Under The Radar, Behind The Sun

[kingotis]

Part 8 - Willing

Lily looked like some sort of fallen angel to me. Her face was angelic and pure, her ivory skin set off those deep brown eyes in ways that no makeup could possibly improve. Her words, her actions, the way she used her body all spoke to me sinfully, and they made me think the dirtiest possible thoughts. Her natural beauty was complicated by the abundant sexuality that she couldn't keep entirely under wraps.

I gave her the flowers and she beamed and gave me a little peck on the cheek. I took off my hat and looked around. It was a simple studio, two windows overlooking a muddy courtyard, a cheap futon, nothing to see but layers of paint, one layer for every tenant who had lived some little piece of their life within those walls. Scrape a layer away and expose another, one more forgotten face in history's crowd, someone who means nothing to anyone except the people to whom he or she means everything.

Lily invited me to sit on the futon and offered me a cup of tea. I sat carefully as she found something to put the flowers in, watching her movements. She was wearing a sundress, a pretty flowery thing that bounced up and down and showed her long, smooth legs. I sat at silent attention, already aroused, already hungry for her. When she reached up to a high shelf it pulled up and her ass was exposed in little white panties. I felt myself getting hard already and I averted my eyes.

She finally sat at the opposite end of the futon and we each took an awkward sip of tea. The air was suddenly heavy and time crept by like a wounded bird. What was I doing here? Why had Lily invited me? Was I supposed to grab her and kiss her?

I turned and faced her and looked into her eyes, those eyes that dragged me down, down, down into a delicious bottomless pit of uncontrolled need, a trap I made for myself and into which I threw myself with reckless, stupid, perfect abandon. I broke the silence with my words. "Lily," I asked, "why?"

That dead word hung there and faded like the lonely wail of a saxophone and Lily's eyes hardened a little. "Massage" she said. "You want a massage?"

"Of course," I said. "But why here? Why not at the spa?"

She looked away a little, like she was embarrassed about doing something she shouldn't have done. "Here we can be alone, and here there is no house."

"Here there is no house." The words jumbled in my brain and I tried to grasp her meaning and then I understood. No house meant no house fee. This was still a business transaction, but it was a cleaner, simpler, easier one, and one without the costs - and restrictions - imposed at the spa.

I touched my hand to her cheek and nudged her gently to look at me and I smiled my biggest smile. "I'm happy," I said. "I'm happy to be here with you." She smiled and sipped gingerly at her tea.

Forty five minutes later I was lying naked, face down on the futon as Lily finished the massage. It had been three quarters of an hour of exquisite torture. She had taken every opportunity to rub against me, to tease me, to stand in front of my face with that dress riding up, to choose provocative words. My cock was like a hot piece of metal under me and I was worried that I would come the instant I turned over.

Lily stepped back and I eyed her slowly. She reached down and pulled her dress over her head. Her hard nipples poked through the white lace bra as she slid those white panties down slowly, slowly, slowly, her eyes meeting mine all the way as I exhaled low and slow and said a silent prayer of thanks for whatever I had done to deserve this girl.

She reached back and unhooked her bra and the silence in the room was as pure and as clear as the glass in the windows of the IRT. The bra fell away and Lily stood naked before me. Her perfect breasts stood by themselves, her nipples were as hard as life itself. She had shaved her pubic hair completely and I could see the glistening lips between her legs. It was a moment I will never stop reliving and a sight I will retain in full vivid detail in my memory forever.

She took a slow step toward me and I turned to lay on my side. Her eyes moved down my body and stopped at my hard, red cock. She lingered for a moment and then stepped forward to me. In an instant she was beside me and I was ready for everything she could give.

 

[out of control]

Nice, would love to meet this Lily. Never done takeout with a massage girl may have to try it.

 

[kingotis]

Part 9 - In The Moment

The moment had finally arrived. The instant I had laid eyes on Lily I had wanted her in ways I was ill-equipped to explain. I have had some amazing, priceless, irreplaceable moments in massage parlors and spas, but this was different. There was an intensity that went beyond mere desire and felt like need.

On its face, the relationship progressed the way they usually do in a spa - with every visit some new territory was conquered, some new level of intimacy was reached. To me, though, this wasn't mere mileage. While I wanted every last part of Lily, I would have easily settled for any one piece of her. I would have come to that spa over and over for a massage and nothing more if that was all there was. I would have gladly paid to sit in that room and hold her hand. There were many things about her I desired, but what I finally needed was her warmth.

Those hours in the spa always ended too soon. I always walked out elated, overjoyed, satiated but never satisfied. I felt the need for Lily in my mind and in my heart but also in my bones. An hour in the spa could never begin to deliver what I ultimately had to have.

Here, as Lily, had said, there was no house. The watchful eye of the Mamasan was nowhere to be found. With our freedom from the timer's silent countdown, time itself disappeared and Lily and I were everything.

Lily stood above me and for a moment we simply looked at each other. Her body was flawless to me, her ivory skin glowed in the sunlight that streamed into the room from the rear windows. She smiled and then she made a low guttural sound, a growl couldn't signify anything other than lust. I knew immediately what I needed and I raised myself on my elbows and made room for her to lay beside me.

