the horizon. He looked at her darkly and seriously.
And in the familiar scolding tone that told her to relax, he replied, “You need some nice businessman your own age. Anyway, I’m gay.”
“You and everybody else!”
That made him smile. “Until next time,” he replied.
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