(a piece from a series about "first times" in my life)
I close the curtains while she sets up the table. I don’t want anyone to see. I have never done this before. Sweat rolls down my face. She says she needs to go to the restroom. As she walks away from me, I notice the knots in her hair -- cords, matted and hanging haphazardly down her back.
She is thin and bra-less. Her armpit hair is curly and blonde, but the hair on her legs is dark, long, and straight. This strikes me as odd.
“Take everything off and lay down under the sheet,” she says as she closes the bathroom door.
I breathe out and take off my shirt and put it on the couch. I look down at my breasts, which hang, also uninhibited by a bra. Red stretch marks glare up at me.
I am fat and ashamed, and I don’t want her to see.
I pull off my cut off jean shorts and my underwear. I place the shorts on the couch next to my shirt, and I fold my underwear and hide them under the shorts.
I look at the rest of my body. More stretch marks branch out down my outer thighs, and rolls of fat wrap around my torso.
I hear the bathroom door handle, and I jump under the sheet. I hide my body like I’ve hidden my underwear, ashamed of both and the condition they’re in.
I keep my face down into the headrest when she comes into the room. I don’t want my eyes to meet hers.
She puts Vivaldi into the CD player. I begin to relax even though I am very aware of my nakedness.
My legs stick to the bottom sheet because of the sweat, and I move to loosen them.
She unzips her bag, removes some lavender oil, opens the bottle, pours it into her hands, rubs them together, and touches me.
The heat from her hands makes me twitch as she massages the middle of my back. Her arms are strong, and she pushes deep into my skin with the tips of her fingers. She pushes the sheet down my back and clutches rolls of my skin in her hands.
She is an artist, and I pretend to be the Venus de Milo as she molds me and shapes me and sculpts me with her hands. She moves the sheet again to uncover my left buttock and leg, and she tucks it between my legs.
As her hands and fingers massage the left side of my behind, I know that I’ve never been touched in that spot, in that way. I like it.
She forces her fingers down to the tight muscles that lay beneath the fat, and they relax.
Vivaldi’s “Winter” plays in the background. She cups my feet and then moves to the other side of me. She finds the muscles in the right cheek of my buttocks and digs deep. I tense. Don’t stop, I think, even though it hurts like hell. Her hands move up my body to my neck and head. I bask like a cat in the movements of freely given affection, only it's not free. It’s ninety bucks an hour.
I try not to think about the money.
I hunger for more touch even though it will end soon. I have starved my body. I let myself get fat to keep the men away, to keep them away from my body, to keep them from fulfilling my belief that no one would want me, really want to touch me in my nakedness.
The music ends. She lifts her hands from my face to indicate time is up.
I don’t want to move, to get up from this table in the middle of my living room, where I have been sculpted, the rolls and curves of my naked body transformed into a piece of art, from this table where I know that I need and deserve touch and can get it without judgment for a small fee.
Comments