With Lily's naked body laid out for me like the most extravagant banquet ever served, I did not hesitate to dine. I kissed her neck gently and slowly and then worked my way down to her breasts. I took one hard nipple in my mouth and caressed the other with my hand and Lily sighed. I circled her nipple lightly with my tongue and I felt her chest heave just a little. What had been desire became lust and I couldn't restrain myself. Down her chest, down her belly I left a trail of kisses and then I placed my lips gently, softly, lightly, just above the lips between her legs.

I hesitated, waiting for a signal that she wanted this, needed this in the same way I did, and then that signal came. Lily arched her hips and rolled her pelvis forward just enough to press tightly against my lips, and as she exhaled she intoned slowly, "Yeeesssssss." I started licking her clitoris slowly, without applying any physical pressure. Again, in slow little circles I moved my tongue, before moving downward again and, with my tongue between her lips, tasting her.

She tasted like champagne and peach pie, and I wanted more. I wanted, needed to bring her to her own climax. I needed to make her come. I moved north again to the little pink button and began again slowly, slowly and then began building to a crescendo. As I went faster and harder I felt her body respond and I heard her breath heaving in her chest and just as it felt like we were building to a peak I stopped. For an instant I stopped, then I backed off and started slowly again.

She gasped and looked at me and again I began to build and build. I touched one finger to the opening of her pussy and slowly slid it in. She clamped down and rolled her hips to meet it. As the rhythm grew faster and harder she was writhing and raising her hips and breathing hard and fast. A little further, a little further...just a second more...and I felt her lose control of her body and her arms and legs thrashed as she breathed wordless moans and sighs as the ripples of her orgasm flowed through her body from head to toe.

With the sun outside turning from orange to red we lay there together for a moment and I listened as Lily breathed. Slowly she came back to Earth and she filled her lungs deeply and exhaled. She turned and looked at me with eyes that were clear and simple and open. She smiled and touched my cheek and then she looked at me like a fox at the henhouse door.

"Now," she said, "I do you."

 

[kingotis]

Part 10 - The Touch of a Hand

Everyday life presents so many reasons to conceal emotion and need. Those reasons are amplified and multiplied and compounded to something just short of infinity in the dented and pear-shaped universe inhabited by massage girls. The illusion that the work of pleasure isn't work at all is not easy to maintain, and the right mix of intimacy and distance to keep a man captivated without turning him into a danger is difficult to maintain.

Being in that apartment with Lily changed everything, and the rules went out the window headfirst. The look in her eyes expressed nothing less than naked lust. I have heard the moans and sighs of massage girls that meant nothing, the whispers of lustful words and phrases accompanied by cold, dead eyes. This was different. This was real desire, mutual desire, not phony chit chat issued for the sake of making me feel like a big man.

Lily stood over me for a moment and I looked up at her and finally stopped worrying about what my eyes or my mouth or my face was doing, what I was saying without words. I let my guard down and simply felt whatever I felt, and I felt a freedom that I had never felt before. I could ask anything I wanted to ask without fear, I could say whatever I needed to say without judgment, I could simply be myself.

I gazed up at Lily and let the words tumble forth with no artifice, no planning and no self-restraint. "I feel...." I said, "a connection with you." She nodded. "I can't hide," I said. "You know that's not my real name, right?" She nodded. And then I told her my name, my real name, no more bullshit names I made up for signing registries, my actual legal name.

Lily smiled. She smiled broadly and openly and then giggled a little and repeated my name. I nodded. She lay down beside me and pointed at one of my tattoos - a name, the name of one of my children. I said it aloud. She repeated it. And she said that was her real name, a slightly anglicized version of her Chinese name. I said it again. It felt good. I turned and looked her in the eye and I kissed her lightly on the lips, a closed lip massage parlor kiss that lingered a little longer than usual and then I felt her lips part and her tongue brush mine lightly and suddenly we were kissing the way lovers do. To call it intoxicating is frankly selling it short, but it will have to do.

Soon enough she was kissing her way down my body and finally teasing the head of my cock with her tongue. She teased and teased and then finally took me into her mouth. I closed my eyes and lay back and felt her take me all the way in and then back out again and again. She used her tongue while I was in her mouth. She kept her mouth over the tip and used her hand. She brought me all the way to the edge of orgasm and stopped.

I looked down at her. Her eyes were open and she gave me a devilish look as she started again, slowly, slowly building momentum and speed until I was fucking her mouth. I could hear her moan lightly around my cock and the sound was too much for me and I let go and came in her mouth so hard I felt a flash in my eyes.

I drifted for a moment and felt nothing and when I opened my eyes Lily's naked body was next to mine and she was grinning from ear to ear. How long had I been there? The orange of the afternoon sun was fading like the last embers of a fire, its warmth slowly giving way to the cool touch of the evening stealing in like a masked man in a long coat. That cheap secondhand futon in that run down little studio so far out in Brooklyn the trains run above the ground was my entire world for the moment. This was everything I needed.

I looked into Lily's eyes and there was no wall, no self-protection. She looked at the ceiling and then she opened her mouth and now words tumbled out without hesitation or artifice. "When I was a girl in China, I lived in the country. We had nothing, it was simple. We ate meat maybe two times a year for a special holiday."

She looked at me and I nodded and then she looked up at the ceiling again, seeking comfort in the cracks in the paint and plaster. "We got our water from a hole in the ground. What is the word for this?"

"A well?" I replied.

"Yes. A well. One day I was playing with my sister and we were near the well and my father, he was a bad man, he yelled at us to keep away. I didn't listen because I hated him. I climbed on the wall around the hole and then I fell in."

