Asian Strip Mall

A massage and a pastry

I thought I wanted to get a massage at the nice place but ended up in the Asian strip mall. I don’t explain what where it hurts, and I don’t ask for anything in particular.

Face down on a Brawny paper towel with a hole improvised through a padded table, I wait for the sound of the curtain hooks gliding so slightly and for the massage therapist to ask, “ready?” She starts with a sheet that covers me just from neck to ankle, and strokes my back gently before digging into my upper back so hard I wince. She giggles. “It’s okay?” I nod, burying my face into the table.

I think it’s funny she has to gain so much purchase on my limbs and the table to get to my back, as if levering herself over a wall like one of those army physical training courses. My elbow jambs into the fulcrum of her Y. It tells me she’s older than me, but probably not by much. Am I into that? Is she into this? After the massage I walk up to the register to check out and her back is to me, rifling through paperwork. Her embossed flesh outlining the bra under her regulation massage shirt—a black tunic—not because the shirt is too tight but because the bra is old, acquired in her last body.

When I leave I get on my bike and glide down the bike lane on Washington. I can’t believe getting this lane painted was such a political crap storm. There’s another older Asian woman now riding a child’s bike on the sidewalk. I feel like reassuring her the bike lane is safe. “We’re protected by the parked cars.” I think of the house she is going to return to. A foyer littered with abused slippers and sneakers that have been washed multiple times, the residue of care. One of her kin is an intern at the publishing company I started my career in. Emily, so small and excited just to have access to free books. She was always shocked when we told her she could take home our books to read. Imagine, a book being enough. This is so far from the possession of my desires. I vow to never go to the nice massage place again as penance.

I should have gotten Chinese pastries to surprise my kid, despite his favorite (a cream bun) being the opposite of mine (the hot dog). He’s only seven but already knows how much I like getting massaged. He loves when I rub his feet, which are so sensitive he goes into a fit when his socks aren’t just so. And one day those feet will fit in places where shoes are like books, and it will not be enough to have nice things if we weren’t amazed by the gift of our gratitude.