Peeling away the layers of an onion would be so much easier than peeking under the surface of my addiction. This shit is like an onion wrapped in a spider web, run through a blender and piped onto a cake in the shape of a large, ornately decorated cock. At the core there is a sexual compulsion that is married to a deeper need for intimacy, for touch, a need to relate. These two feed each other but neither is ever fully satisfied. Atop these twin gargoyles there is a need to avoid true emotional intimacy, a need for control and distance. And then there is the pursuit of inspiration, of experience that makes the words flow through the fingers and wind up here in front of your eyes. The inspiration is fueled and fed by the isolation and solitude, and the isolation is fed by the secrecy and illegality of the acts.
I’m a serial non-repeater. There are very few places I go or women I see over and over. I have a few professional relationships but more often than not I show up unannounced, anonymous, alone…and I take a small sample and walk away, the click clack of my shoes blending with the footfalls of my fellow citizens in a way the rest of me can never manage.
I had a busy day but I saw a window – an hour and a half without any prescheduled business. I grabbed it and shoved it into my coat pocket and ran with it. A few blocks across town…into an unmarked door and up a flight of stairs to a place that doesn’t know me…to spend an hour with a pair of hands…at the end of a pair of arms…belonging to a woman who’d never met me and would never see me again.
I walked in and removed my hat like a decent and respectful sort of man and I scanned the place. Harmony Spa, it was called. Nothing special, like a hundred other places. A few private rooms with massage tables and pocket doors, a table shower, a front desk. I paid the house fee and took my shit off. A middle aged lady named Nina walked in as I put the robe on. She looked at me suspiciously. She had seen the tattoos, must have decided I could be a cop. I smiled at her and she led me down the hall.
I lay down on the table and she washed me. She did her work wordlessly. I tried to make small talk and failed. I turned over and stared at the ceiling as she ran her wet, soapy hands all over me. I can see myself…in a tiny little room…with a woman touching me everywhere…bathing me like a child…and in my head I am alone, my eyes are dead, my mouth is closed so tight not even a whisper can pass.
She dried me off and I asked her name. “Nina,” she said. I wonder what her name really is. Distance, no real names, no real anything, it’s an act, a charade, a performance. My name? She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.
Back down the hall, I laid on the massage table and the massage was mediocre, almost pointless. It got warm in the room and she started to perspire. I flipped over on my own. I knew the end was going to be hard work today.
Humanity…fuck it…what’s the point? Each day is like the last, the only thing that changes is how much money is in my wallet.
Nina laughed at my fat stomach. Whatever, of course I couldn’t possibly give a shit what she thinks, give a shit what anyone thinks, fucking judgment, always judgment, no place to hide from the ears and eyes, just give me five minutes when the god damned voices in my head will shut the fuck up and I can think, please.
Enough. She grabbed my cock and oiled up her hand and I stuck my rough right hand under her shirt even though I didn’t like her and she wasn’t nice and she wasn’t attractive I grabbed her tits anyway because I needed to come, please, OK I just needed to come already could I please have my fucking fix?
Nina was sweating her ass off, my mind was drifting like it does.”Tits, yeah, OK nice…feels great…Lola, where’s Lola when I need her…what time is it? What’s her name? How long have I been here? How much money is in my pants? Where’s Lily? Where are any of us? Fuck it.”
I shut myself down. Closed my eyes. Closed my ears…shoved my hand into her bra and shot my load.
Once I had come, she warmed up, that fucking Nina…started making chit chat with me. I bullshitted her, talked a little out my ass as I hurried the fuck up to get dressed. God damn she had to talk about the fucking shoes…for a moment I wanted to burn the fucking shoes…the massage table, the building, all of god damned midtown. I needed air, my chest was hurting again. My face was red. I tipped her forty and she finally smiled. Fuck it. Air. Needed air.
Down the stairs and out the door and I breathed in the grey filthy air of Manhattan and it gave me life the way it always does. Another layer of the onion peeled away...then replaced with a new layer. If there is one place on planet earth where a man can disappear, this is it. Watch me…watch me…watch me closely…I am gone.