i was asked a strange question today by a customer. my first day back in the coffee shop.
she was a familiar customer, a regular. still, a perfect stranger. her (much older) french husband accompanies her always, and they are usually happy, often kissing at the register and contemplating cookies. i do not know what they do with their time but that they are always out and about reading in the coffee shop during the middle of many other’s nine to five. maybe this is why they kiss so often, and in public. they are so happy not to be structured.
her husband’s name is river. his hair is long and erratic, falling down past the small of his back and the gray strands always seem to fall victim of a vast electrical charge. her name is maya. she is strangely beautiful, in her late thirties, and reminds me of feathers. she once brought a large 2 by 5 ft painting into the coffee shop to show me. she had brought it at the thrift store a day earlier.
this was almost a year ago. i saw them again yesterday, and then today.
yesterday he was reading a book on chinese healing and she a book on egyptian hieroglyphics. she was saddened about her massage therapy classes. she complained a great deal about american schooling; the teachers rush from one thing to the next, no one has time to remember so much about touch, and they don’t seem to do that part so much.
today she asked me to be one of her massage practice friends. a random stranger wants to use me to practice her art. she warned me about various forms of nudity, that she would have to touch my skin. she handled this delicately, as if i would be afraid.
& oddly i was. it was a very open arrangement. i was taken aback momentarily by this openness. for a small second i did not respond, but then warmly said yes. it is not often i am asked such questions, and think sometimes that alarm bells have hindered my possibilities for experience. i do not want to be afraid of a stranger’s touch.