I am almost always a little buzzed when I make the journey down from my front
door to hers. Nineteen floors down, a walk across the street and two stair
flights up to an hour of happiness.
Midway up to the parlor - between stairs to the waiting room - there are
Polaroid photos with the numbers of the employees. They are all sullen mug
shots and I wouldn't have picked 118 or any one of the woman based on the
pictures alone. They are photos of embarrassed young women who looked like
they've just been booked for exactly what they do.
No. 118 always seems glad to see me. It may be because I probably pay her twice
as much as what she usually get from other clients wanting more than a massage.
But when I touch her just as we begin she is always aroused. We have long since
disposed of the massage pretense. And after it is over - accompanied by the TV
volume turned up loud so others won't hear - we simply lie together, holding
one another.
If I'm in an especially melancholy, sentimental, mood I recite Springsteen's
lyric from The River: "I'd pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take"
while inhaling hers, and always murmur sweet nothings in English about how
beautiful and wonderful she is to be with and how glad I am she seems happy
with a feckless spending geezer like me. She always returns the favor with
kisses and beautiful, feckless sounding Chinese.
I don't know what she's saying, only probably that she's happy that she's found
an old clueless foreign guy who will pay twice the price for her favors on a
semi-regular basis. But I'm happy with the illusion and she also seems to be.
Sometimes there's a second round. Sometimes not, but it doesn't seem to matter
until there's a knock and bark at the door telling us that the hour is up. She
hides the money I've given her so the owner doesn't know and we leave the room
like nothing except a simple theraputic massage ever happened.
A therapy that is for me more often than physical satifaction alone.
