"Welcome," said Joni. "I'll need you to fill out this form."
"Sure, yes, thank-you," said Emily.
Joni considered her patient. She was young, twenty-something. Blonde, freckled, curvy. She filled out the form with seriousness, knitting her brows together, leaning over the clipboard slightly, a hint of cleavage showing beneath her sensible blouse.
"There," she said. "All done," she smiled.
"Okay, then let's get started. Follow me."
Joni led Emily into a small room with a massage bed and a desk with neatly arranged oils and balms.
"Now, do you have any specific problem areas?" asked Joni, looking at the form. "It says here you're a teacher. Shoulder tension?"
"Yes, how did you know? I've been so stressed lately. So much marking."
"Well, we'll get it sorted out. Have you had a massage before?"
"Yes."
"Okay, so then you know the drill. Clothes off and between the sheets. I'll give you a moment."
"Great," she smiled.
Joni left the room and stood just outside the door listening to the sounds of her patient undressing. So, here she was, finally, a massage therapist. It had been work, but now here she was, three weeks into her new career, dressed in scrubs, overjoyed.
She whispered to herself, as she had every day since she'd started: "You've come a long way, girl." Just a few years ago, after she'd barely graduated high school, she worked at a juice bar in the gym across the street from the dingy apartment she shared with her mother. Still shared, she reminded herself. But, only until she could get enough money together to get a place of her own.
Her mother was a part-time waitress and a full time whore. She remembered coming home from school early one day to find her mother, absurdly bronzed, naked in the living room, her thick, worn body gleaming sweatily in the afternoon sun. The three of them, her, her mother, and a moustached man, froze in shock, his cock still in his mother's mouth.
After he'd gone, his mother sat on the couch smoking, her ratty bathrobe refusing to stay closed, and said matter-of-factly, "A girl's got to use what she has while she still has it."
That was a lesson Joni took to heart. Later, when she wanted pot or booze or whatever, she knew how to get it. There was a man upstairs, Gordon, who sat around all day shirtless and in track pants, peddling his drugs. But, for a girl like Joni, he sold it for a blow job.