Suggested by a 3-word prompt - Friends. Massage. Tomboy.
According to the thesaurus, synonyms for "massaged" include "falsified," "misrepresented," "manipulated," ... and "altered." :-)
***
Gary's apartment building was right across the street from the local basketball court, so that's where I always stashed my clothes when I was shooting hoops with the guys. Sometimes he let me shower there too. I don't mind taking the train home sweaty, but I also didn't mind doing it fresh from the shower, since my hair dries in, like, seconds.
"Good game! Good game ... OK, see you next week, guys! Adam, don't feel bad, man, my little sister used to play just as bad as you. HA!"
"You coming up? You got a few minutes to hang out?"
"I'm free the rest of the day, Gary, if you want to get a pizza or something."
"Nice."
Gary is pretty cool. He and I have been friends for years, and while some guys can be kinda creepy, Gary and the rest of our little group are pretty laid-back, and I don't have to fend off drunken advances or anything. I don't have them looking at me with lust in their eyes. They don't even ask me out on dates. Which is a relief, most of the time. Like, ninety percent of the time.
Eighty percent. At least.
"You still want that pineapple shit on your half?" he asks me as we head up the stairs.
"Dude, I'm telling you, just try it. You'll want pineapple all over the fucking thing next time."
"Gross."
I'm kind of a tomboy. I'm athletic, I prefer sports to fashion, and my look is generally what I think of as "practical." So I don't get a lot of guys looking at me in "that" way. When they do look, they see a butch-looking dyke (or so they imagine) and their eyes unfocus and they look right past me. Through me.
I'm not complaining, not much anyway. I like not getting too much attention from jerks.
My basketball buddies just see me as one of the dudes. Which as I say is a relief. I tend to wear baggy jeans and a sweatshirt over a T shirt. If I'm really feeling special, I'll wear a tight tank top - one of those ribbed gray tanks that Hanes sells for boys, usually - with a plaid flannel shirt open over it. Getting the picture? Not centerfold material. Not second-look material.
"Motherfucker, just order the pizza," I laugh as I grab my duffel bag and head for the shower. "I'll be out in a minute."
"Don't clog up my drain with too much hair, now!"
"Har de har."
At least the tanktop shows a bit of cleavage. But that's counterbalanced by the hair. I have "practical" hair - short, real short, and dark, almost black. You know Rachel Maddow? Like hers.
I don't like fussing with my hair, never did, and the more my mom used to complain that I didn't look girly enough, the shorter I'd cut it. On warmer days, when boys pass by, I watch their eyes. They see the cleavage, they smirk, their eyes travel up to my hair ... and they frown, slightly, and keep walking. I've seen it again and again.
I have lesbian hair.
I don't care, I really don't. I don't need the attention. But it gets tiresome. And doesn't raise my opinion of boys in general. Men.
Women are different. Sometimes a girl will see my hair, smile, look down, see the cleavage, smile bigger, then come over to say hi. And I always have to say, apologetically, "Sorry, I like boys."
So, yeah. Nice to know I'm attractive to someone I guess. Just wish I could get laid once in a while.
I came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, pulling a sweatshirt over my sports bra and shorts. The sweatpants could wait til I cooled down a little. "Anything you wanna watch?"
"Baby Driver?"
"Cue it up," I said, getting two beers from his fridge.
"Hey," said Gary as he did so, "everything OK with your leg? You looked like it was really hurting you earlier."
"My leg?"
"Yeah, I thought you twisted something or something, you were really favoring your left leg for a while there. I thought we weren't gonna win, for a minute!"
"As if," I said, throwing myself on the couch.
Gary just shrugged. But in the minute of silence that followed, I flexed one calf, then the other. Twisted my left, then my right. Feeling them, from the inside, sort of. When I turned my right leg to look at it from different angles, looking for bruises, I caught him watching me.
"Fucker, you're getting inside my head!" I smacked his arm. "Knock it off ..."