Showing up at a massage parlour at 4am carrying fishing equipment is not the most bizarre thing Mike has done. But it certainly ranks in the top 3.
The motorcycle ride there had been refreshing. The cold night wind blowing against his face helped clear some of the alcohol in his head. He began to wonder why a massage parlour in a small town would see the need to be open at 4am. How many people actually wake up in the middle of the night and decide to go get a Thai massage?
“Senior,” he yelled to Sureish up front. He could hardly hear himself over the revving 2-stroke engine and the beating wind. “Is this a real massage place… or something else?”
Sureish looked backwards at Mike and laughed. He patted Mike on the knee. They pulled up outside the tallest building in the town – a 3 storey motel beside the railway tracks. Mike went pale.
“Why pucat already, macha?” Sureish chuckled. They parked the bike and made their way around to the back of the complex.
Sureish led the way, with Mike following closely behind, carrying fishing rods and a pail. The entire premise was dark except for the moonlight. Like mice in the night, they found their way to a shop lot attached to the back of the motel.
Something definitely smelled fishy. And it wasn’t Mike.
Sitting on a wooden chair outside the shop lot was an old Indian man. He greeted Sureish by name and they exchanged pleasantries.
“Who’s the young man?” the old guy asked in Tamil.
Mike felt his blood freeze at Sureish’s answer: “Fresh meat.”
The old man laughed as he let them both in. Once inside the shop lot, Mike was surprised to find what appeared to be a cosy living room. Sureish plunked himself on the leather couch while Mike awkwardly looked for a corner to lean the fishing rods.
A Chinese man with a horse-like face came out from one of the back rooms and loudly greeted Sureish. Then began a friendly conversation between the 2 of them in fluent Mandrin. Mike, already like a deer in the headlights, stared with his mouth gaped wondering just how much more about Sureish he didn’t know.
Then a Thai girl in an orange tank top and hot pants appeared with a tray of hot beverages. Her skin seemed as if it were made of marble and her long black hair came down to her waist. Her poise was demure, but there was something very sensual about her.
Mike’s heart began pounding. It was his first week away from home and already he found himself in a prostitution house. His girlfriend back home would not be happy. Let alone his mother.
The girl in the orange tank top kneeled and poured tea for all of them. When she made eye contact with Sureish, he smiled at her and she blushed. It was the same smile Mike would learn and replicate successfully years later, once even with a stubborn young lady doctor.
But right now, Mike was too sacred to be in the mood for any of this. However, he didn’t want to look like a wussy in front of the coolest Indian guy he had ever met, so he decided to bite his tongue and see where the night would lead him.
“Oil massage” Those were the only words Mike understood in the stream of Mandrin that followed.
“Macha,” Sureish called out. Finally someone acknowledged Mike being there. “you go in the room there and get ready, your girl will come… And relax, da!” He chuckled.
Get ready? Girl will come?
It wasn’t a room really. It was more of a ceiling height cubicle with a curtain instead of a door. Inside was a rubber mat, and on top of it were a pillow, a towel and a pair of knee-length cotton shorts. Looked like a real massage area. Maybe he was getting antsy over nothing after all.
Mike stripped down to his underwear and put on the shorts. On the other side of the plywood wall, he heard the muffled sound of Sureish’s voice. Then the voice of the girl in the orange tank top. She giggled. Mike folded his t-shirt and jeans neatly in a corner and sat on the mat, waiting for ‘his girl’ to show up.
He breathed a sigh of relief when she appeared. Instead of being a sultry young thing, she was a huge Thai woman in her late thirties. She had the arms and calves of a female weightlifter. This was definitely not a hooker. A bull farmer? Maybe.
“You wan oi masat?” she asked.
“Yes, oil massage,” Mike answered.
“Oi masat no shorts,” she said. “Tower only.”
“Towel only?” Mike had confessed to me before that he had a paralysing fear of being naked in awkward situations. “Nothing inside?”
“No.” She left so Mike could change.
He figured she must be a professional, so when she came back she found Mike wrapped in the towel sitting cross legged on the mat. She instructed him to lie down on his belly and relax.
From the moment she started vigorously thumbing the soles of Mike’s feet; he knew she was an experienced masseuse. Mike smiled at how silly he was, getting worked up over nothing earlier. The massage was very relaxing as she made her way up to his back and neck. Then she asked him to turn over and began massaging his front from the toes up.
As she massaged his shins and knees, Mike had forgotten that he was half naked and being squeezed by a strange huge woman. Her hands kneaded his thigh muscles like they were bread dough. Then suddenly, without warning she pulled off the towel, leaving Mike in nothing but his birthday suit.
“You wan masat tees?” she asked, pointing between Mike’s legs.
If Mike’s mind was a computer, at that moment the screen displayed only one thing over and over again: WTF?! WTF?! WTF?!
“Wha…?!” Mike scrambled to cover his nakedness. “NO!”
“Very nice…” she cooed. “Fifty ringgit only…”
* * * * *
Daybreak was less than an hour away. Mike sat alone on the motorcycle outside the motel. He was tired, hungry and freaked out of his mind. Sureish showed up carrying the pail and the fishing rods, laughing.
“What happen da, macha?” he clapped Mike on the back. “So fast you finish already?”
Mike didn’t find it funny at all. In fact, it was scary to think that this was his first week of university.
He had four years to go.
