Love Frustration

by RM Johnson

  “Call and confirm,” Asha said, pretending to straighten bottles on her table, not even looking at Angie.

  And that’s what Angie did. But it wasn’t the next week, or the week after next, and Asha was relieved when Angie kept missing her appointments, but only a little. She was worried that she had lost a client, but even more worried that it was this particular client, for she couldn’t get Angie of f her mind. There were days when Asha stood by the phone with Angie’s info at hand, and thought of dialing her up, leaving some lame message in her geekiest voice, like, “Hi, this is your masseuse from Phillipe Cozi. Just calling to make sure you haven’t forgot about your weekly massages! Okay. Toodaloo. And have a wonderful day!”

  But Asha didn’t dare. Instead she just accepted the fact that she blew it. But what exactly had she blown? The opportunity for a great lesbian relationship, an illegal marriage, and the adoption of some infant who would look up at her parents and forever be confused as to who wore the pants. Was she just missing some hot, sweaty ass sex on the massage table? What! She didn’t know, and she told herself that it was best that she never found out.

  But then the phone rang.

  “Phone call for Asha Mills on line seven,” Sue said over the intercom.

  “This is Asha,” Asha said, picking up the phone in her room.

  “I know I haven’t called in a while, but do you have anything open today?”

  “I’m sorry. Who am I speaking to?” Asha said, knowing exactly who it was after Angie spoke the first word.

  “This is Angie, Asha. I’m sorry I missed my last couple of appointments, but can you fit me in today?”

  Asha had already found an opening in her book—her finger was sitting there on the 2:30 P.M. slot—but should she let her in? After having already gotten over this woman—well just about—did Asha want to go down that path again? But, just because Angie came in for a massage every week, did Asha have to succumb to her desires? Hell no, she thought to herself. And if she no longer allowed Angie to come, wouldn’t Asha be admitting that she had no willpower whatsoever, that each and every time an attractive woman lay across her table, that woman ran the risk of getting molested, because poor Asha could not control her raging hormones. Of course not!

  “Yeah. Two-thirty, today,” Asha said, confidently. “And don’t be late.”

  “Great. See you then.”

  Now in the break room, Asha popped another mini rice cake into her mouth and looked down at her watch. It read 2:15 P.M. and Asha felt a little stir inside of herself, in that lower region, but she squelched it, telling herself it was just another client, nothing to get weirded out about. She wouldn’t make any special preparations, wouldn’t budge until two or three minutes before the client was due to arrive as she did with all the others.

  Asha put her feet up on the coffee table, and prepared to really chill when someone came into the room. It was Leslie, or as Asha referred to her, “Big Les.” Of course, Leslie didn’t know Asha referred to her as such, and she never would, because Asha wasn’t a fool, and Asha didn’t want her ass kicked. That wouldn’t have been a problem for Big Les, and that was, of course, because she was so damn big.

  Leslie was new by about four days, had just got the job. She was a caramel color, about five eleven, black hair that stuck up all about her head and appeared to break off at the ends if she walked through the hallway too fast. She probably put everything and anything in her hair that was advertised during the Soul Train hour to try and get that stuff to grow. All it did was damage her hair, leaving her walking around smelling like lye and looking like a brunette Woody Woodpecker.

  She was quiet in an evil, suspicious, rattlesnake-waiting-to-strike kind of way. She’d never really said much to Asha in the four days she had been there, and that was perfectly fine with Asha. To her, Les looked rougher than some dudes she knew, bad dudes, dudes who lifted boxes, dumped garbage, and repossessed cars for a living.

  Today, Les came into the break room with her brown bag lunch and sat down. She sat in a chair opposite the coffee table, looking directly at Asha. Les ripped the bag down the center, allowing it to double as a place mat, and revealed a huge ball of aluminum foil. She unwrapped it and exposed half a separated fried chicken. She then walked over to the sink, grabbed a paper cup, filled it with water from the tap, and sat down again.

