On an Ordinary Tuesday, She Took Half a Day Off

My name is Banxia Tang (alias). It was an ordinary Tuesday when, at lunch, I stared at my screen and felt that if this kept up, another month would slip past unnoticed. My leave request said 'personal matters'. There were no matters at all. What there was: an application I had submitted days earlier, sitting in review. That afternoon my phone buzzed — approved, the hour mine to choose, the address sent to me alone. My heart actually skipped. Skipping half a day of work to go somewhere I had waited so long to be allowed into: the pleasure had a delicious, stolen flavour.

On a weekday afternoon the place felt like a different time zone. Sunlight slanted through the curtain gap onto the wooden floor. Slippers were set at my feet first, my shoes taken away, warm tea placed in my palms; I changed without lifting a finger, the robe still warm from being heated. The bath was attended throughout, steam carrying a light floral scent, and sinking into that warm water I thought: so this is what stolen time smells like — flowers, hot water, and a small illicit joy. My phone was on silent. The office group chats could go on ringing in their own time zone, without me.

Lying down, the warmth began at my scalp and carried me, degree by degree, out of my desk chair. The warm, silky Nuru liquid spread over my shoulders and back — gliding like silk unmelting — down my spine to my waist, to the right hand that holds a mouse all morning, and to feet that had spent hours in heels. Midway I could not help asking: do many people come on weekday afternoons? The answer came gently: mostly women like you — the ones who suddenly saw it clearly. I laughed out loud. The world, it turned out, was full of my kind. And as my breathing slowed I noticed something else: from the crown of my head to my toes, every inch of me had been travelled over with attention, as if someone had taken the time to meet me all over again, whole.

The final passage, the Yoni private care, was the part I had called 'whatever' out loud and cared about most in secret. Longing hid behind shyness. I set my terms first: when I say stop, we stop, and no one asks why. The confirmation was steady, and warmth and patience drew close slowly, waiting in silence for me to relax on my own terms. Being opened that carefully felt quieter than I had imagined, and deeper — nobody hurrying me, nobody watching me perform relaxation. I was simply Banxia, a woman who had skipped a Tuesday afternoon and was being tenderly, thoroughly cherished. By the end, the fist I did not know I had been clenching had opened on its own.

To be honest, I had hesitated over that leave form for an entire lunch break. A woman my age, skipping work for something like this — I was afraid people would laugh. Lying there, I discovered that the unprofessionalism was precisely the point: nobody was measuring the output of my relaxation, nobody cared what value that afternoon created. When the warmth crossed my arms, the right hand that had gripped a mouse all morning opened first, fingers unspreading of their own accord; the scent in the room, clean and faint, replaced the office air-conditioning smell entirely. Midway through I even felt a little smug: my colleagues were still in a meeting room facing a projector, while I, in warm glide and quiet light, was ransoming myself back, inch by inch. That pleasure needs reporting to no one. It belongs entirely under those two words on the form: personal matters. And yes — it is my most important personal matter, the one appointment in my month that exists purely because I want it to, which is exactly why it works.

A hot towel over my face, my warm drink refilled once, and in the rest area I finished the last pages of a book I had been carrying for months, while the light outside slowly went amber. Work was the next morning's business. A colleague said I looked well and asked if I had been on holiday. I smiled: yes — somewhere very close by. Now one Tuesday afternoon a month is locked into my calendar well in advance, and I have asked about the travelling ritual too: on my next work trip to Seattle, I want this stolen time booked, openly and properly, into my hotel room.

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