A shaky finger presses the buzzer.
Fidgeting nervously, familiar with the drill,
I wait for someone to appear. There is no sound coming from the other side
of the door, no perceptible movement, and there is a curtain draped over
the glass window of the door. All of the other windows have been blacked
out in order that no one can
see inside the tiny business in Longmont, on the outskirts
of Boulder. I feel all alone out here, waiting. There is only the hum of
the tractor-trailers pulling in and out of the truck stop across the street,
and the rolling thunder of vehicles on I-25 in the early morning rush.
The only indication of life inside the building comes from a bright neon
sign in the window telling me and the other truckers that the spa is OPEN.
It is another beautiful morning in Colorado.
The sun bright, the wind cool and refreshing. I am on the last leg of a
two week run which took me out to Oklahoma, north to Missouri, and then
back toward my home in Cedar City, Utah. Back to my home with my wife and
children and neighbors
and satellite dish and home-cooked meals.
Moments later a curtain draws slightly, and
a tiny, Asian face peeks out through the clear window on the door. She
smiles, then lets the curtain drop again. There is the click of two dead
bolts, the door opens, a bell above my head jangles noisily, and I am ushered
inside. She is petite with long,
dark, wavy hair, tiny features and slight curves.
She wears a thin teddy, black satin on soft, copper skin. She carries a
soft, polite manner, as they are trained to do. I know this script by heart.
She looks to be in her late thirties, close to my age, but it's hard to
tell, really. After a few years in this
business they all get to looking that old, or worse,
no matter how young they truly are. She looks me over with her dark, tiny
eyes, as I do the same to her, in the dim light of the lobby. She greets
me in English, but her accent is thick and Asian, giving away that she
wasn't born here. Smiling, helping me out of my coat, she asks if I would
like a massage, but she asks out of formality, not
inquiry. She knows why I am here.
She knows the script as well as I do.
She leads me to a waiting room behind another curtain, smiling all the
while. There is a television, an ashtray, a couple of seats, and some magazines
to occupy my wait. Food is sizzling, mixing, whipping, and churning loudly
on a television cooking show, but over this I can hear shuffling around
in the next room. I am waiting for him, whoever he is, to finish.
I pace to burn off some nervous energy, and
I notice that there is a kitchen on this side of the curtain. It is small
but adorned with many knick-knacks. A home. There is a small pile of dirty
dishes in the sink and clean ones in the dish strainer. There are the usual
assortment of appliances-magnets and lists and photographs of family on
an old refrigerator, a microwave, an electric can opener, a rusty toaster,
and a coffee maker. It makes me think of my own family in Cedar City. An
old-style rotary phone hangs on the wall, short messages left on post-it
notes stuck to the wall on both sides of the phone. I don't recognize the
letters of the language, but I recognize the doodles,
the scratches, the tiny hearts sketched in the corners
of the notes. This side of the curtain is not part of the business. This
is where she lives.
Some moments later I hear footsteps. The front
door opens and closes, the bell hanging from the beam of the doorway rattles
and clinks like a miniature church bell. Once again that diminutive, Asian
face peeks at me from behind a curtain, smiling, waving me toward her,
instructing me to follow. She is ready for me now.
Inside my private room she tells me to undress
while she goes into the office to run my credit card.
I stare at myself in the mirror, naked and unashamed
and covered with goose bumps in the flickering light of a lavender scented
candle as soft jazz music plays on a portable radio in the corner of the
room. This is what they must think American romance is all about.
When she returns she leads me to the brightly
lit shower area. This is my first opportunity to get a good look at her
in good light. She is mildly attractive, but then again they all seem more
attractive before you have them. Her manner is polite and gentle- fragile
and delicate, like a pure, untouched
flower, the way us American men like them to be- or
at least we are told that's how we like them to be. But she is also very
professional. She has probably been doing this for years, and I think she
has the script down by heart as well. She tells me that she is from Seattle,
but her thick accent tells me she is lying, probably just covering her
tracks for immigration.
