“Fine, you can come in and see him. Just don’t say anything to blow it because you think I should tell him everything.”
Aubree puts her hand on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t do anything to screw it up for you. Personally, I think the marriage and baby thing sounds like a nightmare, but its sounds like want you want.”
“I guess it is,” I say, realizing our toes are long past dry.
Aubree picks up the quick-dry enamel and sprays her toes for a good long fifteen seconds, fumigating the salon.
I grab the can from her. “You only need a little,” I say. “You’re going to give us cancer.”
She gives me a whatever look, slips on her shoes and we leave to meet Cole.
The inside of Aubree’s used BMW is tidy, just the way she kept her locker at the strip club. Clutter drives her nuts. And I knew that at any given time, she’d have at least five pre-paid cell phones stashed in her car, usually the glove compartment. Pre-paid cells are a sex worker must-have. By purchasing them with cash, it was nearly impossible to link the phone number back to a specific person. For this reason, it was perfect for advertising rubs, escorting or whatever. In strip clubs, giving out your phone number was a great way to hook a client to come back again and again to unload his wallet, without him knowing your real identity. And if he got to clingy, the prepaid cell could go in the trash because they were only fifteen dollars.
“Is it the Home Depot on Revere?” she asks.
“Yes, thanks for taking me. What are you doing after this?”
“Meeting up with Al,” she says.
“You know you don’t have to do this. Even if you get to Miami, you can still change your mind.” I’m worried that she’ll end up in jail, specifically in a Peruvian jail. And that she won’t ever come back.
“I know,” she says as she pulls into the parking lot. She looks at me quickly. “You worry too much, you’re going to need Botox soon if you keep making that face.”
“We’re early; it’s not even two yet. Just pull in there,” I say as I point to a parking spot near a stack of carts.
I resist the urge to tell her again that she could drop me off. I knew she wanted to size up Cole because all her attention was focused on scanning the parking lot. Luckily Aubree was dressed in off-the-hooker-clock attire, nothing more than a pair of faded jeans and a v-neck sweater. Aubree had invested in permanent makeup a few years ago, so she always appeared to have her brows done, lip- and eye-liner.
“There he is,” I say, pointing to a truck a few rows over.
“Him?”
“Yeah, he’s just getting out of his truck.”
“Damn, he’s hotter than I remembered,” she says. “Does he live at the gym or what?”
“You’re just used to old guys with money,” I say. “Can we go now?”
Aubree’s turns the car back on, and drives within inches of Cole. She turns down her window and says, “Hey Cole, long time no see,” in her typical syrupy voice. It was the same tone she used with me when she wanted a favor. With men, it was the way she always spoke to them. I don’t think she was capable of turning it off.
Cole turns abruptly to face her with a puzzled expression. I lean across Aubree toward the open window and say hi.
His face relaxes, though he still looks a little confused like he can’t place her.
Aubree turns to face me and under her breath, she says, “I’d fuck him in a heartbeat if I were you. For free.”
“Thanks for the ride, Aubree.” I grab my purse, give her a smile and tell her I’ll call her later.
Thirty-Four
In a couple days, I’m taking the next two weeks off from body rubs. It’s not something I want to do, but I have to. According to my doctor, they will need to do a biopsy to determine if the mass is benign or malignant, although she assures me that these things are often benign.
“Try not to worry,” she said. And honestly, I’m not, but I do wonder if what my breast will look like afterwards.
My mother told me she had the same thing done a long time ago. She can’t remember when, but she said she now has a scar that you can barely see.
“Can I see it?” I asked. She pulled down her shirt as the two of us sat in her living room and showed me a two-inch scar. Front and center on her breast. I was hoping they could go in on the side, something that could be hidden with arms at the sides or makeup. My mother’s scar looks like Frankenstein’s grimace. “It’s faded over the years,” she says. “You can hardly see it.”
I’m going to take this as a sign from the universe that I need a new profession. At least Jack is okay with it. At least I still have him. Otherwise, I’d be broke and alone.
“There’s something I want to discuss with you,” my mother says. I knew there had to be a reason she asked me over for lunch on a Sunday. She opens the back screen door with her foot and blows cigarette smoke out the side of her mouth. Analise is watching a Scooby-Doo video in my mother’s bedroom.
“I want to bring William home,” she says. William, my brother, the one currently rotting in a mental institution. My mother usually doesn’t even bring up his name.
“How?”
“I can check him out. On a trial basis. I spoke with his therapist,” she says, tossing the butt in a coffee can outside and letting the back door slam shut. “They can’t keep him there forever. It’s not like he’s committed a crime,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
I love William, but he has serious mental problems. Ones that overwhelmed my mother and I.
“What brought this on?” I ask.
“I saw that movie, Silver Linings Playbook, and the main character was crazy, and his mother checked him out. She made him take his meds and he ended up falling in love with another crazy person.”
“That’s a movie. They always have happy endings. Most things in life don’t end well,” I say. My fear is that my mother will no longer be able to deal with William and I’ll have to step in.
“Since when did you become so cynical?” my mother says. She turns her back to me, ostensibly to fill the tea kettle with water, places it harshly on the stove, and then sits back down at the kitchen table, opposite me.