  Les took some napkins, the stray ones left on the table, and placed one gently on her lap. Then she stuffed one in the collar of her shirt, careful not to soil her white smock. After a moment, she picked up a chicken leg, sank her teeth into it and chewed, all the while staring directly at Asha.

  Asha munched on her rice cakes as Les chewed on her chicken flesh, both women staring at each other.

  “Wha’s up?” Les said, after swallowing hard.

  “I don’t know. What’s up with you?” Asha said, trying to sound as hard as Les.

  “Shit,” Les said, blandly, still staring at Asha, then ripped another hunk off the leg.

  Asha kept her stare up, but it was hard, because she didn’t know what to make of Big Les’s stare. There was something … she didn’t know, intimidating, something animal about it, like instead of just chewing chicken, she was imagining chomping down on Asha.

  “You like it here?” Asha asked.

  “It’s okay, I guess.” Then she said in a deep voice, bordering on masculine, “You know, I been meaning to tell you. You look good today. You look good every day. I like the way your smock fits you.”

  “Thanks,” Asha said, and she didn’t know just where the fuck that came from, but she was already pulling herself up from the sofa, and heading toward the door. She’d heard more than she needed from Big L and spent enough time staring into her frightening, bloodthirsty eyes. Before leaving, Asha dropped her bag of rice cakes on the table.

  “You can have those, just in case you’re still hungry after your chicken.” Asha left the room, relieved to get out of there.

  When she walked into her massage room, she could hear someone getting changed in the locker room, and knew that Sue had already sent Angie back. Asha paused just inside the room, feeling a chill move through her, but she let it pass, paying no attention to it. This would be a normal massage like all the rest. Asha grabbed a towel, spread it across her table, and stood behind it waiting for Angie to finish undressing.

  “Ready when you are, Angie,” Asha called, looking down, examining her nails, trying to convince herself she needed a manicure when she had just gotten one three days ago.

  When Angie walked in she was smiling, striding into the room confidently as always.

  “How you been, Asha?”

  “Fine. Can’t complain,” Asha said, working a smile up, making a point to stare straight at Angie, letting her know that she had no problems doing that anymore.

  “Good, good,” Angie said, climbing onto the table and lying out across it on her belly.

  Asha stood over her, still forcing herself not to look away from this woman’s flawless skin, even though it was becoming a little harder now. And then she took one of those deep, relaxing, anxiety-reducing breaths she said she didn’t need.

  She held out both her spread hands in front of her, just above Angie’s back, and Asha was relieved to see that they were for the most part, steady. She then lowered them upon Angie’s skin, and started on the muscles at the back of her lower neck, feeling all the tension there.

  “You have a lot of stress built up back here,” Asha said.

  “I know,” Angie said, letting out a breath. “I shouldn’t have stayed away so long, but … I’ve been busy.”

  “Well, next time you’ll know,” Asha said, smiling, because she was feeling so comfortable, not feeling any anxiety, any fear, not thinking about any of the nonsense that had been going on in her head earlier about her and Angie. Asha started to massage Angie deeper, really loosening the muscles in her neck, the trapezius muscles, her deltoids.

  This must have felt really good to Angie, because she le
t out a moan, a sinful, sensual moan like something heard during great sex. Asha halted, feeling another chill, this one very intense, making her entire body shiver, but she paused for only a moment, telling herself, once again, she wasn’t affected by this woman.

  Asha smoothed her hands down across Angie’s back, working on her lateral muscles, then opened her hands flat, using the heels of her palms to massage both sides of Angie’s spine.

  “Everything okay down there?” Asha said, still in control of herself, demanding of herself that she see Angie as just another client.

  “Uhhhhh, like you wouldn’t believe,” Angie said.

  Asha reached over to her table, lifting a bottle of warm oil, squirting some in the palms of her hands, then applying it to Angie’s back.

  “Ohhhh,” Angie said, arching her back a little.

  “It’s a little warm.”

  “Mmm, no. It’s good.”