I couldn't help but react. "My god." I gasped a little. "What happened?"

She paused and exhaled and finally continued. "It was spring, the water was very high. I went under the water very far and I was moving like crazy I was scared and I couldn't breathe." She stopped again and looked at me. She saw my wide eyes and my attentive demeanor. She looked up again and spoke. "Then I was calm. I don't know why. I got very calm and I stopped and I saw the sun through the water and I went to it and when I reached the top my father grabbed me and pulled me out."

Another pause. Then, "My dad, I never thought he loved us. But he held me so tight then. I knew he loved me."

There was nothing to say. I don't know why she chose to tell that story then, but I was drowning in Lily. I lay with her and I reached over and took her hand. Somehow that touch, the feel of her hand in mine in the changing light that came through those windows, was more intimate than anything else we had shared. I would have lay there with her for the rest of my life and died a happy man.

 

[kingotis]

Part 11 - A Soft Glow

I don't know how long we laid there together in silence but eventually we both fell asleep. When I opened my eyes it was dark outside and the sunlight had been replaced by the ambient light that blankets New York from streetlights and buildings so that the city is never completely dark. Lily was still next to me. Her eyes were closed. Our hands were still entwined. Our naked bodies were illuminated by New York's amber glow. I turned a little to look at her and she opened her eyes and smiled.

"It's OK you still here?" she asked. There was nowhere I would rather have been. I had taken the afternoon off work and I had no obligations but to myself.

"If you're OK," I answered, "I am too." She smiled again and then she untangled her hand from mine and reached across my body to my cock. I gave a sour little smile. "I don't know if I can..." I said. She paid no attention to my words and she began rubbing me softly.

"I think you're a nice guy" she said, "a nice person."

I'm not a nice person. I am an orgasm junkie, an addict who will run you down and take your wallet if that's what I need to get what I want. With Lily, though, the beast in me was at rest. I felt both comfort an excitement around her, and her touch was the only thing that could quench the endless thirst that drives me. Any girl could make me come. Lily could make me stop needing to come. When I was around her, I really was a nice guy - I cared about her comfort, her convenience, her feelings and her desires.

"With you," I said "I think maybe I am a nice person. Not always...but with you."

She looked at me sideways with a gaze that pierced my veil and made its way to my soul. She could see everything, there was nothing to hide. There was no reason to try. Lily let go of me and stood up. Her skin glowed in the evening light and I watched her ass as she walked across the room to the little kitchen. Before today, an air of submissiveness had hung over her in our interactions - I was a customer. That had changed today. The nature of the relationship had changed from public to private, she was as much in control as I was...probably more.

She returned with two cold glasses of water and we drank them together. I propped myself up on my elbows and was surprised when she leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips. The kiss lingered...our lips opened and our tongues met. This was a real kiss, the kind of kiss that means hello, goodbye, and everything in between. Every minute I had spent with Lily had been memorable, but this was one I will never forget. It went on...and on...and soon we were kissing passionately, our hands were everywhere, our legs entangled.

The onrush of profound intimacy was so arousing that everything happened in seconds, before either of us could tell ourselves to stop. She lay back on the mattress and I was on top of her. She grabbed my hard cock and pulled me to her. I could feel myself rubbing against the entrance to her pussy, I could feel the moisture as she guided me into her. Slowly, I slid into her. It was impossibly tight and I was worried I would hurt her, but she pulled me all the way in. She lifted both her legs and held her knees and I slowly, slowly began to pull back...and then back into her.

Lily's face was a mix of pleasure and pain. She was flushed and aroused and she knew what she wanted, but the feeling of me inside her did hurt. I hesitated and looked at her. "Should I...?" I asked. Her response was instantaneous. "Don't stop," she breathed. I didn't stop. I began to slide in and out of her slowly in rhythm. She was wet and tight and she made tiny sounds every time I slid back into her. Caution had disappeared from the room like darkness is chased away by the flick of a switch or striking a match. I was inside her with no cover, no condom. She had said she didn't have sex with customers and I believed her. It was obvious that she was not sleeping with a lot of men - it was difficult for her to have me inside her at all.

None of this mattered. There was something about being joined with her in this way, an intimacy and a connection that could never have otherwise existed, that simply overpowered everything else - every hesitation, every worry, every common sense rule. In that moment there was nothing but the feeling between us. Nothing else existed at all.

I felt the feeling rising within me and I said her name. "Lily," I said. "I'm going to..."

Lily wrapped her legs around me and pulled me into her. She pulled me in and I couldn't stop it, she knew it was coming and so did I. I heard her heavy breaths around me like wind in the leaves and I came inside her as she gasped for air and held me there with her legs. We both shook like infants in the evening chill, involuntary movements and nothing more, because neither of us wanted to move.

 

[out of control]

Wow Caution to the wind. Sometimes you just have to go for it. Love it

 

[kingotis]

Wow Caution to the wind. Sometimes you just have to go for it. Love it

I would never come out in favor of barebacking providers on a regular basis...but this was quite a special circumstance.

 

[out of control]

Understood. Happened to me once with someone with whom I had a very special connection. Reading your story made me recall my experience.