“I just remember how it was,” I say. William invited over homeless friends and my mother came home to a disheveled apartment and ransacked refrigerator.
William can’t hold a job and he doesn’t do well with being left alone, so it’s like having another child. He wasn’t always like that; he was basically normal growing up and then one day he deteriorated and then reality slipped further and further away until he lost his job, his friends, and even his home. He was living in his car when my mother took him in.
“He’s fine if he takes his medications,” she says.
William is the same as every other person in his institution: he doesn’t want to take his meds. He pretends, he might put the pills in the back of his mouth, but he always spits them out. My mother would find the wet, somewhat dissolved pink pills under the pillow cushions, sometimes in the trash.
Where William currently resides, they have tricks to make them swallow their pills. Really swallow. Family members don’t tend to be that diligent. Or maybe they are just afraid. I know my mother was. Whereas my mother and I are miniature, William towers, along with his expanding girth.
William thinks the meds make him lethargic, but when he is forced to take them, he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with him, so he stops. He has a forgetful memory of how he acts without medication. Without professional help, it’s a constant tug-of-way to get him to swallow a few pills each morning. I can understand the terrible feeling of loss my mother has, but it makes everyone miserable when my mother tries to pretend that William isn’t too bad.
“Have you discussed this with him?” I ask.
“Not yet,” she says with pleading eyes.
“You’ll need help,” I say and she nods.
“Fine, if you can get him out. I’ll help out a little. Take him out every once
in a while or stay with him so you can go out.”
My mother rushes toward me and gives me a vertebrate-crunching hug. I turn my head away from her hair, which smells like smoke. My arms are still at my sides and my chin rests on her collarbone.
I love William, I really do and I feel immense sadness that he has a condition that he can’t help, however, I can’t help resent my mother for putting all her efforts and resources toward him. Why does she always assume I don’t need help?
Thirty-Five
It’s rainy and miserable out, but everybody says we need the moisture so I’m trying not to complain. Cole tells me he has a surprise for me. That’s Cole’s big thing: surprises. The only other person who tells me that they are going to surprise me is Analise.
I’m two weeks away from moving into Cole’s parents’ carriage house and I’m beyond thrilled. I’ve been packed for three weeks. It’s the only way I’ve been able to tolerate the increasing noise coming from the partiers upstairs. Thankfully, Ana is a deep sleeper, but I’m done with it. I’ve lived my whole life with someone living above me. I hear domestic disputes, doors slam, kids crying, moms crying and rap music. But in two weeks, I’ll hear nothing but the sound of Ana, my own music, and whatever goes on outside when it isn’t drowned out by the activity of an apartment complex because Cole’s parents house sits on a one-acre lot with lots of evergreens surrounding it, yet I’m not too far from my studio. I still feel like it’s something I don’t deserve.
“Can’t you give me a hint?” I ask Cole as we pull into the driveway of his parents’ house. My daughter is dozing in the back seat, but now moves as if she is subconsciously aware that we’ve reached our destination.
Cole laughs and looks at me. “No, you are the worst at being patient.”
“Are we here?” Ana asks from the back seat. “I want to see Sam.” Sam is Cole’s parents’ black lab.
“Please tell me I don’t have to do the blindfold thing again,” I say, getting out of the truck. It’s been a long time since it’s rained or snowed and the recent moisture released a pine smell from the trees. I breathe deeply and relax my shoulders.
Cole is carrying Analise. “We don’t want to ruin your princess shoes, do we?” he says.
“Where are we going?” I ask as the rain picks up suddenly. The trees prevent a direct downpour but I can only imagine what my mascara looks like. I hate looking like a raccoon.
“The carriage house,” he says as he starts to run with Ana bobbing in his arms.
I follow and catch up as he’s fumbling for the keys in his pocket with water dripping off his nose. His fleece jacket is sodden and clinging to his chest, right along with my daughter. He puts her down gently, and just before he turns the key, he turns to me and says, “Ready?”
Cole waves his hand toward the open door to allow me to go first. I take Ana’s hand and I see the most breath-taking kitchen ever: the new cabinets are antiquated white with dark granite countertops. There’s even a granite-covered island. My mouth is open and I’m speechless. It’s the fixtures and cabinets that I picked out at Home Depot.
Cole is smiling broadly.
“Did you do this?” I ask, running my hand over the countertop.
“Yeah, I couldn’t move you into a place with oak cabinets and laminate counters.”
He tells Analise to go check out her room and she runs off.
“When did you do all this?” I ask whirling around to take in everything. “Didn’t there used to be a wall here?”
“I took it out. Makes the place seem bigger,” he says.
“I can’t believe you did this for me, for us,” I say as Analise comes back into the kitchen and tells me that her room is her favorite color: pink. She thanks Cole, jumps up and down and gives him a hug around his waist. He feigns a crushing blow, doubles over and makes her laugh.
