Asian massage spas: Four reasons to check them out
Anonymity. You will leave who you were on the pavement once inside the spa. You will be greeted by someone you never knew and will never know. “Hello Lady,” a woman will say. She will point to the menu. “What you want?” she will ask. An implicit agreement exists, namelessness and disregard. Some masseuses are taller than others, some are fatter, some are shorter, some are thinner, but they are all the same to clients, just like we are to them. My generic, pasty white body is indistinct from every other body that walks through the door.
Amy > Yelp review > Asian Massage Spa
Ugh! It was a new girl, and I tried to ask for the old girl, and they
just pushed me into the room.…
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“I just need to be by the water,” Sadie says as we sit out on the patio, after dinner and our evening walk, watching the burnt orange sun descend beyond the wavering elm trees that separate our property from our neighbor’s. “That’s all I need—just the water.”
Sadie’s been feeling gravity’s pull, again, I can tell—I can always tell—how she gets, sort of retreats within herself, with a faraway gaze like she’s somewhere else.
“The water,” I say. “What water?” I ask, and I take a sip of my beer, a summer shandy though I’m not a summer shandy person—give me an IPA—but Sadie bought these this afternoon, her “accomplishment for the day,” her words, and so I thought I’d give one a try but it’s not for me.…
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She was almost out of my jurisdiction. When you set the distance parameters, it’s best to be realistic considering the weather and person. Una Manzini had the kind of smile that made dandelions blush; a free spirit exceptional in matters both chemical and unnerving. A Harvard alum who studied abroad at Cambridge, except when she told the story on our first date, it was mostly just raves and beans that semester. Una only mentioned Reginald once. He was just some footballer she’d shacked up with in the country that summer when they lived and loved off the land.
I still couldn’t figure why she’d chosen me out of the rest within a forty-mile radius. I was a stagnant fool in a cushy coaching gig with nothing but spare time.…
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My last ride of the night stumbled out of the pub, and I slid my passenger seat forward to accommodate his massive frame. Thick black hair spilled out of a paint-stained Boston Red Sox cap. Crammed in the backseat, he rested his elbows on jean-torn knees and planted his face in oven-mitt hands. His knuckles were scarred and the veins bulged. Those weren’t scars from framing houses or laying brick, I thought. I knew a fighter’s hands when I saw them.
My Lyft emblem glowed purple in the dark night, and after riding in silence on the desolate Brockton, Massachusetts streets I asked him what he does for a living. A plastic tarp blew in the wind on a boarded-up house.
“I’m a carpenter,” he said without turning away from the window.…
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As she slips the five bucks into my cup, I look up from the sidewalk and mumble, “God bless you.” An exhilarating shock runs through me as I watch her saunter down the street, a cluster of bittersweet memories bursting upon my mind. My wife… That’s my wife… Was my wife.
No longer that distant figure on the charred landscape of my youth, no longer a nocturnal phantom haunting my tent under the overpass, but a person of flesh and blood, proof that I once lived and loved in this city that now recoils from my poverty and despair. I get to my feet and stumble after her as she window-shops, her hand gently pulling a young boy along. Over the last fifteen years I dreamed about her a lot… but not so much lately.…
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I just got word. My elementary school’s scheduled for demolition tomorrow. It’s a devastating announcement. Something doesn’t sit right with deliberately tearing down a building built to educate—to encourage learning. This place was the primary setting of my childhood; now in a matter of hours, it’ll be bulldozed, and all that’ll remain is a pile of dusty rubble over its concrete foundation. It was my foundation too. I’m stunned. That blocky brick building where I pined after my first crushes and learned to read and write. Gone. My childhood, leveled. What becomes of memories once their physical tether’s been removed?
In fourth grade, we had this grueling geology exam where we circled the classroom like vultures, identifying rock samples laid out on desks. I failed it—miserably.…
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This morning it poured my glass of Wild Turkey bourbon on A Farewell to Arms, made a paper airplane from an Appalachian Power bill, subscribed to Glamour magazine against my will. Sometimes it squirts toothpaste across my mustache and draws smiley faces on the mirror. It pinches baby cheeks on city buses, fixes tags on strangers’ t-shirts, texts my ex in the middle of the night.
It’s been three months since Moira packed her bags and moved out. “I just can’t do this anymore,” she said. The fighting, the infertility, my drinking—it was more than she could bear. But the affair was what finished us. I’d betrayed her body by giving mine to another. She wanted to forgive me, to move on, and she tried, but something had died between us that we couldn’t get back.…
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