Everything in Life

All around the city, I was going to massage parlors. I’ve been to so many.

There is one in particular near my apartment that has helped me to organize life and to think about life in a new way. This one’s on the same street as the bookstore where I work and it’s on the same street where I bought the blanket. It was called Best Ocean Spa but then they changed the name.

There is a man who works at Best Ocean Spa; the rest are women. I had doubts. I thought, How will it be with a man? Usually the women know the right way to be forceful and where, but he was hard and focused, which was good. I felt a softer touch only in one spot, when he moved his hands down my back to the sides of my waist, to my hips. This motion was not a massage. He did this a few times in a row. I felt a throb and a longing. Did my lower back arch in?

I went back again later in the week. I appeared in my puffy coat and my fake fur hat, carrying a lot of bags. He stood up quickly, as if he had been expecting me, and led me to a glowing paper room in the back. Peaceful instrumental music played. He waited outside while I took everything off except my underwear and lay down on the table with my face through the hole.

He put his hands on the sides of my breasts. Then his fingers entered me and moved back and forth steady and slow then fast.

My friend Bonnie, who speaks Mandarin, told me she would not be the go-between. But she told me one thing I didn’t even ask about. She asked me what his name was and I said, Yan, but everyone calls him David. She said, usually Yan means, “to go forth.” What if you fall in love with him?

I went back. Before I took off my coat, just as I entered the room, Yan walked over. For you, he said. He handed me an envelope. I opened the large green envelope that held a gift certificate for a free one-hour massage.

As I lay there he moved his hands over me with familiarity. He directed me to turn over. He placed the towel over me so that just one part of my body was exposed, and then he touched it, at first like a massage. When I turned over onto my back he always placed a heavy towel over my eyes.

On Valentine’s Day Yan found me at work at the bookstore. He didn’t come inside, but he waved through the glass. When I went out to meet him he handed me a red velvet box. Inside was a beaded necklace. The beads were deep browns, black, and turquoise. There was a wooden bookmark with engraved gold flowers.

Sometimes I looked through the parlor windows when I walked past. A few times we wrote to each other in text messages. How are you? Has always been very busy, feel there’s a lot of things to do every day, sometimes think you pass on your way.

One night, waiting to cross the street, I looked back and saw Yan. He had stepped out into the cold, without a jacket, to smoke a cigarette. I watched his body, the definition of his arms, his muscles visible through his T-shirt, his strong jawline. The almost invisible scars on his cheeks. They became strong, too.

After the first time, I felt happy and wet and burning, and walked a little funny all the way home. The happiness of the first time was inside of me, even if it did not exist the second time, or the third, or the fourth, fifth, sixth…or any of the times that I haven’t been there yet.

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