Authors: Elisa Lorello
He laughed. "That's cute. Shall we get started?"
For the first thirty minutes, I assigned Devin to write a narrative depicting his history of reading and writing. He sat at his laptop and poked at the keys with his index fingers while I patiently finished viewing the artwork, admiring a Warhol behind him (holy crap, a
real
Warhol!), drinking from the sweating bottle and wiping its moisture with my hand onto my leg. I then moved next to him on his suede sofa and read what was visible on the screen while he continued to type:
When he was younger my father read all kinds of books about the history of World war I and II. He would tell me the stories when I was a kid but I wasn't interested. He also read the newspaper and liked to read the obituaries for some reason. My mother used to read to me at night before I went to bed. She read me the Cat in the Hat books and I memorized a few, like Green eggs and ham. I didn't take an interest in reading until I was older,, between 13 and 18. I read book after book and didn't stop until I got out of high school. I liked who-done-its and museum capers. I also remember learning about the beat writers and liking them a lot. I don't know hwy I stopped. The only writing I did was for school and occasionally I wrote a poem for my girlfriend.
What was his girlfriend like? I wondered. A strange kind of envy hit me like a crested wave and receded just as quickly.
When he finished, I asked him to read the entire narrative to me out loud, and he did so, fixing his typing errors along the way. We talked about the significance of the narrative and his current relationship with writing and reading.
"What do you read today?" I asked.
"The Art and Leisure section of the
Times
, mostly. I don't have time for much else."
"And what do you write?"
"Checks."
I then gave him a short piece to read called "Amid Onions and Oranges, a Boy Becomes a Man," by Donald Murray. After he finished reading it, we talked about Murray's style and use of sensory description, and the concept of writing our own story as we read someone else's. In turn, I asked him to write a response to Murray's story. Devin wrote about his first sexual encounter when he was fifteen years old. Just as he finished reading it aloud, I had turned away and took a swig of water, some of it slipping from the side of my mouth and down my chin. My cheeks were flushed, and he noticed when he looked up from the screen.
"Sorry, didn't mean to embarrass you."
"I can see you've already picked up on sensory description," I said. "That's an interesting word you chose to describe the encounter:
lascivious
. Where'd you get that word?"
"I read some sex books when I got into the business."
"You didn't mention that in your narrative."
"Didn't think that counted."
"Everything counts."
I made a mental note to look up
lascivious
when I got home.
Devin's watch beeped; the first hour was up. He then stood up and took a final swig of his beer.
"Okay, Andi. Take off your shirt."
A look of horror possessed my face. "What?"
"You heard me." He picked up a remote and pressed a button, pointing it at his stereo. Club music blared from all four corners of the room. He kept pressing, and each time the speakers responded with snippets of songs, some of which I could make out the melody. My silent game of
Name That Tune
continued. "What kind of music do you like?" he asked, still station-surfing.
"Beatles, Hendrix, Clapton, Nat King Cole, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, John Mayer..."
He glared at me and cocked an eyebrow.
"I like guitars and pianos."
"What kind of music makes you feel sexy?" he asked.
I paused. "I'm not sure. I never thought about it."
"That's your first homework assignment: listen to every CD you own and make a list of songs that make you feel sexy or put you in the mood."
He walked over to the tower next to the stereo that housed his CD collection and ran his finger down the vertical facade, pulled out a case, and when he opened it, the disc slipped out and bounced and spun on the floor like an oversized coin. He picked it up like a Frisbee, and his fingerprints glossing the surface bothered me; I always hold my CDs supine and by the edges. Seconds later, Etta James began to belt out "I Just Wanna Make Love to You." Devin programmed the stereo with the remote to repeat the song. He then led me to a full-length mirror.
"The first thing I want you to do is to get comfortable showing off your body in daylight. Nothing makes a guy more anxious than a woman who is constantly uptight about her body."
"Why?"
