Array Seka - Inside Seka

“Seventy-five.”

He laughed even harder. I looked down at the speedometer and it said thirty-five. Then I started laughing. I felt like I was going seventy-five, but I was stoned. It felt calm and peaceful. But I knew it would be best to pull over.

Frank introduced me to sex and alcohol, and now drugs. The party was just beginning.

As much as I enjoyed the idea of being an adult and working, I realized I wasn’t going to go any further where I was. My salary and benefits weren’t very good so I decided to look for another job.

I put in an application with Reynolds Aluminum Company and ended up working on their production line. I sort of felt like the character in the movie Norma Rae. It was hot and sweaty factory work — a huge building with a metal roof. There was no air conditioning and their gigantic fans did little to cool off our massive production line.

After their Prell Shampoo boxes were labeled, fifteen or so would come at you. There would be one little box that would stick out, which they called the “kicker.” You’d pick that box and stack the last group in it while waiting for the next bunch. That’s all I did for eight straight hours. Pull and stack. Pull and stack. It made me hate Prell Shampoo.

It was the dog days of summer in Virginia. It was hot, humid, miserable, extremely noisy, and I was doing swing shifts. Right in the middle of the section I worked was this little room where the foremen would sit and watch everyone doing their jobs. They had a nice air-conditioned set-up. They were assholes who didn’t particularly treat the women well. We did most of the hard stuff while the men did all the other work that wasn’t as physical. And the guys got more money. After all, it was the seventies.

I took home economics class, so I knew how to sew. I made a pair of shorts and a top to go over the shorts. It was a jumper. The shorts were down to maybe an inch above my knee. I made it because it was something to wear to work that was cool, comfortable, and that I could stand to wear in this sauna.

One day, I was busy on the line when one of the other ladies tapped me on the shoulder and told me they wanted to see me in the office. The foreman said. “You’re going to have to go home and change your clothes.

And we’re going to dock you. Your pants are too short.”

I angrily said, “No, they’re not.”

He informed me he was going to measure my shorts and actually went to get a ruler.

“You’re not going to touch me,” I announced.

“If you don’t change your clothes, you’re not coming back.”

Grabbing my time card, I threw it in the air. I watched the foreman’s mouth grow wide in surprise as the card seemed to hover in the sky. “I quit!”

Storming out of the building, I got in my old Volkswagen Beetle and headed towards home when I spotted Frank driving the other way. He turned around, got behind me, and we pulled over.

“What are you doing?”

When I told him, he asked “What do you mean, you quit?!”

“I quit. I’m not working in that sweatbox. And I won’t be talked to like that.”

We needed both incomes, but he finally said, “Well, okay.”

About a week later, he asked, “Are you going to look for another job?”

“After I get some rest.” Hell, I was exhausted. That job had beaten me down.

One afternoon he got home from work and told me Bob, a guy he worked with, had a side business I might be interested in. He said it wasn’t difficult work and if anybody could do it, I could. That was very intriguing considering I didn’t have a formal education besides a high school diploma. I wasn’t really trained in anything.

“What is it?” I asked excitedly.

The guy owned a massage parlor. I figured I could learn a trade and have a job for life.

The office was in Petersburg, Virginia, which is the next town over and is famous for being the home of Moses Malone. Right next to an Army base was a strip that had a few restaurants, quite a few adult bookstores, and two or three massage parlors.

When I entered the office for my interview I heard a little bell go off. There was a waiting room with maybe eight or ten chairs and some magazines on a coffee table. It reminded me of a doctor’s office — very neat and clean, nicely done. It was actually kind of upscale. There were a couple of guys sitting there looking at me in a way that I hadn’t been looked at before. I didn’t understand why. It made me feel very uncomfortable.

The other door opened into a hallway of small rooms like when you go into a doctor’s office. There was a slender, older lady in her forties with a nice build. She wore white go-go boots and a one-piece body suit that snapped in the front. I thought, “That’s odd. Why would a receptionist not be wearing a skirt or a pair of pants?”

“You must be the new girl. Come on in.”

Still, nothing was hitting me as odd.

I went into a regular-looking office that had a desk and lots of papers and some sort of machine sitting there. The room smelled heavily of cigarettes. Bob was heavyset and sort of disheveled looking. He chained cigarette after cigarette, lighting a new one with the last spark of the old. There were a couple of other girls in the room dressed just like the lady who answered the door. I wondered, “Why do all the girls dress like this?” I figured when you gave a massage you get warm, so maybe they just wanted to be comfortable until they got ready for the next client.

He asked the two girls to leave and he introduced the older woman as his wife. “So, you’re Frank’s wife. He was telling me about you. I understand you’re looking for a job.”

“What does this entail? Does someone here teach me how to give a massage?”

He got this quirky grin on his face. “Oh yeah. We’ll teach you.”

He asked me what my size was for the boots and the little jump suit. His wife went to the closet and pulled a set out. I tried them and he said, “That looks really good on you. You can start today. To begin with, you’ll stick with my wife and she’ll show you where everything is. If you have any questions, you’ll ask her.” I called Frank to tell him the good news.

It was much like any health spa with shelves, towels, creams, a small sink with soap, and a little radio for soft music. There was a men’s shower room and four stalls. She walked me through the routine. I was told that when a client comes in I should tell him to put his clothes on the hook on the back of the door and shower. When he was done he’d come back to the room and leave the door cracked just a little bit so you’d know he’d returned.

Although I had never had a massage myself, I saw them being done on TV and figured, “I can handle this. No big deal.”

We greeted the first guy sitting in the waiting room. After he showered, he was lying on his stomach with his butt covered by one of the towels. She proceeded to show me how to give a massage. They could buy a half hour or an hour massage. A half was $25 and an hour $50. There was a menu in the lobby. It said tips were accepted.

Everything was going along smoothly. “Not bad,” I thought. I didn’t have to sit in a sauna with those macho foremen telling me my clothes were too short. It was nice, cool, and clean. And the boss was friendly, as were the other girls those first four or five days.

After that, Bob said, “Today you’re going to start working one-onone with the clients. You don’t need to have someone supervise you anymore.”

Already confident in what I was doing, I said, “Well, okay.”

The first two or three guys came in and it went just fine. It was just like all the massages I had done with the other lady. No big deal. Business as usual. The first guy gave me a twenty-dollar tip, which was excellent. But after I massaged the fourth client’s back, he turned over with the hugest boner I’d ever seen in my life, and I’m thinking, “Whoa… hold on Skippy.”