morethanenoughtruth

This is a snippet of memoir shared with my much trusted Monday Morning Writer’s Group after carrying it around in my  journal  since July, waiting for a time when I might feel brave enough to share that much truth.  The group drifted into a discussion about how to write the requisite sex scene in a formulaic detective novel.  It was the perfect time.

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Massage ©

In a state of body and mind, long ago and far away, I once had a full body massage.  It wasn’t my idea.  In fact I would have, could have, never personally decided to sign on to such a wild idea.  I was in the last dead state of denial about my bookstore/coffeehouse with its seemingly unfathomable pit of debt.  The bills weren’t being paid, but I didn’t know at that point that my much trusted bookkeeper/accountant was pocketing most of the cash.

My birthday approached.  The store’s sensitive and loyal staff knew what was up with me.  They passed the hat, or envelope, or whatever, and hired a well-respected local masseur to come to my home and give me a bit of an “unwind”.  There was little doubt in my mind that I needed something of the sort.  I couldn’t refuse their gift.  That would have been unthinkable.

On the appointed day I waited, prepared as instructed, clean, depilated, and terrified.  My silk robe flowed in titillating susurrations as I paced the demarcations of my living room.  I want him to come.   I don’t want him to come.  I could call and cancel.  The staff would never forgive me.  Oh My God!  It’s the doorbell.  I opened the door, motioned for him to enter and then feigned a sudden interest in the carpet.  Breathe, I thought.  Just breathe.  It was only then that I moved firmly into the present moment.  Even the memory itself plays in the powerful voice of now.

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I see his feet in sandals, expensive, elegant.  His toes are warmly tanned, softly hairy, a man’s toes.  My eyes swarm up his loosely garbed limbs taking in the full implications of his yoga inspired trousers.  How can he be abroad in daytime Laguna Beach in such an outfit?  I shake my head.  My eyes rise to his face.  Men don’t look like that, not the men I know: techies, engineers, scientists, UCI faculty.  First there’s the hat.  It’s soft leather, the band a pattern of woven hide strips, reminiscent of Indiana Jones, but unbelievably here in my living room.  It isn’t on his head; it’s part of his look, a perfect frame for a too-beautiful visage.  No man that handsome could ever be standing in my foyer waiting to soothe lumpy little me.  I carefully self-correct: This man is here to fulfill a lawfully certified and professional contract for which he has been well and duly paid.

He nods and unbuckles his bulky case that transforms into a table for bodywork.  It opens and waits to accommodate a body, supine, and in need of relief from the tensions of commercial striving.  It is I who is to lie naked upon it.  I arrange myself as instructed, trying for “graceful” but not all that successful, while he excuses himself for a hand wash.  Wherever is my robe?  There it is, over there, on the chair, giving credence to the vulnerability of my situation.  It’s just me now, me and this sheet, or is it I and this sheet?  I’m not really in the mood to quibble over grammar.  I hope that well-intentioned staff of mine knows what they’re doing.  This sheet feels good…clean and cool.  White-knuckled, I tuck it under my chin and wait.

Eyes closed ostrich-like, I hear him enter.  Soft shush-shush of protesting carpet fibers gives him away.  He scratches a match and lights a candle.  Curious, I sneak a peek at the lit candle, at him, at his hat, still part of his look, and at his smooth bare torso.  Thank God he’s kept his pants on.  He closes the drapes, gently, slowly, in a studied dance of quiet and balance.  He stands beside the table and speaks several words in what is surely ancient Sanskrit.  Then he places one hand, warm and light, on my belly and waits.  Warmth creeps through the sheet and melts the knot of wariness it finds.  I want his warm hand on my belly.  I do.  Just breathe.

He turns the satin-faced and hemmed sheet away from my left shoulder and takes my hand, drawing the arm up and out.  The candle has done its work.  Oil, warm and slick, slides over the arm, a smear of fragrant fluid, hands smoothing and kneading skin.  Muscles melt and mold, follow eagerly the anticipated trace of those hands, relaxing even before his fingers get to where they’re headed.  When the arm is in total bliss, he folds and puts it away, but not before placing a chaste kiss on the inside of the wrist.  “Yes Toto, we’re definitely in California now”.  He moves to the foot of the table and pauses, faces my languid presence, presses hands together prayer-like, and bows his head.  I think he murmurs “Namaste”, but who can be sure when mind is afloat?

