02

Chapter 1

POP!

Packer winced as his right front tire dropped into the pothole. The dashboard rattled and the emerald air freshener swung his direction for a potent breath of artificial evergreen. The streets of west LA were a technical driving course with cruddy pavement and jaywalkers, bicyclists, and scooters just daring to be hit. Over the past year he'd learned; don't hesitate, don't slow down. The trick was to react quickly and liberally use that gas pedal.

It reminded him of driving on the ranch as a kid. Heading into the high desert to repair barbed-wired fence in his Dad's old GMC. Sometimes there wasn't even a road, only long grown-over tire tracks that wove around the wild cedar trees of Utah. It could take hours to drive out to the broken fence and the slower you went, the more you felt the bumps, so he and his brother would push the old truck to its limit, leaving a trail of dust, engine oil, and the scent of burning brakes.

The car in front of him swerved around a double parked pickup truck and Packer hit the brakes. The lifted truck's bumper was eye level in his tiny car and decapitating himself wasn't the way he wanted to spend his day. Flashing his blinker he wove to the left, squeezing behind a rusty utility van and a shiny Mercedes. The Mercedes flashed his lights but as soon as Packer passed the double-parked truck he wove back into the right lane. The S-Class zoomed up and over, dramatically cutting him off but dropping into another pot hole and bottoming out on the pavement, a small spray of sparks as evidence of the owner's reckless anger.

Packer smirked. One repair on that S-Class probably cost more than his entire Prius' book value. Driving a sunbaked Toyota around LA was more than a little humbling. People loved their cars here and his had no class. A glance at any given LA street would reveal dozens of Range Rovers and BMWs, always glossy and clean. The street over from his house, there was a guy who street-parked his Revuelto! A Revuelto! Packer hated seeing it sitting on the street and wondered who was rich enough to own a Lamborghini but dumb enough to leave it on the street. The other day he'd seen one of those damned rent-a-scooters leaning against it.

He didn't have to worry about any of that with his Prius. The clear coat was flaking off and there were dents on all four corners. Last week, when he drove through some road construction, a rock bounced up to chip his paint but he didn't give it a second thought. Still, these potholes were ruthless and repairing a blown tire would mess up his plans for the day. He eased off the gas.

"Your destination is on your right" the GPS chimed as Packer turned into the lot under the "SPA PARKING" sign. He quickly parked and grabbed the bag he had prepped that morning.

The truth was, Packer hated LA and not just because of the fancy cars and terrible streets. The city seemed to have very little redeeming qualities. Or, at least, very few of the ones Packer valued. Maybe it was his growing up in the country with the endless, wide-open horizon and no one to bother you. He missed the breathing room and the quiet. He could never quite tone out the constant blare of diesel trucks, wailing cars, and honking Uber drivers. Getting anywhere was a chore. He hated having to use the GPS every time he got in the car, the mechanical voice aggressively rerouting him around traffic accidents or construction. Not that it helped, he ended up snarled in traffic jams wherever he went.

It wore him down. He missed cruising down the highway, the brakes unused for miles, no potholes, and the only sound being the rush of the wind. Utah had plenty of roads like that, ones that extended far ahead without another car in sight. Driving was relaxing in that environment. Here, driving was a high-stakes game of death-tetris and his nerves were always on edge.

This was why today was needed. He'd found the Korean Spa a few months ago and had loved it immediately. It was one of the few places in the city where the cacophony melted away and he could find some momentary peace. He went as often as his schedule allowed.

He stepped out of the car and swung his bag over his shoulder. It dropped into place and he felt a knot in his neck, just inside the shoulder. He guessed it was his upper trap, probably tweaked from weight training. Packer remembered the exercise that probably caused the damage and made a mental note to remove it from rotation for the next few weeks.

He shifted his shoulder and the pain eased. It would need some work, some extra stretches, and he could get a jump on that today as well. The spa had a great area for stretching and he always finished with some self-guided yoga in the clay room. It was all part of his streamlined approach to a perfect spa day. After a dozen or so visits, Packer had settled on his ideal rhythm and routine. He went over the plan in his mind as he headed towards the spa lobby.