  Asha worked gently and steadily down the length of Angie’s spine using her thumbs in a crisscrossing motion, feeling Angie’s body tense some the lower she went.

  “You have to relax, okay?” Asha said, continuing to move down, still keeping herself in check, actually feeling quite strong.

  She continued the massage, working on the area just above where the towel was draped, the lower back. For so many people, that was where most of the stress hid, where most problems lay. She worked the area with more oil, and each time that Angie tensed up, jerked about the table, almost losing her towel, Asha told her to relax. And each time Angie moaned or breathed out a sigh, like Asha was doing so much more than giving her an innocent massage, Asha fought against it, trying to remain unaffected by it.

  “But it tickles,” Angie said, unable to hold her laughter anymore. “That’s why I keep tensing and jumping around.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll work around it,” Asha said, smiling to herself, glad that she was doing so well, even though she was so close to what was at one time driving her crazy. She continued the massage, working around the ticklish area, or so she thought. Asha dug her thumbs into the space just above where the spine and pelvis meet, where there was always loads of tension, and that had to be the most sensitive spot on Angie’s body, for she let out a shriek, and nearly jumped off the table. She managed not to fall, but what did fall was her towel, leaving Angie totally nude, her round, smooth behind exposed, one leg hiked slightly up to expose a hint of her straight medium-length pubic hair.

  Motherfucker! What did I just do? Asha thought. And then the voice in her head was screaming at her. Pick up the towel, Asha! Pick it up! But she could not move. Then she ordered herself one last time, telling herself if she didn’t do it that moment, she’d have no control of what might happen.

  She took a step toward the other side of the table to get the towel, and as she took that step, she felt Angie’s gaze on her.

  “Don’t do it,” Angie said, softly.

  What are you talking about? Asha said, thinking that she was speaking out loud, when the words were really only in her head. I have to pick up the towel. I have to cover you, smother the temptation, drown this desire or else I’ll … I just have to. And she took another step.

  “Asha,” Angie said, and Asha felt the warm hand take hers again. “Stop,” Angie said, lifting herself from the table, sitting up. Asha stopped, her eyes still focused in the direction of the fallen towel.

  “You don’t have to pick that up.”

  Asha didn’t respond, almost afraid to.

  “Do you want me, Asha?” Angie said.

  “Don’t do this,” Asha whispered to Angie, almost as if she was warning herself.

  “Asha, do you want this?”

  “Don’t do this!” Asha said, firmer, her hand shaking in Angie’s. Angie squeezed her hand, trying to comfort her.

  “I understand what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. But how long can you fight it? How long do you want to have to fight it?” Angie said, her voice soft, dreamlike.

  Asha’s entire body was trembling now, her mind cloudy, her legs wanting to run, but something was telling her to stay, that this must happen.

  “Asha, look at me. If you don’t want this, then look me in the eyes and tell me.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Asha said, fraught with anguish, and anxiety.

  “I’m not doing anything that you’re not able to stop. Just answer my question, and if it’s no, I’ll leave you alone.”

  Asha narrowed her eyes, clenched her teeth, trying to summon the strength to reject this woman that she’d dreamt of so many times, that she’d imagined holding, imagined being held by, but she couldn’t.

  “It’s okay, Asha. You’ve tried so hard to hide it, but I’ve known about you from the first day when you looked at me, and every day you massaged me. And I would lie here, hoping that you’d allow yourself to embrace it, that you’d stop fighting what you can never beat.”

  A tear rolled down Asha’s cheek.

  “It’s okay, you have to know that,” Angie said, placing a gentle hand on the side of Asha’s face. “You have to tell yourself that, and don’t worry about what anyone else thinks, because they don’t have to deal with it, they don’t have to live this life. Do you understand?”

  Asha felt Angie place her other hand on her other cheek, felt her turning her face to look at her.

  “Do you understand, Asha?”

  Asha’s lips quivered for a moment, and then she said, “But no one else will understand.”

  “I will.”