She scrubs me down, the warm water and soapy
suds relaxing on my body. Then we return to the room where I lay flat on
the bed and she begins massaging my back and legs. The smell of lavender
from the candle is strong. Small talk is made, but it is not for the sake
of conversation. She is feeling
me out, making sure I'm not a cop, junkie, or whore-killer.
I answer her, pleasantly, in as few words as possible, trying not to appear
threatening with silence or too anxious, too much like a cop, by talking
too freely. She flips me over, lifting each arm and not-so-subtly checking
them both for tracks.
Her skin smells of baby powder, mixing deliciously
with the lavender.
For forty-five minutes she massages me front
and back, head to foot. She soothes and relieves my tired body of a lot
of stress, of the tension of two weeks on the road away from my family.
At the same time she carefully teases me, making sure to subtly brush against
my crotch with her arm or
lean into my body, pressing her breasts or her smooth,
tiny legs against my skin, while working some other part of my body to
build tension. I know the script, and this tension building will save her
time later on. We both know how these things end. We silently acknowledge
this fact about each other. And when the massage is over we talk business.
It's a hundred for her mouth or cunt, sixty for her boobs, or thirty for
her hand. I tip her, and within a few minutes the smell of my semen mixes
with the lavender and baby powder scent of the room.
She leaves to shower while I dress- again watching
myself in the mirror. Smiling. I don't know how many showers she has taken
today, but I wouldn't want to count. I want to hurry and leave before the
afterglow fades and my true vision returns. Sex with prostitutes is always
great, but it is only
physical, not emotional. And once it is over it is
time to go. It could never replace making love with my wife back home in
Cedar City, someone I care about, someone I just want to hold and melt
with after sex. That's the kind of lovemaking where you don't even want
to dress or clean up when it is finished. You just want to lay together,
sticky with each other's sweat, enjoying the smell of each other's familiar
scent mixing in the room, falling to sleep in each other's arms.
Back in the lobby I light up a smoke and slip
on my jacket, waiting for her to see me out. The front door opens, the
bell ringing once more, and a middle-aged Asian man enters, walking straight
to the kitchen. I watch him curiously as he removes his hat and coat and
starts a pot of coffee. I watch
as he reads through the notes on the wall by the old
rotary phone, his lips moving, silently mouthing the words. He notices
me staring and turns and nods his head in greeting. I nod back, exhaling
a thick cloud of smoke, and then butt my cigarette. He moves about the
kitchen. He seems to find
nothing unusual about my presence, like I am just
part of the scenery.
She returns from the shower a few moments later
wearing a blue, oriental robe, spotted with butterflies, and puts an arm
in mine, smiling. The ends of her dark hair are still dripping with water.
When she sees him in the kitchen she waves and they
begin to converse in a language I neither speak nor understand. I don't
know for certain what they are talking about, but I think it has something
to do with dinner because when they finish, and she turns her attention
back to me, the man goes to the refrigerator and removes some leftovers
wrapped in tinfoil. As I turn to leave I wave to the man again. He smiles
and waves back.
After a short goodbye, and a peck on the cheek,
she closes the door behind me. Again I stand outside in the windy, Colorado
morning, alone, the roar of the interstate surrounding me. I am kind of
hungry for lunch now, but I only have time to hit a drive-thru. I don't
have the time to stop and eat and relax because I have to make the other
side of Utah by sundown. But after that my run is finished. After that
I can go home to my own bed, my own shower, my own girl. And when I get
home I will make passionate love to her- the kind that is as much emotional
as physical. The kind that doesn't send you running for the door the second
it's over.
Relieved, I climb behind the wheel of my truck,
and I look once more at the blacked out windows of the Oriental health
spa with the drawn curtain and the neon OPEN sign in the window. As I pull
onto the on-ramp, headed south toward I-70, I think about the two of them,
alone inside, for the moment. And I wonder if he is going to make passionate
love to her tonight after the business closes, when the neon sign is turned
off.