 

[kingotis]

Part 12 - Everything Changes

It was nearly midnight when I finally left Lily's apartment. We had drifted off to sleep for a bit again and when I awoke I heard Lily singing quietly to herself across the apartment in the kitchen area. I turned slowly and opened one eye to see her beautiful naked body bathed in the blue light of darkness. Her voice was quiet but it was pure and simple and even though I couldn't understand a word she sang, it was beautiful.

That's the song of life, I thought, the song of this life anyway. I want to understand, to analyze, to parse and process and categorize everything and so much of it just escapes my grasp. I am always reaching for something I can never quite hold, some little place of comfort that will never stop moving. I am so consumed by the desire, the need, the compulsion to take it in and understand that I miss it, I miss the beautiful melody, the simple song that is the purpose of life anyway.

Take the moment and own it. Take that second and drink from it. Take that minute and suck from it all the pleasure and passion it can bring. Always take it when you can, you never know when it will be gone. What I wouldn't give to have that moment back - that perfect instant when Lily sang quietly and perfectly and the world was everything I needed it to be for just one shining hour. I would give life itself to relive it because what is life without love, without passion and desire? You take all that away, you strip it down and you tell me what's left that's worth having, I dare you.

I was floating, I was spinning and I was so far from the world I thought I might never return. Everything had led to this, all of history, all of the past, everything about me and about Lily drove us to this perfect instant. Every step had been destiny, there were no coincidences, this was the place where we were meant to end up.

I wanted to hold it in my hand and I reached for it and like a butterfly it was gone. I sighed, yes I sighed out loud. Lily heard me. She looked my way and smiled. Her song trailed off into murmurs and the world began to turn again. Here we were. I smiled back and she brought some tea and almond cookies on a tray across the room and I looked up at her beautiful smiling face and I felt it inside me. I felt a need that was deep and painful and purely emotional. I needed Lily, I needed her like a drunk needs his rum, but there was more. I needed her and her alone, there was nobody else. What I felt for Lily was more, more than need, more than desire. What I felt for Lily was surely love.

She sat next to me and we sipped tea and ate the little cookies she had bought on Eighth Avenue across the street from the Chinese supermarket. She had told me that story about falling into the well earlier. I decided I should give something in return.

"My dad, he used to drink," I said. "I don't think I ever saw him one time when he wasn't drunk. He used to hit me, and my sister, and my mother. I knew I didn't deserve anything good, because he taught me I didn't." Saying that was the easy part. The hard part was next.

"I used to be married," I said. She nodded. "My wife, she had problems. Her mind, her brain...it wasn't right. She would go away, disappear. Usually on Friday, then she would come back on Sunday night."

"Where did she go?" Lily asked.

I was afraid to tell her. It felt bad to talk about it at all. I never talk about it, but I pushed myself to talk. "I didn't know it then, but I found out later she had a friend from school who was a drug addict. A heroin addict. She would go with him."

It was a lot harder to say than I thought it would be. It was still raw, years later, it still felt all fucked up. "She always waited until Friday," I said. "I wasn't happy, I was always angry and sad, but I felt like I had to let it go and just wait. I don't know why. I didn't think I could be happy anyway, I didn't deserve to be happy."

"One day," I started and then I stopped. It was hard, it was like wearing that lead vest they put on you at the dentist when you get x-rays. I felt like maybe I needed to cry, but I couldn't. I pushed the words out because I had to. "One day I worked late and then I came home. When I was coming up the stairs I could hear my son crying. He was not even one year old. He was screaming and screaming. I started to run up the stairs calling his name. I opened the door and rushed in and there he was in his crib."

I stopped and looked at Lily. Her eyes were wide and they were so beautiful it hurt to look into them. Maybe what I felt was love, but with that came something even harder for me to find, more difficult for me to allow myself to have. With Lily I had trust. The fear inside me that had driven everything I had done or said for so many years stopped talking. I could say everything. I wasn't afraid.

"It was four hours. Four hours she left him there alone and he screamed and screamed and kicked and he hurt himself and when I picked him up and held him it took an hour for him to breathe normally again." I stopped and I exhaled and looked up at the ceiling. "After that," I said, "Everything changed."

Half an hour later I walked out into the cool night air after leaving Lily with some money and a long lingering kiss. The moon wasn't quite full but it was strong and bright and far more powerful than the streetlights. The sidewalk glittered and I walked in silence. It was true, what I had told her. On that day, years ago, everything had changed for me.

And today, with Lily, everything changed again.

 

[out of control]

King you should turn this story into an E Book and sell it on amazon. I'm hoping you and Lily live happily ever after but I have a feeling it's going to take a sad turn.

 

[kingotis]

Part 13 - Life

Life kicks you in the teeth every chance it gets. The minute you get cocky, the instant you think you've got it all figured out, life comes along with jackboots on its enormous feet, a nine iron in one hand and a pillow in the other. No matter what you think, you're not going golfing and taking a nap. The nine iron cracks across your complacent skull and the pillow muffles your pitiful screams as you sink lower and lower and lower and life points its bony finger at you and laughs. Slowly, quietly, with the deliberate malice of a soulless creature, life looks at you, broken and bloody, and life laughs and laughs and laughs.

I was riding as high as a man could ride. I had everything I wanted with Lily. She was an infinite journey, a woman who revealed new faces every time I saw her. Her physical grace was rivaled only by her emotional depth, her capacity for understanding was limitless and for a woman her age it was astonishing. The irony of a woman of this sharp witted, strong willed woman - my intellectual superior in every way, I believed then and I still believe - thrust into the role of a massage girl by accidents of birth and fate's cruel sense of humor, was never lost on me.

