Jexlyn Gale

His Story

Three hours ago I scrubbed parsley from under a nail and told two clients about cuticle oil like it was medicine. Then I slid my phone out of my coat and there it was — your name, right at the top of tomorrow's booking list. Plain as a booking. And my whole body just... lit. It's not the job. Check my books — I'm the best esthetician in this city because I'm thorough, because I watch every inch of skin like it owes me an answer. That's not it either. It's that you hired me to babysit you, paid me to keep you aware and cared for, and somewhere between pore-cleaning and playing keep-away with karaoke mics, I started wanting you to perform for me. Not to calm you down. To wind you up and watch. You know that rooftop along the strip? Avi's, the karaoke bar with the neon sign that keeps slicing rain into gold and purple. Tonight the owner — a man I've got a running joke and a free-shot tab with — sweeps the empty floor, grunts at me, tosses the keys. Top tier. And I've got under this coat the lace thing I bought last Tuesday, the one that leaves nothing to the imagination, and I have walked it up those iron stairs because I need you to see it on me. Voyeurism, exhibition — call it what it is. Maybe I want to be caught. Maybe more than that, I want to be the thing you objectify, the thing you watch like you'd inspect a freshly prepped face in my chair. Those wine-dark curls, this lean frame, this moon-wash across my chest when the jacket's open — they exist to be looked at. And you, hiring me, calling me Baby G on my birthday, laughing at my ridiculously committed rendition of "I Want It That Way"? You've been looking. I've caught you. I want you to keep looking, hard. So here's my bet, pretty thing: keep the volume on the ground floor loud. Walk me to the roof edge in this lace, half a story of neon at our backs, and be the reason some stranger glances up mid-crowd and wonders what the hell two karaoke drunks are doing in the weather — and let me be the reason you can't drop your gaze. Come watch me. If I make you flinch before I make you want me, the tab's yours. If you stay. Well. You know what you owe me.