Julia fanned her hands underneath the mat, which read SHHhhh in red ink. She felt the cold of the key, nabbed it, and returned to mountain pose with her eyes cast downward in thoughtful thoughtlessness. “SHHhhh,” Julia quietly intoned to herself. A breeze ran through the west-east aligned hallway with a soft whistle. It ran Julia over and she absorbed the moment. Her client Suz had invited her to model for a video, but she was bored and early. She pushed the key into the lock and listened for the metal-on-metal pop of each tumbler slacking. The door ripped open with the breeze, and she struggled to close it against the air.
The studio space was a kaleidoscope of sets on top of sets. Julia tripped over a clothes rack. The layers of lab coats, maid outfits, sequined dresses, receptionist blouses, and everything else that could be starched and pressed, rankled then shoved off.
Suz makes ASMR videos on Youtube. ASMR stands for something pseudoscientific, but to Suz meant Long drawn-out videos with soft speaking and low lights and strange noises. VIewers put the videos on to fall asleep, or induce a trance.
All sound from the world stopped at the door, absorbed by shag carpets and tapestries and bean bag chairs and dimpled foam walling. Julia could hear herself breathe. She tried to distract herself into unconsciousness again.
Props littered the walls. Suz had installed open cabinetry. Julia scanned, She had been doing her homework on Suz’s videos and could place almost every item and how you might squeeze value from its form.
Featured prominently was the fuschia handbag, beloved for its plastic exterior which made a sucking sound when gripped with sweaty hands. The rock garden aside it, with attached wooden rake, had a powerful hypnotizing effect on many. In the corner was tupperware, filled with floral foam. A few comments on Suz’s most recent video tried to warn her about its risk for skin cancer, but they may have gotten washed away in the crush of engagements.
She shed her clothes and tucked them into her tote, then covered with a robe. Suz planned to examine Julia’s skin, so she had spent the night before exfoliating and moisturizing. She found the set they would use, isolated a bean bag chair, and began searching for ingrown hairs.
This was the studio’s dark side. Velvet maroon curtains swallowed noise. The corners were lit by ceramic lamps painted like toadstools. A black chaise snaked between an orange-stained coffee table and the camera stand.
The door to the studio creaked open. Julia turned with a jolt to regard Suz juggling microphones and homemade coffee in a mason jar. Her bald head was dappled with rain drops from the outside world. Julia’s eyes widened with amusement. Suz regarded her with slight panic.
Julia spoke first, ignoring her uncertain presence, “This is new. I like the new.”
“This?” Suz ran a small, spindly hand across her skull. “I just. I’ve been a bit more impulsive recently. There’s no one around to entertain me or tell me no. So I eat a lot of take-out.”
“I’m partial to Filipino. You were almost late.”
“That sounds like on time to me. You’re laying down anyways, don’t you get tired of that one?”
“Ha Ha. I was about to put things together if you feel like helping me out.”
Heads together, they tinkered. Lighting stands to fuss, camera lenses to select, chairs and pillows to fluff abounded. From the walls they collected an assortment of goodies. At this point, they had grown comfortable with an improvisational style, introducing new sounds in harmony with what hung in the air.
Julia had acquired a set of porcelain chopsticks for the shoot today. An hour went down the drain in the flea market, tapping and knocking and dragging different sets against different mediums. These were selected because of the soft ringing overtone produced when brushed against plush. She thought that she might be able to feel its echo call against her lungs.
She placed those and other items on the table, and laid down again. She had to make space between Suz’s undecided microphones.
One was shaped like a pair of ears, one was a large black puffball. Finally, as she listened to her fingers light tapping of each’s heart, examining as with a stethoscope, she selected her favorite, a set of twin microphones, small and metallic, that twisted around each other.
“These are the magic ones.”
“You say that about all of them.”
“They are all magic, but this one makes you feel like you’re here. The screen isn’t flat and we aren’t two characters. You can hear in every direction like a stage play and we’re just there too.”
“I like the microphone that lets me hear you scratch my inner ear.”
Suz grunted then moved to the camera. Julia made a face as Suz adjusted the frame to the subject. She could see the faint, shallow bumps that mottled Julia’s tongue.
“Here” Suz applied tape across Julia’s body to disclose some but not all. Suz’s hands were cold. Her mind emptied when touched like this. The terry cloth robe hung over her chest, and dipped deeply down her back, leaving ample canvas for Suz. Suz practiced tracing the rivulets of Julia’s muscles. Her fingers slowly pulled the heat from Julia’s back, until they reached an equilibrium.
