Oil and Grip

Okay so here's how my Monday went. I bottled a porter at two in the afternoon, cleaned the fermenter twice because I'm paranoid like that, and then at eleven at night I was standing outside a locked bouldering gym in an industrial district with my palms sweating through my jeans.

I'm Vic, I'm thirty-five, and I brew beer for a living. Small craft place, nothing fancy. I've been single since I was twenty-eight, which is seven years, and part of the reason is the thing I like. Oil. Massage oil, specifically. Being oiled up and worked over by somebody strong who takes charge. Most people hear that and either laugh or get weird about it. So I never brought it up with anyone serious.

Then last week I matched with Joanne on a kink site that's basically all about oil. Her profile said rock climber, thirty-four, and her opening message was, "You really like this or are you just curious?"

I typed back, "Really like it. Since I was twenty-one and a girlfriend rubbed my shoulders after a shift and I almost lost my mind."

She wrote, "Good. Monday, 11 pm. I close the gym. Address is on my profile. Don't be late."

So there I was, late Monday night, chalk dust in the air before I even got inside, and a woman's silhouette coming up behind the glass door. She unlocked it and smirked at me before I said a word.

"You're Vic." She held the door. "You're early. I like early."

"You're Joanne." Wow, great line. My brain was mush. She's about my height, forearms like cables, hair pulled back tight, and she looked me up and down like she was reading a route on a wall.

"Shoes off here. Back room's through there." She pointed past the climbing walls, past racks of holds and stacks of mats, to a small room with warm light. "Go on. I'll be there in a minute."

I did what she said. That was already a pattern, I noticed. I did what she said.

The back room smelled like rubber and chalk and, under that, something clean. Mats were stacked along one wall and one fresh mat was laid out flat in the middle of the floor. There was a little hot plate already plugged in and a mason jar of coconut oil sitting on it, going soft and clear.

Joanne came in carrying a towel and a pump bottle and shut the door behind her.

"Okay. Here's how this goes." She set the towel down. "You strip to your shorts. You lie face-down on the mat. I heat the oil, I work you over, and you don't talk unless I ask you something or something's wrong. Deal?"

"Deal." My voice cracked a little on it. She raised an eyebrow.

"Say it back to me so I know you heard it."

"Strip to shorts, lie down, oil, stay quiet, speak up if something's wrong." I swallowed. "That's, um. That's the deal."

"Good boy." She said it plain, not flirty, and it still went through me like a current. "Now get going. I want to see what I'm working with."

I pulled my shirt off over my head and stepped out of my jeans, and yeah, I felt awkward standing there in my shorts in a gym back room at eleven at night. She didn't laugh at me though. She just looked, arms crossed, like she was checking my form.

"You carry your stress in your shoulders and your traps. I can tell from here."

"Is it that obvious?"

"You're doing it right now!" She reached out and pressed two fingers into the top of my shoulder and a sound escaped me that I hadn't planned on. She grinned. "Yeah. Get down."

I lay face-down on the mat. It was clean, smelled faintly of soap, and the floor underneath was cold through it. I put my arms down at my sides and stared at the mat fibers and tried to breathe normal.

Behind me I heard her testing the oil, dipping a finger, rubbing it between her hands. Then a pause.

"Last check before we start." Her voice was closer now, she was kneeling beside me. "You said on the site you've never actually had this done for real. Right?"

"Right." I turned my head so she could hear me. "Never. I've watched videos. I've done it myself with a bottle of drugstore stuff in the shower. But nobody's ever... yeah. Never."

"Good." She said it like I'd passed something. "Then this is your first time and I'm going to do it right. If the pressure's too much, say harder or softer. If you need me to stop, say stop and I stop, no questions, no hard feelings. That goes the whole session. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Face forward then."

I heard the oil pour first. A thin, warm stream, and then it landed across my shoulders and the heat of it made me jump.

"Easy," she said, laughing a little. "It's just coconut. Warm, not hot. You'll love it in ten seconds."

She was right. By the time her hands settled on my shoulders the oil had spread and the warmth had sunk in and I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding since I walked in the door.

Then she started working.

Her thumbs drove into my trapezius and I understood immediately why she climbs. Her hands were strong in a way that caught me off guard. She pressed deep, slow, following the muscle from my neck out to my shoulders and back again, and every pass pushed another knot loose that I didn't know I had.

"Oh," I said. Just that. It came out on its own.

"What did I say about talking?"

"Sorry. Sorry."

"Mm. Don't be sorry. Just be quiet and let me work." She dug in under my shoulder blade and something released that had been stuck for maybe five years. "God, you're a mess back here. What do you do, carry grain sacks?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Brewing. Fifty pound bags."

"Well. Tonight's your lucky night then." She poured more oil along my spine, warm, and the scent rose up and filled the little room, sweet and rich, mixing with the chalk and rubber. It smelled like exactly the thing I'd been imagining for fourteen years and it was real, it was happening, on a Monday.

She worked down my back in long dragging strokes, both hands, leaning her weight in. Her knee pressed light against my side to brace herself and I felt her calf muscle flex against my ribs. Strong everywhere. I was going to lose my mind.

I tried to stay quiet like she told me. I mostly managed it. Little sounds got out anyway, hums and breaths, and she never complained about those, only when I tried words.

"Your legs next," she said after a while, oil squelching as she moved down. "Then we flip you over and I do the front. And after that, if you're still standing, we'll talk about the part you actually came here for."

"There's more?"

"There's always more." She worked a thumb into the muscle beside my spine and I arched without meaning to. "But you're doing fine for a first-timer. Breathing's already better."

"How can you tell?"

"Because when you walked in your chest wasn't moving. Now it is." She poured more oil, slow, right between my shoulder blades. "Now hush. We're just getting started!"

She got to my lower back and slowed down. Way down. Her thumbs traced along the top of my shorts and I held very still.

"These need to come off or they're getting oily. Your call."

"Off. Off is fine."

"Thought so." She didn't rush it. She slid them down and I lifted my hips and then I was face-down in nothing but oil and a towel she'd laid over me at the last second. "For dignity," she said, and I could hear the grin in it. "Which we'll be abandoning shortly, but hey."

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

More oil, poured in a line down my spine, and she followed it with both hands. When she got past the small of my back I tensed up without deciding to. Everything down there felt like a border I'd never let anyone cross.

"Relax your glutes. I can feel you clenching from here."

"I'm not..."

"You are. Totally normal. Breathe out." Her thumbs pressed in and I