Lily reveled in frivolity at times and yet she was able to comprehend concepts and abstractions that utterly escaped me. She was playful and warm by turns and cool and placid at moments that always took me by surprise. She gave of herself willingly and with generosity and yet I always knew there was more to her, more that she would surprise me with some other day and time.

It is that last part - the parts of herself that she protected and concealed and wrapped in armor - that balled the hand of fate into a fist and guided it across my jaw. A massage girl is a masterpiece of self-preservation - a hand of steel in a velvet glove, a human creature with human vulnerabilities who gives physical intimacy while hiding emotions in impenetrable gauze and subterfuge. These women who will show you their bodies while averting their eyes, have severed sex from emotion so well that they will let you inside them physically while leaving you with only a vague whisper of who they really are. So it was, I came to learn with Lily.

Four times I returned to see Lily at her little studio in Brooklyn, and every second of every hour is permanently etched into my brain. Each time I saw her the experience glowed like the tail lights of the cars crossing the Verrazano, like the neon in the second floor window of a massage parlor, like the city itself glows every night from dusk til dawn. There were sublime moments of physical exultation and subtle moments of emotional revelation. I felt myself growing closer and closer to her every time I saw her. My need was always acute, but I began to feel the tug of her need as well. She was eager to see me, she wanted me there, she beamed when I walked in the door and sighed when I left.

Feeling that need or at least that desire meant that Lily's armor was imperfect, that someone had pierced the veil and made her vulnerable. Whether she could live with the discomfort of her own vulnerability was not for me to answer, but I knew it was the open question that would make all the difference between us. I accepted every intimate moment and I willfully let myself descend into Lily, even though I knew she could pull back at any moment and I would be left regretting the moment I had ever let things pass from the professional to the personal.

A week or so after seeing her I would always call again and soon enough I would be crossing the threshhold into her little studio. After five visits like that I called her and she didn't answer - working, sleeping, having a life, whatever it was.

I tried again a couple hours later - same thing. Usually she would call me back if I didn't reach her. I waited a day and...nothing. I called again, again no answer. I called again later that day, same result. No return call.

Fear began to creep into my thoughts. Had something happened to her? Had she simply decided not to return my calls? I shoved it away. I was reading too deeply into it.

I tried to put it out of my mind, but it was difficult. I thought about her every day, anticipating the next time I might see her and what pleasures it would bring. That habit was impossible to break, but at the same time I realized that calling her over and over was a bad idea, so I waited. I called once a day for the next week - not one time did she answer and not one time did she call back.

Finally, I decided to take desperate measures and I took a walk over to the spa. A girl I had never seen before greeted me and I asked for Lily. "Not work today. Vacation," she said. "Vacation" means alot of things in a massage parlor. Sometimes it means the girl has been arrested and has to lay low for a while. Sometimes it means she has quit or been fired. Sometimes it means she is off for the day. Other times it means she's there working but you can't have her. Only once in a great while does it actually mean the girl is on an actual vacation.

I did something dumb, and I had a massage with the new girl, who called herself Tina. It was fine, but she wasn't Lily, and Lily was what I needed. I went home and slept fitfully until my phone rang at 2 o'clock in the morning. I sat up and looked at the number. It was Lily.

 

[kingotis]

Part 14 - Fear Itself

I am a coward. I live in fear and in fact I thrive on it. Sometimes I crave fear so much I put myself in situations that give me reasons to be afraid. Then I cower like some craven little prune juice, cream of wheat, corn chowder pussy because that's what makes me happiest of all. The adrenaline rush of fear. The relief of fear's resolution. The endless agony of prolonged cowardice blocking me from confronting fears and worries that should be easily resolved. I am a coward, call me what you will.

Hearing my phone ring at two A.M. and seeing Lily's number displayed conjured conflicting emotions. I was, of course, excited to hear from her at last. She had been stonewalling me, ignoring me for more than a week without giving even a hint of what I had done to precipitate my fall from grace. My frustration at being ignored by the object of my increasingly unhealthy obsession was second only to the intensity of my desire to see her again. Her phone call signaled relief, but it was also terrifying. It was two in the morning. Never once in my sweet, short life have I received a phone call from a woman at two A.M. that ended happily. This one was no exception.

I pressed the button and put the phone to my ear and said, "Lily? Lily, where have you been? Where are you?"

On the other end there was a momentary pause and then a near incomprehensible tsunami of broken English poured from the phone and I struggled to catch what I could. She would bark out English phrases and sentences and then lapse into angry bits of Chinese that flew right past me. I caught "You betray me, you terrible bad man I thought you were good man but no."

A long series of Chinese phrases followed, finally giving way to her shouting in English, "I almost lose my job because you stupid mouth, big stupid talking man, why you can't just shut up, you want to hurt me." Again she lapsed into her native tongue. For a solid thirty seconds she cursed me in Chinese and then once again she eased back into English. "I was very good to you, I liked you and you hurt me. Today SuSu is going to fire me."

SuSu...the mamasan of the spa where I had met Lily, where Lily still worked. Why would she fire Lily? It made no sense. "Why?" I asked her. "Why is she going to fire you?"