While Ana is still crunching him, I hug him. He’s still wet and smells like a mixture of pine and just Cole. It’s a smell I’m very familiar with in so many years of being friends, of borrowing his jacket when I’m cold or him leaving a hat behind in my car, but it’s the closest I’ve gotten to him. We’ve never even kissed and right now I want to quit everything I’m doing and dive right in. I’ve never had anyone be as generous to me as Cole, with the exception of Jack, I suppose, but that’s more of a give-and-take relationship.
I lean up on my tippy toes with my arms around his neck to kiss him on the cheek. Cole turns his face at the same time and we end up kissing on the mouth. His lips are warm, smooth, and a huge tease. I feel Ana at my side and pull away quickly, look down and ask her if she wants to go find Sam. And of course she does. What I really want is a few minutes alone with Cole. I want to look at what he’s done and it’s not something a child would be interested in. My daughter loves Cole, but she’s so used to getting my undivided attention that it can be difficult to talk to Cole.
He offers to take Ana to the main house where Sam is, and his parents. Knowing Ted and Sandy, they probably have homemade cookies waiting for Ana.
He leaves with Analise and I walk around the house—my new house—blown away by how beautiful this place is, even without furniture. It has the smell of a new home, even though it’s old and remodeled to retain the antique elements.
Cole comes back quickly.
“Do you like it?” he asks, clearly proud of himself. “The cabinets are called Vermont Winter.”
“How long did this take you?”
“A few weekends. It wasn’t a big deal, besides, it helps out my parents if they continue to rent it out after you move out.”
I laugh. “Why would I ever move from here?” I say. “It’s beautiful and perfect.”
“Maybe you’ll get married.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe you’ll at least invite me over more often,” he says. I rarely invited him over to my apartment. I was too embarrassed because it’s something Cole’s not accustomed to. He comes from an intact, well-to-do family and I come from something quite different.
“It’s the least I can do,” he says.
A Body Rub Girl’s Start-Up Essentials
1. Backpage Ad $2 (take your own photos --free)
2. Massage table from Amazon $64.50
3. One bottle of high-quality, unscented grapeseed or almond massage oil (not baby oil!) $9
4. One bottle of unscented, quick-absorb lotion, such as Lubriderm $11
5. Stack of clean sheets, hand towels, pillowcases from a thrift store $10
6. Day rental of a studio space (in my area, there are rent-by-the-day massage studios) $20
7. Music from your cell phone (free)
8. New Google Voice phone number (free, assuming you have an iPhone)
9. Laundry Bag $5
Total Cost: $121.50
With one appointment, you'll have a complete return on investment. What other business can do that?
Thirty-Six
Today I have an appointment with a client who likes a finger shoved way up his ass while he gets his happy ending. It’s a horrendous dose of reality after a lovely weekend with Cole and Ana.
On the weekends away from the studio, I feel normal. When I open my studio door, knowing I have an appointment with Dale, I realize how low I have sunk and the depression comes in a tide-sucking wave.
But it was me, and only me, that got me here. So it’s up to me to get out. Erotic massage is definitely the proverbial golden handcuffs.
The first time I met Dale, greeting him in the waiting room, I was relieved. He was warm and handsome in an outdoorsy way, and talkative. His teeth were a blazing white, either from a deep bleaching or veneers—a good sign of attention-to-detail hygiene. I figured it would be an easy session. If he got a little too handsy, no problem, he was good-looking. And the talkers always help pass the time.
During his rub, I was going over my mental to-do list: what groceries I need to pick up for dinner, what bills need to be paid and suddenly he twists around, grabs my free ha
nd and inserts my finger in his ass. Prior to that, I was thinking I scored an easy regular. And then he goes and does that. And when I attempt to wiggle my finger out, he jams it back in. Not a word and just a grunt. This is something he should have discussed with me before he just went ahead and did it.
I get a lot of unusual requests: toe sucking, sitting on their chest during the release, peeing in the mouth, and on and on. Some requests I do and some I don’t. Most patrons don’t just grab my parts and insert them into theirs. Dale essentially wants a prostate massage, which I hear can be heavenly, but is not something I offer.
Prostate massage involves more than inserting a finger in the ass. Most providers use a glove first, though again, I’m sure there are guys who complain that it reduces the sensation. One girl at American Dolls offered prostate massage and she made a killing. She claimed she got better with practice, reaching inside a guy and finding the right spot, which was really the internal part of the penis, according to her. She grew up on a farm in Iowa so I figured that prepared her for what she did. But again, I’m not her.
Immediately after our first session, I soaked my finger in alcohol, washed with scalding water, and then used hand sanitizer. Rinse. Repeat. And repeat again ad nauseum. I couldn't eat with my hands without thinking about where my left pointer finger had been. I frantically searched the Internet to find out how long it takes for the epidermis to regrow.
Dale had mentioned a long-standing and fabulous relationship with a prior erotic masseuse. Apparently she had no qualms about inserting her finger into his ass, but unfortunately she's out of the business. To be honest, I would be willing to stick a finger up the ass if said finger was gloved (is double-bagging too much to ask?) and if it was an extra the client paid for. It's still gross, but at least I wouldn't feel the need to amputate.
Confessions of an Erotic Masseuse: A Memoir Page 13