“My back.”
Her hands churned through unflinching flesh, exploring the reaction from the man sewn to her leather massage table.
“My back.”
Hair pronounced from his nude body like a series of explanation points, static – reaching for the sunlight cast through a single, rectangular basement window.
“MY BACK!”
Muscles tightened, breathing intensified, as she visualized the naked man’s tension dissipating amongst vibrant-amethyst waterfalls, absorbing through her palms with magnetic strength, and breathing compassion into the stranger, lightening his etheric body.
The man laid motionless.
Instantly removing herself from the massage room, she clasped a nearby towel, and darted for the restroom.
“Dead,” she thought, “just what I needed.”
Dousing her hands with soap and scrubbing furiously, she overheard the naked man projecting phlegm into his mouth before swallowing.
Alive.
“Sarah,” the man bellowed, “you’re the best, wherever you are!”
Sarah hastily returned to the room, anxiously drying her hands on the side of her leggings. The man, fully dressed, reached for the faux leather wallet in his back pocket.
“Will I see you next Saturday, Mr. Calboli?”
“Next week,” he thought, parting the twenty dollar bills crammed into his wallet,
“No, my son’s having his sixth birthday party, in-laws and everything. How about Friday, wouldn’t mind taking the edge off beforehand?”
“Sure,” she said uneasily, observing the overweight Mr. Calboli protract a single twenty dollar bill – tossing it to the damp table.
Short, Mother-fucker owes me forty dollars!
A serrated pain ascended her spine.
“Here you go sweetheart,” he said before turning his back and waddling from the room. Staring at the twenty dollar bill, Sarah opened her lips, but was slapped with silence. She stood watching Mr. Calboli’s bald spot fade further and further until the door shut behind him. Sarah returned to washing her hands, but was suddenly interrupted.
“SARAH!”
A thin Chinese woman plowed through the wooden door, fists like cannons.
“Sarah, your last client went thirty minutes over appointment time, did you charge him? Where the fuck are you, washing your hands again?”
Sarah yanked herself from the bathroom, anxiously drying her hands on the sides of her black leggings.
“I’m sorry, Auntie Lee, I lost track of time. I can make it up to you!”
The elderly woman’s face shrunk in spite, “this business is nothing but TIME, Sarah. Three months you work here, three months you waste time! No wonder you fail college. Your mother is right, no brains up there! Lucky white man think you pretty!”
Sarah’s chestnut locks draped over her defeated eyes.
A compliment, she thought.
“You better not be fucking my customers, Sarah.”
Density grasped Sarah’s spine like an anaconda snuffing its prey.
During her lunch break, Sarah puffed from her cannabis vaporizer, embracing the warm distraction, and watching butterflies pick pollen from lavender bushes.
A vibration from her phone jostled her mind – reaching for the device, she noticed a text from Alex, the boy she hopelessly admired.
“Can we reschedule tonight? I’m hanging with the boys!”
Betraying her gut, she obliged, although tracing past texts revealed countless reschedules, countless excuses, and countless warnings and rumors that Alex was raw-dogging Taylor Switzle in the backseat of his 2014 Nissan Altima.
Sarah’s back ached and she had to wash her hands.
Tangerine rays permeated from the single, rectangular basement window, enlightening the massage table in the center of the room. Her last client of the day was completing the paperwork at the front desk with Auntie Lee. The man was awkwardly stiff with lumbering glasses cloaking somber eyes, a tucked in cobalt polo, and carrying a distorted paperback.
He walked into the room nervously, index finger picking at his polo collar.
“H…hell..llo,” he smiled, voice trembling.
Sarah returned the gesture, beckoning him toward the massage table.
“If you’d like to get undressed to your level of comfortability, we can get started.”
She washed her hands, removing the germs, the debris, the constant grit that suffocated her sanity, and returned to the man facedown on the table.
“Are we ready?” Sarah asked, squeezing oils and ointments into her hands.
The man obliged.
Sarah descended fingers upon the nervous man, who relaxed upon increased intimacy, her hands casting spells against the strained myofibrils, liberating him from their cumbersome captivity. Scaling his shoulders, and puncturing deep between blades, Sarah began losing track of time. She enjoyed making her clients feel good.
She enjoyed tracing the muscles with the indents of her palms, moving the gelatin flesh like tsunami waves. However, her time was drawing to a closure.
Five more minutes, she thou-
“H-hey, uh…”
The nervous man’s skin dampened, and he began stuttering. Interrupting the session, he pulled himself from the table, reaching for the paperback book. He flipped through the pages and discovered sixty dollars, offering the cash to Sarah with quaking hands.
“I.. I… I he..heard you d..d..do Mmm-MORE?”
Sarah eyeballed the cash, hesitantly picking the folded bills between his fingertips.
“Will you please turnover?” Sarah asked politely, before extracting another round of oils and ointments.
He obliged once more.
Sarah hovered above the man’s towel, before carefully removing the white canvas, revealing his flaccid penis. She glanced at the clock towering over the door, twenty minutes from close. Quickly, she thought, maneuvering the soft genitalia into her glowing embrace, well not like he’s doing you any favors.
The man groaned, squirmed uncomfortably, eyes shut, while Sarah summoned the stress from his body, caressing the man’s inner thigh with one hand, and plucking his shaft with the other.
“Are you going to finish?” she whispered.
“Y… y.. yes,” he stuttered .
Her pace quickened, “please, whatever you do, just don’t be loud about it.”
The man glared back in confusion.
“When you’re coming…. Be quiet about it. If you need to make noise, just say it’s… your back or something. I don’t need them suspicious outside.”
The man nodded, beads of sweat littering the massage table.
She didn’t mind, she thought, making her clients feel good.
The man’s feet twisted, quivering against the leather massage table, before extending into the open air.
“My b…. b-b.. ack,” he whispered, eyes opened, glaring into the opaque basement ceiling, body tightening like a sponge releasing water – releasing.
“M..mm…my b…b..a…ack.”
She didn’t mind the handjobs, she thought, she minded the co-
“I’M… FUCKING COMING!”
The man erupted, face swollen, eyes drifting to the confines of his skull, body flailing like an Alaskan Sea Bass – mind departing the ethereal realm, the cosmos, the fractal universe, desires vanquished. The Buddha.
A spasm struck the center of her spine, severing the discs placing her upright. With one hand stroking the man’s erupting penis, she folded ninety degrees, teeth splitting, spinal cord clenching, and descended toward Mt. Vesuvius. Sarah ricocheted with unpleasant images: obese Mr. Calboli, unsupportive family, college failures, unfaithful Alex, and now the stiff, nerdy man, as his semen ambushed her chestnut hair, glazing her polished skin, casting constellations across her ebony work shirt.
Now Auntie Lee marched through the door, cannonballs engaged, before freezing in the doorframe, mouth open, and eyes vigilant. Sarah’s face glistened, reflecting the pale moonlight penetrating the single, rectangular basement window. She brushed the nectar from her eyes, wiping her hands alongside her leggings, before glaring back at Auntie Lee with a pollen stained face.
“Either you’re helping or you can shut the DAMN door!”
THE BADBOOB 