therapists
“He wanted to be put into a trance. He wanted to be held without being touched, but not in a poetic way. He wants you to hold him, without touching him. He wanted you to give him the feeling of being held, but from the other room…”
I didn’t understand what she was talking about. I had checked out of the conversation two minutes prior, I was getting texts from Lucy who was working that night. Lucy worked in a private strip club. Most people have never heard of a private strip club. It’s not the same thing.
“Sorry can you give me a minute? I need to eat something” I said to B, who had stopped talking and was waiting for me to respond to what she said.
“Yeah, ok of course”
I stood up and walked to the kitchen that was pitch black. The lights were terrible in there, for some reason the rest of the rooms were warm amber, but the kitchen was white blue fluorescent so I just kept the lights off. I never use the kitchen at night anyway. There was no food, except for the peanut butter. I grabbed a spoon from the drawer, my first choice in the dark was a baby’s spoon - which gave me a bad feeling so I put it back, and found the bigger spoon. I spooned the peanut butter, at first - too much, so I put some back. Like when you put too much shampoo In your hand, so you let it fall off onto the shower floor, and you move it around with your feet. I took the spoon, with the peanut butter back into the living room and started eating it off the spoon. I remembered I had some raw pecans, so I grabbed what was left of the bag and poured it into my mouth to mix with the peanut butter. This was my dinner, it was good.
“In my last relationship I sat my mom down and asked her to be the rope tied around my ankle as I dove into his ocean “ She said, watching me eat the peanut butter.
Just then my phone rang, it was Lucy. She was at work, and I knew it was important because it was so late and she never called unless something had happened. I declined the call quickly.
“I’m sorry I have to take this, it’s my sister”
B nodded as I quickly stood up and walked down the small hallway to one of the bedrooms. The rooms had “1” and “2” labeled on the doors with red laminated paper. I went into room “2” and closed the door and called Lucy.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Lucy answered quickly, it barely rang.
“hang on, a dude just came in - let me go outside…”
I waited, listening to the muffled sounds of a trap beat, like the sound of someone who butt dials you, stuff rubbing up against the phone. After 30 seconds of that, Lucy’s voice came in clear. I could tell she was outside, and it made me think of the brisk air of back home, the actual brisk cold air of the East Coast.
“So what’s up? are you okay? I don’t have long I have a friend over”
“yeah, I’m good - I just have a story it’s kind of gross do you want to hear it?”
“always, you know I do” I responded calmly, relieved she was okay.
“basically this guy came in and got a show with my coworker and apparently like midway thru the show he put a sounding rod in his dick and it started bleeding everywhere but he was like no I’m good and so she kept dancing, and he just kept jerking off until he came and just came a bunch of blood, and my coworker got blood on her and was like freaking out - it was fucking insane bro”
Before I could respond my phone froze, and the screen went black and it died. I held my dead phone looking at the door labeled “2” and wondered why I didn’t go in room “1”.