Back Alley Massage

 I walk away from the noise of Siem Reap's Pub Street, and I don't stop.  I walk over sleeping dogs and woven mats full of rambutans and bananas.  I bypass dark-eyed children with unnatural smiles.  I step into barely lit alleys, the fear of the unknown a welcome respite from stale 80's rock and “happy” pizzas.  I hear them calling, a hundred hisses from all sides.  I don't look.  I already know they're staring.     I'm wandering alone, but I know what the staring means.  It means I'm not foreign enough to be forgiven the many slights I don't know I've done, only foreign enough to stand out like a beacon of impropriety.  I walk away, because it's too hard to stay still.   Without thinking, I duck into the sanctuary of a massage spa, with dingy curtains and dim halls. The masseuses study me, and I study them in return.  We are all silent, long-haired, and dark-skinned, yet I feel like a middle-aged cowboy looking for his whore.  The notion makes me turn my eyes away from their faces, and down to their hands.  I like the idea of thick, hard fingers tunneling into my skin, so I look for large, peasant hands – broad, strong, and brash. I find a pair that I like, attached to the brownest woman I have ever seen.  Her palms are heavily lined, her clipped nails are still shiny with oil, and her fingertips bear the kind of smooth calluses that are earned only through experience.   She looks at me. Without a word, she gets up, and I follow her.  I undress and crawl atop the sarong on the floor, layered over towels and blankets and other soft things.  She drapes a piece of cloth over me, dims the lights, and begins.   Her hands knead through the dark little secrets buried in my body without even knowing what they are.   The rolls of her arms lull me to sleep.  It’s an odd kind of refuge, this space within her limbs, but the gift is one greedily taken.  She doesn't speak to me once.  I'm only another lump of tight flesh she must set loose.  It's exactly what I need.