The first parlor I chance upon is on a lane near my hotel and shows no menu of services on the outside or through the shop window. The female manager informs me all they offer is upper-body massage in reclining chairs or foot massage.
Everything takes place in the front room, there evidently being no back or private rooms. It bears the standard sign of a multicolored pair of reflexology feet indicating therapeutic foot and body massage. Full-body oil massage is advertised in the window without a price. She leads me to a private room with a dedicated table and fiberglass module shower unit and tells me to shower and slip on the provided shorts.
Ten minutes later a different woman enters, a strange nerdish woman in her forties with short curly hair and glasses. She places her styrofoam takeout dinner under the massage table. She avoids eye contact and utters nary a word though I am at ease in Mandarin. She keeps darting this way and that before getting settled, jumping up to open and close the door by small increments until she finds the right balance between my privacy and what I suppose to be her sense of safety.
When the time is up she grabs her meal and dashes out of the room. I toy with the idea of having my girlfriend watch us, who happens to be in the hotel room waiting for me, but no, not tonight. I step around the corner to a 7-Eleven to look over the wine selection. Inside the shop I become aware of a disturbed lady staring at me from behind the aisle. She sidles up to me, holding a spoon in her hand, which she passes over the wine bottles like a radiation detector. Then disappearing back behind the shelf she peers at me mischievously, grinning as if we were children playing hide and seek, or as if trying to communicate by some telepathic code.
Yet any woman who approaches me with the frankness of a sex worker intrigues me, even if no words come out of her mouth. A wannabe prostitute? I keep bumping into Miss Busty from the Morning Star over the next few days. She does have a friendly and spontaneous manner about her, as do many women involved in the business as a matter of fact.