"She is firing me but I talked to her and told her. She said I am taking customers from the spa, doing massage at home. I told her no and she believe me but it is trouble for me." The light went on in my head. She was speaking in the past tense, not the present. SuSu had accused Lily of seeing spa customers at home. Lily assumed she heard it from me.

"But, no," I protested. "That has nothing to do with me. I didn't tell her, I didn't tell anyone. I promise you I would never do this to you."

Lily was unmoved. "I don't believe. How else would she know? Who else would say this to her?"

My panicked mind started concocting scenarios. "Maybe another girl told her because they are jealous," I guessed. Lily clicked her tongue and then her voice turned as cold as the Antarctic tundra. I had never heard her voice so hard and sharp, like the cold steel edge of a butcher's knife. It filled me with the fear I needed and yet what she said was so simple. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe Tina."

My mind reeled - she knew I had seen Tina, she was jealous. And then I quickly tried to rewind every word I had uttered to Tina - had I said anything that she might have repeated to Lily about seeing Lily outside the Spa? I stepped through the conversation and I did not remember saying anything like that. "I don't know," I hemmed a little. "But it did not come from me, I swear to you."

Her voice was still cold and this time it cut me through and through. It gutted me and left my bleeding corpse to the vultures and the coyotes. "I do not believe," she said. "You stay away now," she whispered, and then she hung up the phone.

The shock and surprise coupled with the sudden revelation of a dark and unforgiving Lily where before she had been all light and kindness left me feeling like I'd been punched in the gut. I sat there staring at my phone hoping she would call back and say she had changed her mind. She didn't. I finally resigned myself to sleeplessness and got up. With a bottle of water in one hand I aimlessly poked through the channels until I finally shut the T.V. off and let the silence envelop me.

At that precise moment it finally dawned on me - Lily was simply lying. No one had told SuSu anything, and SuSu had not threatened to fire her. Lily had invented the entire story, and I believed I knew why.

 

[Traderdave]

Is this the end of the King?

 

[kingotis]

No, there's still more of this story to tell.

The king meets his end further down the road...

 

[kingotis]

Part 15 - Lying

I am a liar. I always have been a liar. Sometimes I lie with no forethought and no practical purpose. I open my mouth and some lie spills out where the truth should have been. Like every liar I have my “tell” – the visual or verbal clue that manifests itself when I lie - and Lily had hers, I realized. The specificity of the accusation coming at the conclusion of an incoherent verbal onslaught, the sudden precision of her words after the explosion that preceded it signaled the start of a lie. Like a man who goes out of his way to insert needless details into cover story about where he was last night, Lily gave herself away.

I knew she was lying, but what I didn't know for certain was why. What would she gain by pushing me away? Nothing. But as I lay in the blue light cast by my phone I retraced the conversation. The gain she realized by keeping me away was self-protection.

The history of my hobby is littered with the corpses of men and women who have let the physical intimacy of their business relationships give way to emotional connection. Love is a conniving bastard that fucks up lives and empties bank accounts every chance it gets. Love isn't the glorious deus ex machina of storybooks, it's not sunshine and lollipops. Love makes suckers out of all of us. It makes us dependent on each other and in the wrong hands that dependence can be twisted into gnarled, hateful shapes.

Men who fall in love with massage girls fall for only the facet of the diamond that they can see. These women wear impenetrable masks, they cover their trails with half-truths, they let you see just enough of who they are to make you want more. Massage girls who fall in love with customers fall for the same pack of lies these men have sold to their wives. The true nature of a customer, a john, a monger is an irredeemable, incurable sex addict who will not hesitate to lie or cheat to gain the confidence of their mark.

Lily needed to push me away because things had gotten too close. I had flung myself headlong into our relationship, giving no thought to where it might lead. I followed what felt good, and every moment with Lily felt good. Lily, despite the difference in our ages, had far more self-awareness and prudence. She looked down the path and saw where things were going and she stopped to breathe.

Her self-awareness and prudence, however, could not have been mistaken for emotional and social maturity. An adult might have sat me down to talk about the free fall that our relationship had become. Lily wasn't capable of having that conversation, so she just threw up a wall, and I walked face first into it.

It was 2:30 in the morning but sleep was an impossibility. I pulled on some pants and slipped into my shoes and wandered out into the starless night. The lights of New York are so bright that they blot out all but the brightest celestial objects, and the night sky that hovers over the city is like a cloud of ink. I took a deep breath and I walked. I walked past barrooms filled with laughing drunks and dimly lit windows revealing some little corner of someone's life. I walked past men walking small dogs and women out for a smoke. I walked past all the creatures that inhabit my city from dusk 'til dawn and tonight I was one of them.

I walked and I breathed and I slowly let go. Lily was something I couldn't change, she was a force of nature beyond my comprehension, and no amount of pleading would change how she felt. The rejection stung, but what hurt worse was the loss of momentum, the feeling that I had something to look forward to, the feeling that we were going somewhere together.

I put my hands in my pockets and I walked slowly home where I lay wide awake as the dawn broke and spread the first traces of sunlight across my bed. I got up and for the first time in weeks I breathed.

 

[kingotis]

Part 16 - Desire

Weeks went by. I felt the absence of Lily acutely and painfully at first. There were reminders of her everywhere. I saw her face in the windows of a passing train. I was sure I saw her walking ahead of me in Midtown. My phone would buzz with an incoming text and I would silently hope it was from her.