Suz sat on the carpet between Julia’s half-moon lounge. She struck a match and lit a candle sitting on the coffee table. It was called evening walk and Suz thought it smelled like verbena. She said a small prayer for guidance, peace, and health. Julia acknowledged the Duwamish people and their dispossession from the land that the two of them now rented. They breathed in the thin smoke and felt light.
“I’m ready.” Julia spoke into the air. She moved from upright to reclined, and laid on her chest. She breathed into her diaphragm and lowered her shoulders, evaporating tension wherever it was found, then faced the wall. Her heartbeat ticked each moment past.
The red dot indicating image capture flushed with life. Suz greeted the audience in a breathy whisper.
“Welcome back, you guys. I’ve missed you, I hope you are well. Today, I have a special guest here, our friend is back to be our model for our skin examination.” Suz felt her brain click into auto-pilot. There is an etiquette required to keep someone watching; it took the same voice to coax out the first drink at a party.
“Grab a blanket, or maybe some tea. Get comfortable.” Her voice flittered between the twin microphones, the rasp of her vocal chords catching in the steel mesh.
Julia lay motionless. With each breath, she imagined herself filling with stones, becoming increasingly immobile and inanimate. Her body deepened into its rest, filing the creases of the leather underneath her. Fewer and fewer thoughts emerged from her subconscious. Those that did were concerned with the make of the chaise. There was comfort in its solid construction, a facsimile of the earth’s embrace. She did not think it consciously, but she felt completely flat.
Suz’s hands outlined Julia’s ribs and spinal column, introducing each muscle to the viewer. “This redness here, it shows us where she holds her weight. When it’s underneath her shoulder blade like that, it means she is pulling inward too much. Instead of displacing pressure, it goes there and can’t go out through her arms and legs.” Suz had put black polyester gloves on, she had seen another video and thought the sound was more pronounced. It gave the effect of an emptied plastic bag glancing across concrete.
Suz purred delicately with each new perspective. Pulling skin taught in one direction with both hands. Pinching and then releasing. “This brings blood flow to the surface.”
With each adjustment, Suz asked for consent. Julia very quietly grunted approval at each turn. Were she entirely present, the examination would induce mild discomfort as her skin was poked and prodded. The pleasure is for the viewer. Suz procured the chopsticks, and hovered the stems over the nape of Julia’s neck. “Is this okay?” Julia barely registered a nod from her fugue state.
The porcelain was cold. Julia’s skin shimmered instinctively with gooseflesh. They snaked upwards, parting the hair along the back of her scalp. The chopsticks turned slowly, bundling ribbons of hair, creating bunches and then releasing. Tension again and then release. This hidden skin was unaccustomed to touch, and Julia flushed.
She was being brought back into her body. Waves ran down her from the base of her skull. She became conscious of the cool air brushing against her back and from the radiant heat of Suz’s body hovering over her. Reality was calling back to her, but she wanted out, pinching her eyelids closed until they wrinkled to try to recede.
Her body pulled away from Suz’s synthetic touch, although it did not stop. Julia peered through her hazed eyelids at Suz, who was watching her. She knitted her eyebrows in.
Suz continued needling in her hair.
Julia rolled onto her left side, leaving her back to the camera.
The chopsticks then trailed downwards, out of her hair, and back along Julia’s spine. Julia laid with eyes open. The velvet curtains pooled against the break of the floor, the shimmering morass reflecting the camera light back at her. Her breathing came at thoughtful intervals, careful not to respond to Suz’s touch. Suz’s hands eventually came to a pause, then lifted to turn off the camera.
Suz watched Julia’s back through the lens before turning off the device, “Hey, what was that about?”
“I got a bit in my head. Maybe we need a safe word?”
“Maybe, just not when the camera is rolling, it catches everything.”
“Couldn’t you just cut it?”
“They could feel in the inauthenticity. That’s what they like.”
Julia grimaced. They each puttered about the studio, collecting their wares, then said their goodbyes.
Suz sent the file over to Julia around dinner time. Julia typically liked to savor them in the state right before sleep. She started the video and watched Suz’s hands; they made sense of the body in the center of frame. It didn’t move, but grew red with each touch. As she watched the hands move, she could feel their mirrored memory across her body.
She lay impossibly still. Bit by bit, Suz sculpted Julia to sleep.