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Kenneth Brosky

Managing Editor:
Stephanie Nolasco

Associate Editor:
Janelle Kennedy

"The Masseuse "

       Allen Sanders

“Cross the Fremont Bridge. Turn right. Then left on Stone Way. You'll see a gray house, a pink neon sign.   `Helen's Beauty Boutique.'   First right passed the sign.   You'll be on Lucas Place.   Halfway down the block is 117.   Buzz 9.   I'll be expecting you.” Those were the directions she'd given him over the phone. He was certain he had them straight.

            Eric Meechum turned left onto Stone Way.   But that was thirty minutes ago. He'd driven north from 34 th all the way up to 65th, circled Green Lake and headed back down again.   No gray house.   No pink sign.   He could barely see beyond the two funnels of fog swirling before his headlights.   Eric did not approach driving to some new place in a haphazard way. He'd allowed himself plenty of time.   Right after dinner, he kissed his nine-year old daughter and seven-year old son goodnight. He avoided the kitchen where his wife was loading the dishwasher but paused to call to her from the hall as he opened the front door, “See you.”

By now she'd lost interest in his search for a cure. Of course, she was sick of the whole situation. He felt the same way.

  “See you,” she said back to him, her voice stripped of intonation.

Eric left the house, his shoulders hunched and his face thrust forward, wondering why he was driving off on so foggy and damp a night as this, to a part of the city he'd only passed through on occasion.

Did she think he was pleased with the way he'd been behaving these last six months?   Here he was forty-two and where he'd hoped to be. Hadn't he been proud of his family? His work?    Didn't he know how ungrateful he seemed? A year ago -- without the slightest duplicity – he'd have said he was a content man.   Now he longed to be duplicitous. This dragged-out, aimless, uneasy feeling would have best been kept private.

There was no medical explanation. Last month, when Eric returned to his doctor for a follow-up appointment, he expected   -- he fervently hoped   -- to hear a positive test result, several positive test results.   He imagined the possibilities, a list of ailments that might have stricken his body and left him with this prolonged fatigue. He arrived at the medical center determined to react bravely, prepared to show manly acceptance and courage.   It might have been a rare but treatable thyroid abnormality. High blood pressure.   An iron deficiency.   Some previously undetected intolerance for glucose, wheat, milk, or – it would be tough, but he'd manage -- chocolate.   Eric had even readied himself for the news of an unusual, permanent drop in testosterone.   He would bear with dignity the injections, the daily regimen of pills, a diet requiring tremendous discipline. He could accept surgery.   Any identifiable physical malady would do. All he asked was that it not be fatal.  

Why couldn't he have been welcomed with a straightforward medical diagnosis?   A handful of prescriptions?   His doctor held the clipboard with one hand, flipped several pages. “All test results negative.” Eric noticed the look of suspicion and curiosity, as if Eric had been hiding some vital but embarrassing fact.   There was one more check of his heart with that cold stethoscope. More palpations of his neck, abdomen, and back. Then the doctor said,

“Eric, you need to learn to relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

He was sitting on a runner of crinkly white paper atop an examination table, the sweat trickling down his sides in spite of the coolness of the room.   The doctor stared at him. He studied his shoulders, commenting without saying a word, on   Eric's slumped posture and his beaten down expression. Eric straightened himself and tried looking more cheery but it was way too late.

“No, you're not relaxed, Eric. I've known you a long time and this isn't like you. Your muscles are so tight, they must feel ready to snap.   I can see it. And this has been going on how long? Too long, Eric. I bet you can't even remember what being relaxed feels like.”

Here it comes, Eric thought. The psychiatric referral. He'd ignore it. He'd toss out the slip of paper. Hadn't he read all the self-help books his wife recommended?   Done the mental exercises on feeling good about yourself?   Didn't he know the list of challenges posed by each new stage of life?   Hadn't he practiced those deep, slow breaths, the images of tranquil country sides?   Gone jogging every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?   For a whole month!      

“I'm going to refer you to someone, Eric” the doctor said.

“A shrink?”

“No, a masseuse.   I want you to undergo massage therapy. At least once or twice a week for a few months.”

“A masseuse?”

“I'll get you the name and number from my office.   Every patient I've referred to the woman I have in mind has come away quite satisfied.”

It wasn't like Eric but he looked at the doctor and smirked, making a concerted display of coyness, hinting they engage in a little playful, male camaraderie. “Satisfied in what way?” he said with a grin.