Now it’s time for the right arm.  Yes.  I am definitely up for this.  It’s the same drill, but this time its mirror image.  I wish I didn’t already know what was planned for this, my good right arm.  Then it would be another surprise, but he does not disappoint.  No kiss this time.  He leaves me wanting; nothing is more poignant than want.

He uncovers feet and legs, turning the sheet up and tucking it firmly, safely, about my thighs.  The pitcher of oil is now very warm.  He lifts it, holds it in both hands against his chest while he intones a few soft words to the room, certainly not to me, because I am not part of this tableau.  I am else-where, else-when, a mere watcher.  He tilts the pitcher and streams a small line of oil back and forth over feet and ankles.  His free hand presses both ankles together while the line of oil anoints his own hand and wrist.  I understand.  We are bound in an intimate celebration of sensation as together we are gratified by the warm oil rubbed into skin, his hands, my feet.  His other hand replaces the pitcher and joins this gentle orgy of carpal, tarsal, and filangeal sensation.  His eyes smile, but his lips are composed.  He rubs his hands and arms, my feet and legs, pressing first hard, then relenting to tenderness.  The oil smooths, warms.  The hands glide, awaken. Eyes close.  I pray: Don’t stop!  Please don’t stop!  Both hands advance slowly, gently upward.  Don’t breathe.  Ever the gentleman, he retraces his movement toward ankles and feet, sliding oily fingers between happily titillated toes.  I can relax.  He will observe the bounds of decorum.

I smile, am safe, anointed in sacred oil and floating in sacred space.    He turns his back to me.  “Now, please lie on your stomach”, he requests.   I flip, gracefully as possible, given my slippery state and limited platform.  I rearrange the sheet and express readiness with appropriate reticence.  He returns to my side, gathers the top of the sheet and strips it away entire.  Yipes!  The shock of cold raises hair the length of my bare backside.  Again a poured stream of hot oil anoints my derriere entire.  Now he wastes no time.  His hands wipe the oiled flesh in broad strokes.  Up and down, across and back.  The rubbing is rough and insistent.  Strong fingers grasp and release, grasp and release, press and release, thump and release.  Fingers stretch, roll, and soften the steel cables that connect head to shoulder.  Pain screams but ultimately gives way to happy moans. Hands squeeze and release, squeeze and release.  The repetition consoles.  Please don’t stop.  Must not stop.  Cannot stop.  Don’t you dare stop! 

 But then he turns away, and asks that I lie again on my back.  The sheet, returned to cover my bare form is welcome, but not for long.  The upper hem folds back, is rolled over and over, baring breasts, nipples even now still pink and pretty, stand brazenly alert.  Long forgotten are the thoughtful employees, the envelope passed and filled.  These pale smooth breasts are all mine, both of them.  “Be here now”, Ram Dass often reminded his followers.  “Here I am!”  The old coot would be proud.

Then Indiana Jones demurely pulls from his pack a small golden horn.  He places the bell-shaped end on my sternum and softly blows a long low rumble, gentle, sustained and soothing.  Again, and again he moves the horn’s bell down my anterior center line toward my navel, my center, stopping to blow the horn at each new destination.  The pitch varies, sometimes low, sometimes higher, sometimes playing an arpeggio, sweeping up or down the scale.  I am an extension of this shaman’s instrument, drawn into his spell of pitch and vibration, that calls out to vast wastelands of feeling denied, anguish set aside, terrors long ago put away for some future remembering.

All those emotions, lost children of the heart, convene, answering his resonating summons and embrace me like a hundred hungry hugs.  I gasp, gag, shake in racking sobs, tears streaming down cheeks, off chin, no dainty dabbling with tissues here.  All unknowingly, I follow the direction of this simple commercial encounter into a holy place of deep healing and release.  A screaming volcano explodes in overflowing rivers of angst, streaming clear colorless magma of soul.

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 Indiana Jones folds his table, picks up his hat, passes me the box of Kleenex, and tells me to blow my nose.  He gives me a sweet brother hug, and is gone.

_Dorothy Jeanette Martin 5/17/2021