Back in my Scottsdale days, during the reign of the Craigslist massage parlor, I put out the ad. The quiet little siren song for the lonely, the curious, and the profoundly fucked-up. “Discreet massage for women,” it whispered. “Picture required.”
And the emails came flooding in, a digital parade of quiet desperation. Among them was hers. Mid-thirties, maybe. A pretty face, but with that quiet, tired look you see on women who’ve spent too long scrubbing crayon off the walls. The wedding ring on her finger in the photo was practically screaming. She pulled up in a minivan, the official chariot of surrendered dreams. A stay-at-home mother of four. Perfect.
She was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs when she arrived. Didn’t know what the hell she was getting into. I played the part, the quiet professional. Dim lights, maybe some shitty music. “Undress,” I told her. “Towel. Face down.” The whole beautiful, phony ritual.
And then she was on the table. Butt naked. Ready for the service.
I went to work. Pushed all the right buttons, apparently. The quiet tension just melted off her. When the hour was up, she didn’t just look relaxed; she had those crazy eyes. The ones that tell you you’ve just flipped a switch somewhere deep inside, maybe broken something beautiful and irreplaceable.
And just like that, I had my first stalker.
She came back. Again and again. Not in a demanding way. She was well-behaved. Knew the boundaries. It was a clean transaction. She’d come over, get her fix, and leave. She told me her story, in quiet little pieces between sessions. Married young. Her husband was the only man who’d ever touched her. And now, the marriage was a corpse. Separate beds, quiet resentment, the whole goddamn show. She wasn’t looking for an affair, not really. She was just looking for a different kind of poison, a quiet little rebellion against a life that was slowly, quietly suffocating her.
This arrangement, this beautiful, ugly, and completely honest transaction, it suited me just fine.
Then I blew up my life again, moved to Hawaii. Cut the strings. Burned the bridges. Started over.
And then, years later, the ghost showed up in my Facebook messages. Her. The quiet, respectable housewife from the minivan. She’d found me. Tracked me down across the goddamn Pacific Ocean. I kept the connection going. She was a good person, deep down. Just not someone you’d take home to mother, unless your mother was a particularly open-minded therapist.
When I eventually crawled back from Hawaii, tail between my legs, broke and busted, she was thrilled. She showed up at my new little shithole in Scottsdale. And Christ, she was a different woman. The quiet, nervous housewife was gone. In her place was a goddamn corporate warrior. Sharp clothes, perfect nails, a whole new vocabulary. She’d gotten a job, climbed the ladder, built a new cage for herself. But the old hunger, it was still there.
She knew the rules. She knew what I wanted, what I was good for. That beautiful, ugly, and completely honest “coffee caviar” of pure, uncomplicated physical release. She’d come over, we’d perform the ritual, and she’d leave.
But now, she wanted more.
“I have worth, James,” she’d say, afterwards, in the quiet, sticky aftermath. “I’m not just a piece of meat. I want to date you. Take you out. Do things.”
And I’d just shut her down. “Not interested,” I’d tell her. “I’ll be your tool, your goddamn release valve. But I’m not dating you.”
She’d go quiet for a month, maybe two. And then the text would come. “Can I come over?” And the whole beautiful, ugly, and completely predictable cycle would start again. An hour, maybe two. Quick, clean, and completely emotionless. And then I’d show her the door. Don’t stay too late. Don’t stay too long.
It went on like that for years. A quiet, strange, and completely functional arrangement.
And then, a few weeks ago, after two years of silence, she called. “I have a villa,” she said. “At one of the resorts. Come over on Sunday. I’d love to see you.”
So I went. What the hell. The place was nice, of course. Poolside. Sunshine. We talked about old times. Flirted. The old, familiar dance. And then she took me back to the room. Our first “sleepover,” in eight goddamn years.
But the world, that old, relentless bastard, it still had its claims on us. She had to be at her corporate temple by 5 a.m. I had my own cage to get back to by 7. So it was just a quick, beautiful, ugly transaction in the dark, and then the quiet, polite disconnect.
But this time, something was different.
I woke up at four in the morning. And she wasn’t there. She had left the villa, she wasn’t in the bed next to me.
And in that quiet, dark, and completely unexpected moment, I felt it. A strange, unfamiliar, and completely terrifying little flicker of… need? Vulnerability? Christ. At fifty-seven years old, after a lifetime of kicking them out the door, was I finally feeling the quiet, ugly sting of being the one left alone in the dark?
The beautiful, ugly, and completely hilarious irony of it all. The tables had turned. The man who had built a whole goddamn life on the quiet, respectable art of detachment was suddenly feeling the quiet, pathetic ache of wanting someone to just… stay.
What a goddamn joke.
I guess the universe really does have a sense of humor. Or maybe it’s just that eventually, even the coldest, hardest bastard gets tired of sleeping alone.
Who the hell knows. I’ll probably see her again. And I’ll probably kick her out the door again.
But maybe, just maybe, I’ll let her stay a little longer next time.