"It's like stepping into an alligator pit. If we try to say something to make the woman feel better, we ultimately say something stupid and make her feel worse; if we say nothing, that's even worse because then the woman wonders what we're thinking and fills in the answer for us, which, of course, is always the wrong one."
"What are you thinking?"
"
Please don't fucking ask me if you look fat
."
"What if she is, though? I mean, what if she's got layers of it and triple chins? Surely you must have clients who are both obese and insecure. What do you say to them?"
"I empower them by giving them the option to talk about it or not, or I simply start touching them and they forget about it. All they really want is to be touched, to be validated. And I've seen enough art depicting figures of every shape and size that all bodies are beautiful to me."
"You're really into art, huh," I said, hearing the stupidity of the sentence seconds later and regretting it.
"Don't change the subject," he reprimanded. "Take off your shirt."
I stood between him and the mirror, frozen.
"Look, Andi. You agreed to trust me. I'm not going to harm you in any way, I promise. And if something is so uncomfortable that you have to stop, you can. I'll never force you to do anything you don't want to do. But if you can't even dip your feet into the water, then you might as well go home and we'll tear up the contract."
He was right; I had to start somewhere, and I had to trust him. I was wearing a heather-gray SCCC t-shirt and denim cut-offs. The straps of my white Body by Victoria bra slid off my shoulders as I tentatively pulled the tee over my head, careful not to rub it against my face and smear my makeup, most of which had gotten gooey during the stuffy subway ride. Oddly enough, a repressed memory reared its ugly head:
Fifth grade, elementary school nurse's office. Four girls and I are told to strip to our underwear for a physical. A strange, pale man with gray hair is examining us, accompanied by a nurse (also a stranger); he makes us lift our undershirts and pulls down our underpants. (Why did he do that? I can't remember.) They weigh and measure each of us and announce our numbers. I am the heaviest, and the girls make fun of me, because I am also the shortest.
Devin broke the flashback. "Nice bra. Body by Victoria. Are you wearing the matching panties?"
"No," I responded, slightly dazed. "They're blue cotton." He told me to look up at him, but I couldn't make eye contact with him. I felt his eyes looking me up and down, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I scanned the room for an exit.
"Tell me what you're thinking and feeling, Andi."
"I'm feeling massively uncomfortable, and thinking that I've made a huge fucking mistake to do this since I hardly know you."
"Understandable. But you had enough fucking guts to ask me in the first place. And I commend you for that. Really, I do. That's not something an inhibited woman does. Something in you wants to get past this fear and discomfort, otherwise you wouldn't be here."
My muscles relaxed slightly after he said that.
"Just listen to the music," he said. His voice lowered to a soothing pitch. He continued, "It's just you and me. No one else is in the room, no one can hurt you, and you can leave any time you want. But before you do, I want you to look in the mirror."
I turned and stood before the full-length mirror, fixated on my half-exposed body. My belly protruded from under my breasts, lifted and held by the bra. My breasts were big and saggy. My body stocky and short. Shoulders narrow. Back broad. Legs stunted. Arms wiggly.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"Flab everywhere," I replied. "What do you see?"
"I'll bet if you stood here, completely naked and posed, you'd have a Reubenesque body. Really, Andi. You're voluptuous. You've got this fleshy belly, you're curvy, you've got ample breasts, your legs are great, and everything's in proportion."
Were we looking at the same body? I suspiciously eyed Devin's reflection in the mirror.
"
Oh, you're a smooth tawlkuh--you are, you are
," I said in my best Marisa Tomei,
My Cousin Vinnie
impersonation. I could tell he was getting a little annoyed.
"Do I say what women want or need to hear? Yes. Is it bullshit? I don't think so. All women are beautiful, Andi. And I didn't get my reputation by bullshitting my clients. Women come back to me because I tell them the truth."
"
All
women? Oh,
come on
! Qualifier aside, you're a modern-day sophist! You tell them the truth, but it's a truth swaddled in words like 'voluptuous' and 'Reubenesque' and 'curvy.' Like putting Sweet'N Low in your ultra-caffeinated coffee after downing a greasy cheeseburger and fries--what difference does it make?"