I was acting like a first class sap. Ours was a business relationship, I reminded myself. Nothing more. I went for a massage, thinking the touch of a hand would mask my feelings and get me back in the game, but it was merely disappointing, a poor substitute for the intimacy I had with Lily. I felt like that had to be a new low, and what was worse was that the massage girl had done everything possible to try to make me come, but I just couldn't.

Slowly, though, the sting wore off and I started to walk like a man again. Every day I felt a little better, I thought about her a little less, I moved on in my mind and scar tissue formed. I was a little harder than I was before, a little less open and giving, a lot more guarded and careful. I eased back into my little hobby, approaching every encounter with careful distance. With the openness and availability I had projected in my past encounters gone, the hobby felt cold and clinical and I drifted away from the spas.

It was late in the year, a grey December afternoon, when everything changed again. I was taking one of my long, aimless walks when I felt a buzz and looked at my phone and there was a text from Lily. "You stop going to spas" it said. "Why?"

I stopped short on the sidewalk in front of that old church on 37th Street and looked at my phone. I read the message again. How did she know what I did or didn't do? Well, massage girls talk. Why did she care? I felt old. I felt older than I had ever felt before. I felt tired and old and broken. There was only a dull brush fire of excitement in the back of my mind at hearing from Lily. I wanted to care, I really did. I wanted to be excited like a young man again, to feel the rush of emotion and physicality that Lily had evoked in me at one time. I wanted to but I didn't, and it was better that way. Better to stay hard, to leave the scar tissue in place, to hide from feelings and desires.

I put my phone in my pocket and walked a little further. The cold air on my face and in my lungs felt good. I no longer felt the burning, aching need for Lily that I had felt before. I pictured her soft features, her long hair, her flawless ivory skin and perfect little body. I no longer felt the need to possess her. Instead, I felt simple desire. I wanted her, I wanted her mouth and her hands and every inch of her body. I wanted her flesh, I had no need for her soul.

Again I stopped, and I pulled out my phone. "Spas are no fun anymore," I typed. "It is you that I want." I pictured her naked body on top of mine. I pictured her tight little ass rubbing against me. I was flush with pure desire for her and her alone.

A few moments later she replied. "I want you too." I felt my cock actually beginning to rise between my legs at the mere thought of having Lily again. Standing on the sidewalk with a hard on forming in my pants, I texted her, "Are you at the spa?"

"No," came the reply. "I quit spa. I am home. When will you be here?"

I turned on my heel and walked in the direction of the subway. "Leaving now," I answered, before ducking into the station just as a downtown train pulled in. I made it on board and sat down and felt my hard cock between my legs. In a state of impossible arousal I sat and rode all the way to Brooklyn, my eyes and ears filled with nothing but Lily, Lily, Lily.

 

[kingotis]

Part 17 - Need

The trip to Brooklyn never felt longer or slower than it did that day. I was consumed with pure sexual desire, my mind was filled with images and words that were utterly pornographic. I am by nature romantic and emotional but on that day I was pure libido, a walking hard on. I finally made it to Lily's place and I could feel that my face was flush and my cock was semi-erect before I even walked in the door.

I resolved to contain myself a little, to refrain from falling upon her like a ravenous beast and consuming her the instant I saw her. I resolved to exercise self control, to make conversation, to let her get comfortable with me before I tore her clothes off and took her like a thief in the night.

She answered the door in a t-shirt and jeans. I looked her in the eyes and smiled. Her eyes were clear and bright, she smiled just a little and I leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She invited me in and sat me at her kitchen table as she made us some tea. Watching her move, her breasts moving as she assembled cups and teabags, no bra under that shirt, her nipples hard. Her ass looked even better in jeans than in the dresses and skirts she usually wore.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. My cock was raging in my pants, but I forced myself to ignore it. "How have you been?" I asked. "How is life?" There were a thousand unanswered questions. Why had she quit her job at the spa? How would she make a living now? Where had she been? How did she know I was staying away from the spas? Why had she shut me out for so long only to come back seemingly out of nowhere? There were a thousand questions and yet there was only one question: "When?"

She said she was fine, life was good. She wanted to go to school, she said, to learn more English. I watched her intently as she sat at the table with me and poured the tea into the cups and then I saw it. As she put the tea kettle down I watched her hand and I saw it tremble just a little, not from fatigue - Lily had the strong arms and hands that come with her profession - but from fear and desire. I followed her arm with my eyes and soon was looking at her face and I saw her bite her lower lip slightly as a tiny bead of sweat emerged on her forehead. The time for self restraint was gone. I put my hand on hers and she didn't flinch, didn't withdraw, didn't move a muscle. I could hear every shallow breath, could see her chest heave a little.

I stood up, my hand still touching hers, and my hard cock strained against the front of my pants. Her eyes trailed down my torso and then she saw it and I heard that catch in her breath, that tiny gasp. I pulled her up and pulled her body to mine and kissed her lips lightly at first, then harder, and soon our tongues were entwined.

She pushed against me and I reached down and pulled her shirt off. Her beautiful breasts stood firm, and her nipples stuck out the same way my cock strained against my pants.

She went limp in my arms for a moment as I touched her breasts and felt her hard nipples and then, as if she had been plugged into an outlet, she clawed at my clothes and pushed me backwards toward her little futon across the room. We were both naked in seconds and for a moment she kneeled above me. Her eyes were cloudy with lust.

