A few years back I decided to work in Atlanta and take it easy in the Deep South for a week. I booked a room at the Georgian Terrace, an iconic Atlanta hotel in Midtown off of Peachtree Street. The hotel was known for hosting luminaries such as Calvin Coolidge, Talullah Bankhead and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Georgian Terrace had also hosted the premiere gala for Gone with the Wind.
Needless to say, I had visions of sipping a mint julep while dressed in white linen, lounging on the hotel patio, working only every other day to offer the joints in my hands and elbows a rest. Happy elbow's a bitch.
I arrived in Atlanta on a Monday, checked into the Georgian Terrace and went straight to the café patio, wearing jeans, and enjoyed a bourbon cocktail while watching passersby. After an hour or so I went up to my room and napped for a few hours. I woke up and readied myself for the one client I'd booked for the day. Afterwards I went down for a casual dinner then decided to continue my lazy day with an early night to bed.
The next morning I woke up late, showered and decided to head down for breakfast: scones and a latte. When I got down to the lobby there appeared to be at least a hundred people checking out. I ignored the commotion and strolled into the café. I asked my waiter about the mass exodus. He explained that seventy-five percent of the hotel was checking out. The BET hip-hop awards were going to be live that night, less than a block away at the Fox Theatre.
Within minutes a train of the shiniest Escalades I've ever seen rolled up to the hotel curb. I sat and watched while at least thirty well-dressed black urbanites, pulling luggage that I would be happy to live in, checked into the Georgian Terrace. After the show died down I headed out for a little sightseeing. After no more than an hour my phone was blowing up with too many massage requests to ignore. So I headed back with four bookings under my belt.
There was another BET group checking in when I returned and after a few minutes of rubber necking some of the men I went upstairs and prepared for my first client. I wasn't shocked when he turned out to be a fabulous black woman trapped in a heavyset black guy's body. He was there doing makeup for one of the wives. He made me laugh uncontrollably throughout the session, then promised to drop off a joint before the awards show that night.
My fourth client showed up twenty minutes late around 3 pm and floored me when he walked through the door of my room. He was a well-known-ish, physically stunning R&B hip-hop artist. Having had more black men in me than a Harlem urinal, I would have slept with him right there in the doorway. He told me that the makeup artist loved my massage and suggested me. He stripped down to his underwear and hopped on my table. I then proceeded to give him the most comprehensive massage I could perform. No muscle went unworked, including the niner that was jutting out from his underwear when he turned over. He left, paid double and gave me a hug on his way out. Ten minutes later the makeup artist dropped off the joint he had promised.
"Girl, I gotta go make a fifty-year old woman look like she's twenty."
And he walked off while we both laughed.
After he left I smoked part of the joint on my balcony, thinking about how the faraway dream of my lazy Southern vacation turned into a surprise blackout that I couldn't have been happier about.
