You Should Find a Husband

The tourist wished to find out everything about her. Although she was practically young enough to be his daughter, or granddaughter, maybe... Still, she fascinated him. He'd fallen completely under her spell. She was just so beautiful, had a smile that he'd sell his soul for and a perfect, well-rounded hourglass figure, the type of body so perfect it looked photoshopped.

Better yet, unlike many of the local women, she wasn't a whore, either. She wasn't turning tricks, hadn't been fucked by hundreds of baboon ass baldie fatsos and losers like the old man buns, that old man mullet shitbird, and their slovenly ilk.

With her silky, coy demeanor, she really did seem like a nice Buddhist girl, and she didn't appear to have any ulterior motives, the tourist thought... Maybe she wouldn't be an agist, annoying, entitled bitch like so many of the women back home, either...

The tourist made up his mind and planned to ask her out. He watched a couple of videos on YouTube, watched Learn Thai with Mod, and learned a handful of Thai phrases for dating. He was ready. He was READY! He was going to have his own little exotic beauty, his own little perfect china doll. It was all coming together...

Finally, on a muggy Friday afternoon, he did it. Sitting back in his big comfy recliner, the foot massage chair, he twisted his lips into a big Thai smile, and told his dream girl that she "should find a husband."

Then he asked her, confidently, in a mix of broken Thai and English, if he could buy her dinner.

She only smiled and giggled, didn't say yes or no. When he reiterated his offer, she again giggled, and mentioned something about "working." Which he took as a no.

Then she asked him, in broken English, if he had any pictures from when he was young, if he could show her his "young man" pictures.

A chill plaited up his spine. His eyes narrowed. His body hair rose, prickled like a hedgehog... Then a sickness stirred, and formed, like a clenched fist, in his stomach.

So this was it. To her, he was just another old man, just another customer, nothing more... His heartbeat then began to race, his breaths shortened, and his mouth turned dry as sand...

But, only kindling his consternation, the tourist's dream girl wasn't sensing any of his internal anguish. She just kept smiling, asked again if he had pictures of himself, when he was "her age."

"I think you was han'sum man," she said, smiling wider, and giggling once more, profiting in his grief. Then she whispered something in Thai and snickered with a nearby masseuse, another young Thai girl, who was busily rubbing at the feet of a sleeping middle-aged Japanese businessman, and the two masseuses shared a fit of suppressed laughter.

Pressing his eyes shut tightly, the tourist's sickness inside grew, spread across his chest. It stung. It festered. His life, everything was feeling like a lie. Everything. All the smiles. It was all a fraud. A FRAUD!

He'd known these ugly thoughts. He knew the voices. The cockroach voices in his mind's walls. The infestation in his subconscious. But now, now though, they were impossible to suppress, and the cockroaches were crawling from their cracks, and attacking, like phantoms in a horror flick.

The phantom voices were rampaging, pouring in like hordes of starving rats. The voices telling him he was nothing. Not even a human. He was only his money. That he was a walking ATM. That he was no better than any of the others that he'd mocked.

The reckoning then settled in. It was a dark, cold and hollow feeling that hardened and formed into a shard of broken glass. It pressed to his throat. The tourist then knew... There'd always be... a void... The voices, a fucking football stadium of the aggrieved, appeared and rose, all standing, all screaming at him. And hovering above, high as an angel, the tourist could see a veiled figure pointing and falling backward laughing.

A clucking rage filled the tourist. His eyes opened slowly, like sliding elevator doors. He then glared at the smiling young girl, jerked back his feet from the stool, stepped out of his big comfy pleather massage chair and rose, as a grim champion, to his feet, and sneered.

The girl, appearing confused, threw her head back and asked, "Is, okay?"

The tourist didn't answer. Instead, he kicked the girl in her face. Drilled her with a dropkick to her chin, launching her backward, sending the small girl tumbling, collapsing to the floor, landing with a crash. Lying crumpled on the floor, the girl unloosed a shrill whine, then began whimpering like a beaten dog.

Then the tourist, his marbled legs still beaded with rose-scented oil, stormed straight out of the massage parlor's front door, and began marching, barefoot, toward the golden glaze of the sun.