The doctor frowned and Eric regretted the question, feeling crass. The doctor didn't say anything but Eric understood that disapproving, lopsided, barely-formed smile, followed by a quick departure into the hall, from where the doctor called back,

“I'll have my nurse give you the name and phone number.”

She did and by the time Eric finished putting on his shirt and shoes, the doctor was in another room, caring for another patient.

***

Eric squinted, leaning closer toward the windshield, hoping to spot a phone booth.   He'd call the masseuse and cancel.   But after driving slowly for another three blocks – no more than fifteen miles per hour -- he still hadn't seen a phone.    He turned on his windshield wipers but the blades screeched as they etched arcs of dirt, making his visibility worse.    The fog seemed denser and at each new intersection, Eric slowed even more, honking in staccato beeps to give warning. He kept anticipating a neon sign, pink, yellow, orange, blue, green, any would be a welcoming sight.   But no color shone through. The world remained gray and white and smokey, like a scene out of Cassablanca .

            Eric was skeptical. Sure, some people found massage relaxed them.   But his problem seemed to be of a different order.   The reason he'd made the appointment was his determination to try anything to put an end to this nonsense.   And there was   that bit of curiosity, the faint stirring of lust he'd felt while recalling those storefront windows near the airport, the signs in tubular neon – MASSAGE -- ALL KINDS -- OPEN ‘TIL 2:00 A.M..

Eric pulled to the side of the road and parked under the orange-pink glow of a halogen streetlight.   He tilted back the driver's seat. Reclining, he took in the graceful, looping, hypnotic flow beyond the windshield. Eric's shoulders felt cramped, his palms moist.   The tension had mostly affected his neck and shoulders.   But lately he could feel his legs ache.   It was as if someone grabbed his calves and wouldn't stop the squeezing.   And he couldn't stop thinking, What did he have to worry about?   His doctor had declared him in excellent health.    He had a wife with a good legal career and a penchant for motherhood, a wonderful little boy, a wonderful little girl, a partnership in a respected accounting firm.   And there was Sam.   They were devoted to each other, Eric and his dog Sam.   Petting Sam was the only thing that still made him feel better.   He would sit in the corner of the couch for hours after work, staring blankly at the reports he hadn't found the time or desire to read at the office.    All the while, he'd be petting Sam.    He'd stroke the dog so long he could feel the dirt layers build on his palm.    But how many times a day could he rely on that?

And holding the children on his lap didn't help much.   They didn't sit still.   At first, his wife had been supportive – then with the months passing and no change, she'd grown tolerant, impatient, then angry.

            “Malaise” is the way she described his condition the day before he made his massage appointment.

            “I'm sick of your state of malaise,” she said, pushing her chair out from the dining room table and taking her plate to the sink.   She cooked the dinners and he did the dishes, so she left her dish there for him to wash, along with the kids' plates and the pots rimmed with baked-on foods he'd have to scrub off with SOS.   She came back into the dining room where he sat thinking “malaise” was a very good choice of words. She had an enviable talent for incisiveness.   His wife said he should see a psychiatrist, but he told her he was thinking of massage.   

“Oh, that's a good one.   I think you need a whole lot more than having your muscles loosened.”  

            His wife was big on psychiatrists.   Six years ago, analysis had supposedly changed her life.   “It gave me the courage to compete in a man's world,” she would say. Every weekday morning, they'd each get up early and put on their suits.    He wore grays and browns, pin stripes or subtle checks.   Red ties were his favorite.   She wore blues and beiges and even pinks, with billowing scarves that looked like they were made of silk or satin, and subtle touches of makeup.   He'd rush downstairs to prepare breakfast while she finished putting her makeup on.   She'd eat quickly, and take care of the dishes.   He drove their kids to daycare and school, and she'd pick   them up from the sitter's in the afternoon.    Eric had been proud of her, when she was hired at a prestigious law firm.    He bragged about it as if he were entitled to some of the credit.   Lately it all seemed too much.   Where were their lives leading them?

Ten minutes had passed when he sat up in the car with a start. Why hadn't he done this earlier? Eric opened the glove compartment and took out a city map. He groped inside for the flashlight and turned it on.

He scanned the tiny street names.   There.   Lucas Place.   Seven blocks back.   How had he missed it?   He made a slow, wide u-turn. Eric saw the sign for Lucas Place and turned.