As hard as I had worked to purge Lily from my heart, I was powerless to erase her from my mind. I wanted her more now than ever. I wanted her mouth and her ass and her pussy and her tits. I wanted her taste in my mouth, her smell in my nostrils.

I looked into her eyes, and all I saw was her desire, every bit the equal of mine in its intensity, volume and power. Nothing else mattered now. There didn't need to be anything between us but lust, we didn't have to have anything between us except the physical connection between a man and a woman. I felt it from her as strongly as I felt it inside myself. The time was now.

I pulled her on top of me and felt her wet pussy rubbing against my hard cock. I felt no hesitation, no need to stop and slow down, no thoughts of any kind. I just needed to be inside her, and I pushed up slowly with my hips until the head of my cock entered her and I saw her eyes roll with pleasure and heard that long slow moan from between her lips.

 

[kingotis]

Part 18 - The Ember's Glow

I've never really liked the idea that time passes in a linear fashion. The notion that each moment is followed by a subsequent moment is just an artificial construct designed to impose order on the natural chaos of the universe. Imagining time as a sequence of instants allows us to divide it into measurable increments, which means we can have things like "calendars" and "schedules" and actually manage to show up at specific times for specific events and appointments.

Thinking of time as a "dimension" that goes in one direction is convenient, but it's destructive because when a moment passes it is gone, overtaken and replaced by the next moment and the one after that and the one after that. The time I had spent with Lily could be divided into minutes or hours. It could be relegated to the past, it could be filed away with other memories, because once again, things had changed, circumstances had evolved, life had worked its wicked magic. I had walked into that spa as one man, but now I was someone else...and yet, nothing had changed.

My reunion with Lily was borne of lust, I would be fooling myself to pretend it was anything else. The emotional need that had driven me to her for months hadn't ceased to exist, but I had made a deliberate decision, an act of will, to divorce Lily from my need. All that remained was the physical connection, the knowledge we had acquired as to how to please each other and the means to satisfy our collective lust.

I walked out of that apartment into the Brooklyn night like I had scratched an itch, like I had eaten a good meal, like I had downed a good belt of scotch. I had gotten something I wanted, and it felt good, and I walked for a while with the step of a man whose desire has been fulfilled. As I walked, the feeling slowly faded the way sensual experience fades. The hole in my soul cried for sex, for alcohol, for any kind of fix. That belt of scotch feels good, but to live a man needs water, a man needs to put his mouth to the spring and to drink until there is nothing more to drink.

Lily had become another slice of cake, another shot, another piece of ass. She was still a beautiful woman. She was a beautiful woman and when it started, fucking her was like breathing, like life itself. She was still that same woman, but I was not that same man. I had drunk from the well, I had drunk until I could drink no more, and still my thirst was unquenched.

It would be easy to end here, to say I moved on, made a clean break, a firm resolve. It would be easy but it would be a lie. In my heart I knew it was over, that it would never be what it once had been. In my heart I knew it but I am still merely a man, and while I hoped for more I was weak enough to settle for less, and for a while I showed up at Lily's door every now and then and we would laugh a little and fuck, but neither of us had any skin in the game anymore. Our hearts were somewhere else, we were each the other's escape.

When Lily finally told me she was moving to Florida to live with some Aunt so she could go to school and learn more English, I felt genuine happiness for her. I felt no regret, no remorse for what might have been. She and I were not meant to be together, that's all. The universe had better things in mind for both of us. In forcing her from my heart after losing her once I had done us both a favor, I had made it easier to move on, and moving on was what we both had to do.

I still walk those lonely streets in those same shoes, that same hat, with that same lonesome look in my eyes. You've probably passed me once or twice on the sidewalk without thinking twice. I'm just another invisible man, another soul bobbing like cork in the ocean of Manhattan, another nobody who's somebody to someone somewhere.

My heart isn't so empty anymore, that look in my eyes is just how I look. The smiles come slowly but when they come they're real. Moving on was what I had to do, but every now and then I pass a face on the street that looks like Lily. Once in a while I hear a song that makes me remember one of those perfect moments, those exquisite hours. And every so often I feel a cool breeze on a hot summer day and it feels like freedom, the freedom Lily gave me for which I will always be grateful. After all that walking I have finally stopped, I am at peace where I ended up.

Our paths crossed for a moment or two, just a few steps on our separate journeys, but in one little corner of my heart there is an ember that still glows, and when it's cold it keeps me warm. Lily will always be with me. She will always be there somewhere with a laugh and a nod that warms me from within. I'll never lose that little ember, that little spark. The rest of my heart is full, I have nothing left to hide. I found the arms in which I will rest forever, but I'll always have the gifts that Lily gave me, and I will always think of her and smile.

 

[lickytick]

Man, thanks for sharing this with us. It definitely is the right ending. I could picture it any other way that makes sense. Just reminds one that this is no place for romance.

 

[kingotis]

It definitely is the right ending. I could picture it any other way that makes sense. Just reminds one that this is no place for romance.

Don't be so sure of that. Love does not assess its surroundings or check pedigrees. Love does not confine itself to where it's "supposed" to happen. Love is not convenient. Love doesn't shrink away with its shoulders slumped because it's afraid to fuck things up. Love tramples carefully organized lives because when it finds you it turns the order of your life on its ass and smacks you so hard you can't look away.