- The sensuality of a massage...

He had been trying to convince himself that he was never going to fall in love again.
But he was falling. It seemed like getting drunk, something they do often, slow motion effect but you were totally aware of the falling, just seem that nothing could be done to avoid it.
He loved to go to places where people will turn to them. She is so pretty that will cause most men to turn when she walks by. She will go ballistic just to the mention of this, she consider herself with no possibility of beauty, that she cannot convey this type of passion to men. Something in her past force a devaluation of herself at a level he has never seen it before.
This became an issue; he loved the idea of finding out what it is all about. This will have to go into what he usually calls the “parking lot”. Ideas left for later, because it was not the right time to ask the right questions or because she will just not go there. The parking lot was getting full especially in the last months, when they have been spending so much time together.
Nevertheless he has been able to find some details, one piece at a time, small bits of information, mostly said when she was careless. He put some dots together trying to get the whole picture. He has always been very good at that. Politics for him were easy because of the ability he had to build full scenarios just connecting dots. He remember the time in Mexico, when by doing this, got the head of a very large corporation and his competition, fired. He knew only small details and with the help a reporter, he build a stroty that made so much sense that the reporter actually published. It turn out that most of the “story” was true. Guy got fired.
He knew that she will probably never really fall in love with him, he was just a “leverage” in her life for her to move the world. She was meant for much larger things, she just didn’t know about it.
OR she may never get there… He was a tool to get her to focus on what she really wanted, at the beginning was for him just to prove if he could actually do it. Bring somebody smart enough with an opportunity, open some doors that willnever open otherwise, and see what happen. And he had been looking for some time, tried in some other ways. Mostly women but he also did it for men. There was his French friend and the greek one. They both were excelling. The only problem is this time he fall in love with the subject… that sounds creepy and stupid, research, and lab stuff.
And he will pay dearly for it.
They used to drink and have dinner and talk and talk.
This time it was different, what about a massage, he ask her?
It will be amazing, one of the other senses to come alive. In Asia he became so used to the massage therapy. Went through it 3 or 4 times a week, as much as possible. He believed it was one of the best preventive mechanisms he had found. That and meditating. So, they went for their first massage together. He ask her to do al the arrangements, she found a perfect place, new for him, downtown Toronto.
Everything started with him giving her a massage at his place. Nothing funny, like they used to say in Hong Kong. It was a real massage, with all the right moves and the right pressure at the right places. He found that he enjoyit as much as her. She fall asleep and he had no heart to wake her up.
Nex thing is they were making reservations for a couples massage at one of the best SPA’s in Toronto. They will have a great experience. She had never been really at a SPA like this one, so it was a learning curve for her, and definitely a totally different experience for him. Since his time in China, he had never had massage this way. Even in China it was usually a male therapist for a male customer, and vice versa.
And they went to it, they shower and they enjoy their massage. It was funny , only in Canada they will call a massage a therapy and even it got paid by the insurance company.
Way to go. The went to have dinner and then went to his place where they fall asleep, same bed, no sex as usual, but this time he hold her inside his arms. She didn’t complaint or run away from him as usual. This may be a turn around in all their relationship.

- Fish, cooking and life goes on...

He told her that she could always use her place for anything, just hang around, or use it as a refugee. She just told him that she was going to need to move out of her new place. But news were good, her best friend has ask her to share a house. Yes that was incredible, a semidetached that the two of them and maybe a third friend could share, costs, etc. but mostly it was the concept that she will have a porch, some front yard and even a full blown kitchen. Not that she cooked that much. She promised him she would prepare dinner one of these days. They went to the new supermarket, upscale, all organic. A concept that she liked, but considered a waste of money. She has all these small shops where she would buy things at better prices. An of course, she will know every single person, she will know by heart, their problems, their dreams and sometimes more than that. He was also uncomfortable with all that exchange of information. He was a magician of that at work, he used it to outrank everybody to the higher positions in ever company he had been working. But he never went over the personal pieces.
She was really good at that. He even considered she went to far, too intense communication in a very short period of time. Examples of them going to a restaurant or other places, where she suddenly became a confident and friend of waiters, attendants, etc. were numerous. But, nothing you could do, packages don’t change, you take it or leave it.
Ann has a policy of “no questions ask”. She doesn’t ask anything, but she really doesn’t want to be ask a single thing related to who she really is, who hurt her, who came into her life and inflicted so deep cuts, that she can only lick by herself and doesn’t allow anybody to touch them or to get near it. Any type of inquiry not related to very superficial subjects turns her away and then she wont return for days.
But here she was offering to do something he knew was extraordinary, she will actually go all the way and get into the kitchen for something more complex than microwaves or some fried vegetables.
Even today, after all this time, He is able to remember perfectly what happen with that first, and to his recollection only, dinner prepared by her. He can close his eyes and go back to that experience.
He gave her a key to his place, access to the building, even gave her name to the concierge, so she can go in an out at will. She was there when he arrived. She had brought some things from home, especial herbs and other condiments that were so unique and she didn’t want him to spend on buying more. She was convinced that there will never be another one. He knew it, and accepted it.
Fish, of course, she is a vegetarian, no red or white meat. Vegetables in a very unique way, half done fried, half oven, and the kitchen was really a mess. But he was so amazed at how she had grown inside him, how much she was becoming part of his daily life. And the most amazing thing was that for the first time in his life, it was really a very intense relationship with no physical contact. She will run out of his arms if he tried to hug her. No touching, pls. Just an occasional kiss from time to time, but never anything more.
They started to meet every other afternoon when he was in town. This came with some very intense weeks, with no show ones. He travel a lot and she had her way of going MIA that it was impossible to track down. Turn the phone off when you are not at work that was actually her motto. No drinking and dialing. And She had a need to drink every night, she call it “market research”, that was her career, her connection to the real world that she craved so much, the music, the life events that bring people together in a spiritual communion difficult to express and understand unless you are into it. She went intothis world, different friends and people that she cherished for many years, some her former partners, some just friends, women, men, mostly what she called “her boys”.
And in all this convergence of traditional family values, Midwestern education, frustrated continuing to higher education, she was a unique gem, she bright, sparkles in the middle of a very obscure scene. Her love for arts, but non conventional art, music that is never finished, DJ’s that decompose other’s people music, graffiti that means more bands and gangs than art, expressions of underground rebellion are her favorites.
The need to be straight, no lies rule, but then she lives a total lie, she can live two worlds, without them touching each other. He has never met all these people she talks about. They are like characters in another novel of life. They exist as long as she talks about them. Every one of them, plus the new one of the week, are really extraordinary people that is not fully developed, not yet quite rich or famous, events that happen to them had trunk their success. He guesses if it is not a way to claim the same for her.
She always complaints about how tired she is, she can go into a deep sleep just sitting at his living room. He can contemplate her for hours, no need for more. She calls that creepy. He really doesn’t understand the meaning of many of her words. He doesn’t really speak that well the day to day lingo of the people her age, and she speaks very fast. He will tell her that her brain was much faster than her mouth. Too much processing power and very small output bus. For him, everything is related to systems. Life is a full system, composed by small subsystems, interconnected all of them. Ecosystems that explains what happen in life. Nothing happens outside a system. She doesn’t agree. Ann is convinced that it is all about breaking those systems, work outside them, surround them, push them.