            At 117 he buzzed apartment 9.

              “Mr. Meechum?”  

Through the intercom, the masseuse's voice sounded raspy.

              “Yes.”

            “I'm Elise.   I'll be there in a minute.”

            She must have been well into her forties.   Thick blond, curly bunches of frizzy hair lay on her shoulders; the texture of her face looked smooth and soft.   Only a few lines creeped spoke-like from her eyes and mouth. When she tilted her head, Eric could see large, silver, hooped earrings.   And around her neck and wrists she'd stacked chunky jewelry made from ceramic or inexpensive-looking beads.   She wore a scoop-necked, creamy muslin blouse, with a ruffled flap resting on her robust breasts.   Her denim skirt touched the floor and clung to her tapered hips.   And she had a serenity about her that made him wonder if she was doing drugs.   But she stood with her shoulders squared, looking fully in control and self-possessed and Eric thought her quite attractive.

            He realized he was staring.   The masseuse didn't seem to mind.    She waited, continued smiling, then shook his hand and said, “Hello.”  

            She led him down a hallway.   A single, dim bare bulb, pocked with old paint spatters, dangled from three braided wires, providing the only light.   Aromas from her neighbors' dinners mingled as he passed the numbered doors, 1, 3, 5, 7.

            “So what do you do?” the masseuse said, without turning.

            “I'm an accountant.”

            “Ah...”

            They arrived at another door.

            “Here we are.”

            All the lamps in her apartment had cloth shades with tassels, colorful, glowing batiks that didn't let much light through.   Tacked in clusters on the chalky white walls were unframed posters of attractive men and women stretching gracefully in leotards, their lithe bodies twisted and folded in yoga positions and dance exercises.   The furniture, squat and bulky, had tattered cushions, upholstered in a nubby beige material with loose gold threads.

            “Nice posters,” Eric said.   He meant it.   He liked her place.   It was so full of frugal creativity.

            “Thanks,”   Elise said.   She pointed to a pair of orange shutters.   “That's the dressing room.   You can take your clothes off in there.”

            “But I have neck tension.”

            “I understand that, Eric.   Do you mind if I call you Eric?   Is this your first massage?”

            “Yes.”

            “I do full-body massage.   Do you know anything about full-body massage?”

            “Well, I...”

            She stood by the couch, her arms crossed, patient as a kindly nurse waiting to administer an enema for the thousandth time.

            “Tension in one part of the body can come from tightness in another, trapped energy moves, imbalances seek an equilibrium but may miss.   The mind itself may be dislodged from its natural focus and desires.   The therapy I use recognizes that our bodies are integrated systems.”  

            “You want me to take off everything?   All my clothes?”

            “It's up to you. Some men prefer to leave their underpants on.   When you're ready, pull back the curtains.   Slip under the sheet and lie face down. Oh, and bring one of the towels with you.”

            Eric opened the shutters. The dressing room was a large closet, a walk-in.   At one end was a small stained glass window.   Along another wall was a grayish pedestal sink. The moldings and ceiling were painted a glossy white, the walls a romantic maroon.   Skirts, blouses, and dresses hung on a fir rod.   They looked like outfits a gypsy might wear, or perhaps a Mexican folk dancer.   Next to the sink, on a spindle-legged table, stood a glass salad bowl, overflowing with beaded necklaces, bracelets and stringy earrings.   An old Indian bedspread, the color of spicy mustard with red and green swiggles, served as the curtain over the doorway into the massage room.  

Eric stepped in front of a long mirror and began to undress.   First, he removed his sweater and lay it over the wooden rod.   He turned back to the mirror, undid several shirt buttons.   Curls of hair stuck out from the V of his undershirt; he took pride in his hairy chest.   Then he noticed the shirt's underarms, yellowed and blackened.   He quickly pulled it over his head.

            Eric stared at his belly.   Leanness was giving way to a soft mound of fat.   He grimaced and undid his belt, slipped off his pants and located an empty hanger amidst the gypsy costumes.   He hung his pants carefully so they wouldn't wrinkle and snapped off his socks.

            What caused a man's leg hair to disappear above the ankles, the bareness creeping upward year by year?  

Eric paused, pulled away the front of his underpants, looked.   Were the men who left their underpants on in the minority?   Would she think he had some sort of hang-up if he didn't take them off?