He'd start in the warm pool and rotate through the jets until he found the one that hit his lower back just right. After warming up, he'd hop into the hot jacuzzi and five minutes later, straight to the cold plunge for as long as he could stand it. This part sucked but the sacrifice was well worth it. His body, fearing hypothermia from the water sitting just above freezing, would send his blood deep into the muscles and internal organs. The blood, extra oxygenated from being in the heat of the jacuzzi just moments before, delivered all that healing oxygen deep into his aching muscles.

The cold plunge was also the time Packer exercised his mind. At first, the shock of the cold would send him reeling. That ancient genetic fear embedded in the human race, fear of freezing to death, often triggered a panic response. "Get out and get warm" his body would scream at him. This would be accompanied by stress responses like anxiety, shallow breathing, increased heart rate and his arms and legs pulling in towards his torso, a subconscious trigger to protect his most vital organs.

Instead of jumping out, Packer would force himself to stay in the frigid water and fight the panic. He'd mentally chant, "mind over body" to force calm. He'd count his breathing until it was slow and regular. Honing his focus one moment at a time, his heartbeat would eventually slow and his body would gradually accept the inevitable cold and the stress responses would abate as he settled in.

The longest he had stayed in the cold plunge was five minutes. After one minute the panic usually subsided. After two, his ears would start to pop, the vasoconstriction in his eardrum rebalancing the inner ear pressure. During minutes three and four, a slight numbness would start to seep into the extremities. His fingers and toes felt it first but soon it permeated his torso and a tickle between his legs told him his scrotum was contracting, hauling in his balls to keep them warm against his abdomen.

At five minutes the shivers started and the light headedness began. This usually retriggered the panic and was his cue to get out. He sometimes thought about staying in longer, maybe just to prove to himself that he was tough, but it would ruin his spa day if he passed out in the cold plunge. He imagined 911 being called and him being hauled to the hospital, naked on a stretcher with his shrunken balls on display.

And besides, the next part of his routine was the best! After the agony of the cold plunge it was straight into the dry sauna. The dry sauna was a fiend! At 200 degrees fahrenheit, it started evaporating the cold water off his skin almost immediately, creating a personal cloud of steam. Packer liked to think of the steam as his worries boiling off him and evaporating in the air. Like the incident with the shiny Mercedes cutting him off, the stress of dealing with an asshole driver would dissolve into water vapor.

The dry sauna heated up the body quickly and once again, the blood would be on the move. After delivering its oxygen deep in the muscles, the blood vessels would dilate and rush blood out to reoxygenate and circulate back into the extremities. This moment was Packer's favorite because it left his whole body tingling. His mind, cleared from the cold, slowly began reconnecting to all those teeming nerve endings and that physiological calm practiced in the cold plunge somehow seeped into his body.

It also felt good when his balls dropped as the scrotum released and what was two meager inches moments before turned back into its flaccid five. Not that Packer was embarrassed about his shrunken junk. On the contrary, he found it amusing to think of junior hopping in and out, in and out, like a horny groundhog hoping for a springtime fuck. But the sauna heat helped him return to his normal, respectable size.

From what he had seen, his dick was perfectly average when not shriveled up from the cold. Packer was always careful not to leer but in a room full of naked men, curious eyes wandered and comparisons were made. Since becoming a regular at the spa Packer had realized how different penises could look and it fascinated him. There was a huge variability: long or short, narrow or thick, bulbous or pointy. Each one had so many components that could all vary: head, shaft, urethra, foreskin if there was any, scrotum, left and right balls, not always identical. Each one was unique and, all-in-all, they were simply interesting. Packer happily watched them come and go, the mandatory nudity of the spa putting them on display.

He approached the welcome desk and the little Korean lady behind the counter smiled at him. They exchanged payment and she gave him his locker room key tagged to a wrist band. Most wore their key like a bracelet but Packer hated it on his arm, getting in the way. It would go on his ankle and after the first glorious plunge he would forget it was there and bask in the freedom of complete nudity.