  “But …” Asha tried to say, another tear falling from her eye.

  “I will understand, and that’s all that matters,” Angie said, covering Asha’s cheek with her soft lips. She kissed Asha there, then kissed her in the center of her cheek, then placed a delicate kiss gently on Asha’s lips. There came the slightest bit of hesitation from Asha, pulling back only enough for herself to notice, but then she stopped herself, for the feeling she was experiencing was true, natural, more than with any man she’d ever been with.

  Angie pressed her lips slightly harder against Asha’s lips, parting them gently to allow the tip of her tongue to seep out. Asha met her with her own warm tongue, her head beginning to spin, her body feeling warm, weak, her knees feeling as though they were about to give at any moment. And when she felt that she was about to fall, Angie wrapped her arms around Asha, pulled her into her soft, naked body, and kissed her harder.

  Asha’s head was swimming now. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but whatever it was, it felt good. She could feel all the pain, all the hurt, the anger and self-loathing she had felt for herself start to wash away as she was being kissed by this woman, as she kissed this woman, and at that moment, she wondered why she had hidden from this part of herself for so long.

  8

  I wanted a big wedding in a huge church with hundreds of people to witness the happiest day of my life. Faith would have all of her friends and family there, beaming proudly at her as she walked down the aisle. For me, Asha would be there, maybe a couple of associates I knew from work, but no family. I was an only child, my father out of the picture, and my mother, well, she’d lasted only two years at Shady Brook. I never went to visit her, took care of everything via phone, including her funeral arrangements. I didn’t even make the actual funeral; I just passed by the casket afterward. I was afraid what sorts of feelings would’ve crept out of me, and I didn’t want anyone to see me if I felt the need to topple my mother’s coffin off the platform it was on.

  In that empty room, staring down into my mother’s waxy face, a dress on her that I had never seen but paid for, I tried to pretend that all the love she had never given me no longer affected me. I tried to act as though I was a grown man now and had never been a child, and she had never deprived me, but I could not pull it off. I felt the tears coming before they were even in my eyes. They were introduced by a pain in my heart so strong that I felt I would double over. It dropped into my stomach when I finally accepted the fact that
she was gone. Now and forever, she was gone. That thought pulled all those emotions I’d tried to suppress out of me, and the guilt, the regret, the resentment I felt toward my mother had me stretched out over her casket, holding on to it as though I feared someone were trying to take it, and my mother, away from me. I cried there for an entire hour, sobbing like the child I tried to deny I’d ever been, and afterward I felt no worse, nor did I feel any better.

  I wanted a big wedding, and I didn’t know if this was to compensate for the feeling of family that I never had, or if I was just so excited, so proud to be finally getting married that I wanted the world, or at least as much of it as I could fit into that church, to know. But Faith wasn’t game.

  “I want something simple, something small and intimate, like city hall,” she said.

  “City hall is about as intimate as getting married in a Greyhound bus station.”

  “It’s not about how big the wedding is, baby,” Faith said, snuggling up next to me, looping her arm around mine. “It’s about how good the marriage is afterward. Let’s take all that money we’ll save from the wedding, and do something crazy, like go on a month-long honeymoon around the world.”

  “Really?” I said smiling, picturing us traveling as husband and wife.

  “I don’t know. Yeah. Something like that. What do you say?”

  “Okay. Whatever you want, baby. Whatever,” I said, the smile growing even wider.

  “Sir. Sir, you’re next,” a voice said, interrupting my thoughts. It was the heavy black woman from behind the counter, trying to get my attention. I pulled myself from what I was thinking, and said, “Oh, yeah, a dozen of your freshest red roses, please.”

  The woman took her time, picking the dozen carefully, then asked, “How are these?”

  “Those are great.”

  “You want ’em in a vase, a box, or in paper?”

  “Paper’s fine,” I said, then hesitated for a moment, not knowing if the news of my wedding would make her any difference or not, but feeling too excited about it at the moment to hold it in.