He allowed the elastic to spring back and close around his waist.

            “How are you doing in there, Eric?”

            “Just about ready.”

            “I'll meet you in the massage room.”

            Eric grabbed a towel from a stack stored on a shelf beneath the salad bowl.   What was he to do with it?   Wrap it around his waist?   Hang it on his shoulder?   Pushing the Indian bedspread to one side, he walked uncertainly from the closet holding the towel casually in one hand.   He smiled but discovered Elise was not in the room. Two cube-shaped candles in black, nicely crafted lead holders stood on a dresser to one side, flickering, casting a wavering yellow light over a kind-of examination table.   He smelled incense. He tossed the towel on the counter and turned back the sheet, lay on his stomach, covered himself.

            “Ready?”

            “Ready.”

            A door opened at the other end of the room and looked at her from over his shoulder.

“Do you like classical music?”   Elise had changed her clothes.   She appeared to be wearing a nightgown but when she stepped closer, her outfit turned out to be a loose-fitting jumper made of an ivory corduroy.   He wondered if she was braless.

            “Classical music's fine,” he said.

            She disappeared into a dark corner.

He heard an orchestra, a soft, gentle symphony.

            “Beethoven?”   he said.

            “Yes.”  

The masseuse appeared at the side of the table and hovered over him, her thick hair swaying against her cheeks and brushing her shoulders.   She looked steadily at his face and tucked a firm hand under his head.   He smelled coconut.

            “O.K.,” she said. “Let's slide you up a little, please.   There.”

            Her soft, spindly fingers guided his head into a small, cushioned crater.

            “You certainly are tense.   Where else does it hurt besides your neck?”

            “My shoulders and legs.”  

He was aware his voice sounded distant and strained.

            The masseuse rolled down the sheet to his waist. She returned to the dresser, picked up a plastic bottle, squeezed a clear, thick substance into her hand.   Then she rubbed her palms together.

            “Close your eyes.”

            Eric closed his eyes, wondering what she thought of his body.   First came a scent like suntan lotion – more of that coconut aroma.   Then he felt a slithery landing upon his back.   She stroked and pressed, skimmed the elastic band of his underwear. The sheet peeled away from his legs and disappeared.   Her hands began a rhythmic crisscross, skidding toward each other from opposite sides of his calves. She worked circles into his thighs.

Turn over, Eric. What choice did he have?

Her hands plowed wide oily swaths through the roots of his chest hair and danced on his abdomen.

            “That feels good,” Eric said.

            She dragged her fingers from his shoulders to his sternum and up again, sweeping the sides of his neck.   She lifted his head and held it above the table while her other hand kneaded the back of his neck below the hair line.   Finger tips massaged his scalp.   A wave of delicate pressure passed over the curvature of his eyes.   Her hands circled his nipples, moved downward.

            Eric spread his legs apart.   Only slightly.   The air that settled into his crotch felt soothing.  

            “I think I'll take these off,” he said.

            “That's fine.”   The masseuse's voice was noncommittal. “I'll be back in a minute,” she said, closing the door behind her as if she were not about to witness what he looked like completely stripped down.

            Eric shoved off his underpants, still lying on the table, dropping them to the floor.   He wouldn't call what he was feeling relaxed.   More excited than relaxed, he'd say. Would she return naked?   This could be all he needed. Should he feel guilty for even contemplating it?

            The door opened.   A narrow block of gauzy light preceded her. Corduroy jumper, bulky blond hair, placid blue eyes. Nothing changed.

            “Doing o.k.?”

            “Yes.”

            Then he saw Elise's face above his, her shoulders working.    She still hadn't looked below his waist.   She seemed to be concentrating on her work.   She wiped away the oil with the towel, sweeping his body with broad terry cloth strokes.   Now she was dragging her hands along the ridges of his hips, down his legs, paying no attention to the sudden ascension he couldn't stop from occurring.

            The masseuse yanked the towel from her shoulder and tossed it back onto the dresser.   She filled her palms with fresh body oil.   Her hands landed on his shoulders.   She slid her fingers to his wrists and then around them.   More runs down his forearms. Her hands leaped to his ankles, tenderly flexed his feet.   When those hands moved up his legs, he felt a burst of tingling in the creases behind his knees, the same tingling he'd first experienced stopped at the top of a Ferris wheel at age twelve.   The sensation swept up through his body and left his throat sweetly parched.   If only she would indulge him.