He swung open the door to the men's locker room open and a rush of warm wet air pulled him in. With a pavlovian reaction he felt his body sigh, eager for the next few hours of peace. He smiled. Today would be a good day.

Chapter 2

Packer's eyes were closed. They had been closed since he had finished his yoga and took the final pose laying on his back, palms face up, in savasana. The darkness behind his lids pulsated, in time to his slow and steady heartbeat. Gentle color, dark and rich, danced through his consciousness. It felt like seeing, even though his eyes were closed but if it was sight, Packer wasn't sure what he was looking at. Was it the inside of his skull? Perhaps it was residual sight, the neurons of his mind still firing even though there was nothing to see.

He let his mind continue to wander, not bothering to think too hard about a possible answer. It was only in this calm that he realized how overactive his mind usually was, racing from thought to thought as he hustled through his day. When not at the spa, closing his eyes felt more akin to a fireworks show, muted and dulled, but still concussive. An active dreamer, his nights were usually filled with confounding, vivid images. It was exhausting. Here however, with his mind and body at peace, the darkness behind his lids was soft and inviting.

Utter bliss. Packer felt entirely relaxed and let his mind scan from the crown of his head down to the tips of his toes. He felt the clay tile underneath him, slightly warmed. His body pulled the heat out of the clay and he slightly perspired, still warm from the yoga. He was completely naked but a pocket of warmed air hovered around his body, draping him like a quilt.

His body curved over the flat clay flooring. The occipital of his skull, upper back, buttocks, calves, and achilles of his ankles rested against the floor, while the natural curve of his body lifted his neck, lower back, and back of his legs just above the ground. He could never lay fully flat on his back, it was the curse of his curvy, muscled frame. Instead, he floated just above the floor but let those few places of contact ground him.

He couldn't lay like this forever. Packer's thick buttocks caused too much of a curve in his lower back and he knew it would eventually start to pinch. He'd been a stomach sleeper his entire life because laying on his back was rarely comfortable. After yoga stretching like today; however, he could comfortably rest on his back for a time, any tightness in his buttocks or back released from the hip openers and lower back stretches.

Packer started to cool down and slowly became aware outside of his body. With an intentional breath, he inhaled the bouquet of the room, noticing the scent. The clay tiles gave the room an earthy tone lightly mixed with the smell of chlorine of the wet spa just outside the frosted glass door.

He took another deep breath, let his own heartbeat fade from his ears, and began to notice the background sounds. He could hear water running, probably from the showers in the wet spa. He could hear a murmur of voices on the other side of the door, friendly and quiet conversations of those enjoying the amenities. He dissected the sounds of the room and gradually became aware of deep slow breathing of someone close by.

Packer felt the air swirl around him and knew his neighbor must be lying very close. It was surprising. Packer didn't remember anyone taking the spot on the ground beside him. He had drifted in and out of sleep during several of his long yoga poses and the man must have entered quietly enough not to wake him. He felt a flutter of gratitude for whoever was so gently sharing this space with him.

Packer had always been very sensitive. His mother had seen it early on. "You're always so in-tune," she used to say to him. She had known her child picked up on everything. Even at the youngest age, he could sense the energies of those around him. If his parents or siblings were feeling upset, he knew. If they were happy, sad, or angry, he could tell. More than once he had known someone in his family was in trouble before anyone else. When his dad had been in a car accident Packer had run to his mother crying before she had even gotten the call.

His teenage years had been terribly disorienting. Packer's own feelings spiked wildly and unpredictably but being so attuned to the world around him, the emotional mayhem of pubescent children, had exhausted him. He used to run home from the schoolbus and shut himself in his closet, fighting off the cacophony of emotions that had berated him all day. In the dark and quiet he could calm down and process whatever had come his way that day, whether it was the frigid rage of the school bully or the icy despondency of a depressed classmate.

Slowly, over years he had learned to shield his sensitivities. He could block out those whose emotions he didn't need to read. He still checked on his dad and kept tabs on his friends, more than once calling them up just after they got bad news. It was also one reason why he had the knack for pegging good people and keeping bad ones at bay. He could read the emotional state of anyone around him at will, even when they were trying to hide it.