"First of all, I have no idea what a sophist is. Second of all, which would you rather hear, that you're curvy and voluptuous, or that you're not as fat but your breasts are bigger than some women I've met? Truth is relative, is it not? And you just told me in my first lesson that word choice goes a long way when persuading an audience to keep reading."
My mouth hung open as I stood there. Quick fucking learner.
"It's perception. Look..." He lifted the lid on a leather ottoman next to a chair, pulled out a coffeetable book and opened it to a Reubens painting. "Do you see a fat woman? I don't. These painters regarded the female body as the essence of human life. Her flesh was life-giving, her curves life-affirming. And painters captured that and all its beauty."
I flipped through the book slowly, studying each earthly, heavenly figure, looking in particular at bodies that seemed to resemble my own. Why did I see these as stunning and mine as stunting?
"Go back to the mirror and look again, and tell me
one thing
you like about your body--any part."
I went back to the mirror and stood skeptically, staring at my reflection, feeling the rhythm of the song that was on its second playing. I looked at every part of my body.
"I like my eyes."
"I do too. What else?" he asked, standing behind me. I paused and looked again. "Look at your
body
."
"I like that my body seems to be flabby in proportion. It's not as if I have these little boobs and an excessive belly, or a butt that is three times the width of my waist."
He nodded while I looked some more. "I like my legs, too," I added. "They're muscular."
I looked even more and remembered how Andrew used to compliment me on my legs. My legs and my face--everything else in between was nonexistent, I guessed. Then again, I'd pretty much covered up everything else.
My observation was jarred by the touch of Devin's moist hands on my hips and waist in an attempt to move them to the music. I jumped. "WHOA! I forgot to tell you that I am massively ticklish."
He stepped back. "That's cute. That's really cute. We'll make that work to your advantage. In the meantime, start dancing."
Devin made me dance in front of the mirror, moving and swaying to the rhythm of the music. "
Feel
the words," he kept saying. "Don't just see yourself as half-dressed and dancing. See yourself as sumptuous."
My bra straps kept sliding off my shoulders and my bare feet squeaked and stuck to the wood floor, knocking me off balance a couple of times. But by the fifth round of "I Just Wanna Make Love to You," I forgot that he was in the room, watching me, and instead I watched myself sway my hips and bend my knees and stick out my chest and raise my arms over my head and seductively motion to my reflection as if motioning to my lover. It had never occurred to me to wonder if he had been turned on while watching me.
Finally, he stopped the CD.
"Good. Your homework this week is to fall in love with your body. Actually be
attracted
to it. Also, practice dancing, because next week you're gonna dance for
me
--not the mirror--and I'm gonna have you strip further."
I made a second mental note to wear matching underwear that day.
Devin's homework was to write the first draft of a memoir, read a Patricia Hampl essay, and make a list of twenty of his favorite words. My homework was to make a list of sexy songs and dance naked in front of my mirror. I wondered who had it easier. Sitting on the hot, stuffy train packed with gray-skinned, faceless commuters, I closed my eyes and listened to Etta James in my head all the way home.
Chapter Six
Week Two of the Arrangement
I
DANCED ALL WEEK. I DANCED TO EARLY Duran Duran and Janet Jackson and Robert Palmer. I danced to Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles. I danced to Jimi Hendrix and Joe Satriani and Stevie Ray Vaughn. I danced in my cut-offs and a bra, in bra and panties, in a bathing suit, topless, and finally, naked. I danced in daylight and in darkness. I always danced in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom (although one early evening I caught myself checking out my reflection in a shop window). I watched the way my breasts moved, the way my arms formed shapes in the air, the way my legs jutted out, round and muscular. I watched my feet tap in rhythm. I watched my hips sway and thrust. I watched my neck turn, and strands of my hair fall in my face. I watched every curve, every curl, every roll, every muscle. And Devin was right: I fell in love with my body.