receiving a glycolic peel (I don’t find its biting sting unwelcome—in general with beauty treatments , pain feels like an assurance of progress to me) for the aesthetician to gush, “You know? You really could be a model.”
“I’m too short,” I’d quip. “Five foot seven.” Though I’d flirted with doing print ads for a small time during college, I couldn’t stand taking direction. I also had the fear that with the right photographer , the real me might accidentally be captured—that in looking at the photo, suddenly everyone’s eyes would widen and they’d actually see me for the very first time:
Oh my God—you’re a soulless pervert!
The lobby of the plastic surgeon’s office had a clinical asceticism to it; with its white pillar columns and brushed chrome accents, it seemed to be part church and part laboratory. I suppose that was the message they were trying to convey: staving off decrepitude combined the miracles of religion with the progressive advancements of medicine. Yet the elderly patients in the waiting room made it clear what a pseudoscience the whole thing was. They’d often look up at me, raising vast draperies of throat skin that hung above their crepe chests like crumpled ascots. Knowing the miseries of my future body, most of them couldn’t help but give me a smile filled with sadistic delight. “You have beautiful skin,” one told me once. She seemed to squirm with relish as she said the words; it was no different from kicking me in the ribs and saying,
Everything on you will one day sag.
But for now, every inch of my flesh was perfectly taut—if I were to run out to the lobby midtreatment and shed my bathrobe, the sight of my immaculate abdomen would likely have caused these withered creatures to fall to their knees crying and break a hip.
Spa days were usually paired with shopping sprees. These were a necessary cushion against the realities of my pretend marriage: buying nice things helped me temporarily forget the vulgar angle to which Ford’s stubbled jaw hung open while he was snoring, the moist smacks his tongue made when he chewed a steak, and even my rare though inescapable duties in the bedroom. But they certainly couldn’t help divert my thoughts from Jack. Lately I’d begun packing my closet with body-clinging tailored suits and silk shells with low-cut backs: this way I could wear a jacket into the classroom , then remove it so only the students could see my exposed flesh, never the other teachers; occasionally I also wore long sateenscarves that covered my chest. Only upon entering the class would I wrap them up around my neck or sling them back across my shoulders so the air conditioner paired with my open-nipple bra could put on a show. Until I was engaging in true contact with Jack or another student, I needed the boys’ hungry stares for sustenance: these young men were so new to life, they didn’t yet know how to mask the direction in which their eyes were peeking nor their wonder and delight at what they were looking at.
Even in this competition of the involuntary gaze, Jack proved himself to be far superior to his peers. While others looked upon my chest with a gleeful smirk or pleasant shock, Jack stared in the way one might watch a waterfall—there was something profoundly hopeful in his glance, an optimism that the world held more wonder than he’d ever thought to guess. It was a feeling I tried to encourage in him with an affirmative glance or a nod, one that told him, simply and plainly,
You’re seeing exactly what you think you’re seeing.
*
In retrospect perhaps
it was also his name that set me on his trail—I hoped Jack Patrick’s two first names meant he was two boys in one: public Patrick, a regular fourteen-year-old schoolboy, and private Jack, who might willfully submit to every smutty thing I wanted to do to him.
His behavior in the classroom was promising: self-doubtful but alert; laughing when I or one of his classmates made a
“I’m too short,” I’d quip. “Five foot seven.” Though I’d flirted with doing print ads for a small time during college, I couldn’t stand taking direction. I also had the fear that with the right photographer , the real me might accidentally be captured—that in looking at the photo, suddenly everyone’s eyes would widen and they’d actually see me for the very first time:
Oh my God—you’re a soulless pervert!
The lobby of the plastic surgeon’s office had a clinical asceticism to it; with its white pillar columns and brushed chrome accents, it seemed to be part church and part laboratory. I suppose that was the message they were trying to convey: staving off decrepitude combined the miracles of religion with the progressive advancements of medicine. Yet the elderly patients in the waiting room made it clear what a pseudoscience the whole thing was. They’d often look up at me, raising vast draperies of throat skin that hung above their crepe chests like crumpled ascots. Knowing the miseries of my future body, most of them couldn’t help but give me a smile filled with sadistic delight. “You have beautiful skin,” one told me once. She seemed to squirm with relish as she said the words; it was no different from kicking me in the ribs and saying,
Everything on you will one day sag.
But for now, every inch of my flesh was perfectly taut—if I were to run out to the lobby midtreatment and shed my bathrobe, the sight of my immaculate abdomen would likely have caused these withered creatures to fall to their knees crying and break a hip.
Spa days were usually paired with shopping sprees. These were a necessary cushion against the realities of my pretend marriage: buying nice things helped me temporarily forget the vulgar angle to which Ford’s stubbled jaw hung open while he was snoring, the moist smacks his tongue made when he chewed a steak, and even my rare though inescapable duties in the bedroom. But they certainly couldn’t help divert my thoughts from Jack. Lately I’d begun packing my closet with body-clinging tailored suits and silk shells with low-cut backs: this way I could wear a jacket into the classroom , then remove it so only the students could see my exposed flesh, never the other teachers; occasionally I also wore long sateenscarves that covered my chest. Only upon entering the class would I wrap them up around my neck or sling them back across my shoulders so the air conditioner paired with my open-nipple bra could put on a show. Until I was engaging in true contact with Jack or another student, I needed the boys’ hungry stares for sustenance: these young men were so new to life, they didn’t yet know how to mask the direction in which their eyes were peeking nor their wonder and delight at what they were looking at.
Even in this competition of the involuntary gaze, Jack proved himself to be far superior to his peers. While others looked upon my chest with a gleeful smirk or pleasant shock, Jack stared in the way one might watch a waterfall—there was something profoundly hopeful in his glance, an optimism that the world held more wonder than he’d ever thought to guess. It was a feeling I tried to encourage in him with an affirmative glance or a nod, one that told him, simply and plainly,
You’re seeing exactly what you think you’re seeing.
*
In retrospect perhaps
it was also his name that set me on his trail—I hoped Jack Patrick’s two first names meant he was two boys in one: public Patrick, a regular fourteen-year-old schoolboy, and private Jack, who might willfully submit to every smutty thing I wanted to do to him.
His behavior in the classroom was promising: self-doubtful but alert; laughing when I or one of his classmates made a
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