Packer still hadn't opened his eyes but he gently eased his mental shield, opening to the emotional space around him. He listened to his neighbor's deep breathing and, at the top of the inhale, tossed a light shower of energy out into the room. He thought of his power like a kind of echolocation. He could send out a wave of energy and feel it bounce around the emotional characters of the room, gathering their emotional state until finally bouncing back to his emotional radar. The frequency and temperature on the return reflected on who was in the room and how they were feeling.

He didn't talk about his gift much. Most people rolled their eyes in disbelief when he did. His mom said it was the holy spirit and his best friend said it was aura reading. Everyone seemed to have their opinion on what it was, how he should use it, and how he should interpret it, but Packer wasn't interested in their analysis. Whatever it was, he didn't really care to define it. It was his little superpower and he knew it worked.

Packer felt the energy return. There were several people in the room, two sitting on the benches in the corner, one standing or sitting against the far wall, all to his left. Curiously, his neighbor had chosen to lay down in the small space to Packer's right side, between him and the wall, and not in the large empty space to Packer's left, between him and the other men in the room.

The emotional energy of the room pulsed cold and Packer quickly put his shield back up. Cold meant the energy was frenetic and Packer wanted to enjoy the warmth of his yoga high as long as it would last. He returned to his breathing and grounded back into the clay tiles. His body would fully awaken soon but for now, he danced along the edges of consciousness and bliss. He could feel the numbness start to seep into his butt and knew his back only had a few more minutes before it started to ache and he'd have to get up.

Packer filtered through the energy he had retrieved, sorting it by each person in the room. The three on his left were excited, heartbeats racing and nerves tingling, and Packer smiled. This wasn't an uncommon energy in a nude spa. Perhaps it was their first time.

Packer remembered his first Korean spa, walking to the open showers in a haze of anxiety. He had never seen so many naked men. Could he look at them? Should he look away? What if someone saw him glance at their naked body? Would they be offended? What if someone stared at him, what was he supposed to do then? And the most terrifying question of all, what if he got excited?

He could understand why a guest on their first visit would seek out the quiet privacy of the clay room. Maybe they needed a moment to calm down. Packer didn't mind them being there, as long as they were quiet and he could keep his shield up, this was a space for everyone to feel whatever they needed. A nude spa was the perfect place to release the shame of a puritanical culture and validate every feeling. Packer wouldn't fault anyone for getting nervous, it was only natural.

He released the excited energy of the men to his left, letting it dissipate into the ether, and turned to the last energy in the room, his neighbor laying just to his right.

The energy was different than anything he'd ever felt and Packer struggled to contextualize it. It was fresh. Light. Happy. Like a tossed summer salad with dark greens and vibrant vinaigrette. Whoever was over there was different than anyone Packer had ever read. It was such an unusual reading, Packer's breathing caught, the energy invigorating him and he felt his body start to wake from the savasana pose.

He fluttered his eyelids open and let his gaze rest on the ceiling. The clay tiles covered the floor and walls but the ceiling was plaster with brown paint. It kept the room dark and earthy, in line with the clay theme. Packer slowly blinked one, two, three times and finally let his gaze fall to the right. He could see him, right at the corner of his eye. Packer was right, he was close by, his body less than two feet away.

His neighbor lay on his back with his arms resting over his stomach, it slowly rising and falling with his rumbling breath. Just like Packer thought, he was asleep. Slowly Packer let his head roll to the right so he could take in the entirety of the man laying so close to him.

A smile cracked Packer's lips. The salad metaphor had been strangely correct. This man next to him emanated light playfulness. Packer studied his profile. Asleep, he looked entirely at ease. The left corner of his mouth was turned up and Packer could see a hint of smile lines near his closed left eye.

He followed the wrinkles up to his eyelids, gently closed as he slumbered. The eyelids flowed to the profile of a small nose and round cheeks. He had a boyish look. Further down his cheeks hollowed out and the right angle of a strong jaw aged the boyish features. His dirty blonde hair swept across his forehead and down, gentle curls from his hairline not quite making it to the ground.