            “Do a lot of men get aroused this way?” he asked in a hoarse, friendly whisper, trying not to think of his wife.

            “Some do and some don't.”   The masseuse's voice was even.   “If you have to leave the room, we can take a break.   Here, you can use this towel.”

            For what? he thought.   In all his teen and adult years, it had never occurred to him to try a towel.

            “No, I'm all right.”  

He'd gone flaccid.

            She went back to his feet, then moved back up his legs, working the lubricant into the hairless sections.   Her fingers took hold of his calves and juggled the muscles.   Lightly they pinched at the skin above his knees.   Hands slipped inside his thighs, finger tips pressed nerve endings.   Eric imagined the masseuse bowing her head, parting her lips, opening her mouth wide, taking him in.   But when he looked, her face was expressionless, her eyes fixed on his shoulders.

              “Doesn't this affect you?” he said.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I wonder how you feel working on men like this.”

            “Oh, it doesn't bother me.”

            She stepped over to the dresser again and shook powder into her hands.

            “Mr. Meechum – Eric – full-body massage isn't supposed to become personal.”

            “It's not?”

            “I mean, of course it's personal in a way, but it's not like going on a date. I'm trained to help people, both men and women. I've seen so many bodies these last few years, all I think about is the feel of muscles and skin and knobs of trapped fear and energy and how with these hands I might be able to stir up a dampened spirit.   Sure, I may find a client attractive. But you can stop imagining   you're on the verge of a sexual encounter.”

            Eric propped himself up on one elbow.   Elise reached toward the wall and flicked on a bright ceiling light.   He blinked.

            “Is that a signal to leave?” he said, surprised he sounded smooth and charming.

            “No, it's just that I can tell you don't understand. You've missed the point.   Look at my face.   See the wrinkles?   Look at my arms.   I exercise but they're flabby, just like my thighs.   I'm over fifty and this is my job, to ooze the tension out of people suffering like you, work out the pus built up from living.   So please, Mr. Meechum, don't fantasize about me and I won't fantasize about you.   No performances are required here. There's nothing to prove or disprove.   Just allow me to do what I do and concentrate.”

            “Concentrate on what?”

            The masseuse switched off the light.   The candles still flickered.   She put on another tape of classical music.

            “O.k., let's start over.” Her soft hands landed on his abdomen. “I want you to focus on my touch against your skin and your skin beneath my touch.   Make believe I'm not here. Imagine you're under water and about to surface and there's someone waiting for you, someone who will be so glad to see you.”

            “O.k.,” he said, though it sounded pretty hokey.  

            Her fingers climbed his chest.   Hands slid up and down his legs.   They smoothed the tightness from his shoulders.  

            “And when you're frightened,” she said. “Remember how this felt.”

            “O.k.”

            He recalled when he was a boy at a summer camp, sitting in the hush of the night, under a swathe of stars, around a friendly, soothing fire.   More oil seeped into his skin.   He tried hard to follow the masseuse's instructions.   He'd always been a conscientious student.   Soon there was nothing but hands and fingers and towels and oil, even the table beneath him seemed to slide away and disappear.   Sensation, arousal, release had no fixed location.   They could pop up anyway – between his toes, at the base of his neck, across his chest or shoulders.   They could make his fingers separate – even levitate, it seemed.   She dangled an arm, twirled and fluttered it, lifted a leg, curled up a toe. With each movement of his appendages went a tiny puff of tension.   Blood and energy flowed and ebbed in every part of his body.   He felt lusciously calm.   There was something profound he could almost see and nearly understood.  

Dressed and back in her living room, he wrote a check.

            “So next Thursday at seven?” he said.

            “Right.”

            “Thank you.”

            “You look better.”

            “I feel better.”

            A mist settled pleasantly into his pores as he walked to the car.   Heading south on Stone Way, Eric could see the moon lingering in a haze above Lake Union, the houseboats bobbing, the Seattle city skyline standing stately in the distance.   There was something holy about the wetness and the dark, the water of the lake under the moon.   He crossed the Fremont Bridge, reciting that absurd, little poem.

                                                            I am a wand of magic tilting from side to side.

                                                            The world is swirling down upon me, I have no place to hide. So I tap the air gently,

                                                            One, two, three,

                                                            Close my eyes to it all,

                                                            And see what I can see.

. .