Full Body Massage

He will be more difficult to satisfy than a man who only thinks he is a bull. That is Sunny’s opinion and she’s an expert. I keep my opinion to myself. I’ve not been in this country long enough to speak. With my diary, though, I’m fearless, and in my dreams, I revel in inexcusable deeds. He is as large as a love seat. We peer at him from the common room, huddled behind the door giggling, and I think, but I don’t say, that he should never sit. Upright he will surely be striking, but perched on the cushion of the only chair in our little lounge, dangling his hat before his knees, he looks pathetic and obscene. His eyes don’t shift as we titter, but one hairy ear the size and shape of a large man’s cupped hand turns in our direction. I know who I am and what kind of man likes me, and I can tell, watching him paw the brim of his hat and flex the ropy muscles of his massive neck as he absolves our dingy room, that he’ll choose me, of all of us. I helped him from his coat in a close chamber meant only for people, and gasped at his acre of shirt, bright and wide as a ski slope. I came back when he had taken off the rest. A towel would not have covered him, so he had used a sheet—for me, I thought, to spare me what he could, and facedown he was sobbing. My little fists pattered across his shoulders like raindrops. To prove I didn’t mind, to thank him, I squeezed his tail in both my hands and told him, in the language of my dreams, of a time when everybody had been happy.

Copyright © February 23, 2008 David Hodges