Tag Archives: body

Femme du monde

I spoke in a paranoid manner, like someone dealing coke on a playground.

“She always wears the same pants–high-waisted, the color of mustard,” I explained.

K furrowed his forehead. “So what?”

He didn’t get it. She and I had been out six times, and while she was attractive, her sartorial choices revolved around that high-waisted, mustard-colored pair of pants.

K continued after an uncomfortable pause: “When are you seeing her next?” 

“Tonight. She’s coming over for dinner.”


……….


I made her pasta and got her drunk. We groped at each other–unhooking, unzipping.

I reached for the button on her pants.

“Wait,” she gasped, clutching my hand, “we should stop.”


……….


“I’m ready” read the email. Twenty years had passed. But I knew what it meant. 

She still lived at the same place. She seemed too old–a disease, she would explain later in the bedroom. She still had on the same pants. They were faded and badly worn in the knees.

“Fuck me,” she hissed. I grabbed her by the waist and yanked her pants to the ground. Her torso toppled from her hips with a thud. “Thank you,” she said before dying.

“For what,” I wondered. I hadn’t fucked her yet.




All the Dangers of the Past

K always said goodbye in the same way: detached yet sympathetic, like a vet telling a child that her dog has died.

Some cried. Others seemed relieved. The woman sitting on the edge of his new gray couch was somewhere in the middle. She muttered something obligatory about “stay[ing] friends” but she snatched up her things  and left in a decidedly unfriendly manner.

K was finally convinced: No woman, regardless of beauty, charm, or material wealth, could measure up to the stunning creature that was engraved on his forearm in bold lines and colors. She understood him. She would never hurt him.

He ran his fingers across her face.

……….

K had gone to the tattoo parlor on a whim one day, taking with him an editorial spread from a men’s magazine featuring some exotic model from South America. K watched her take shape, grimacing with each thrust of the tattoo artist’s needles yet anticipating the end result. When the woman was finally complete, K just knew his lovelife would never be the same.

……….

K glanced at the woman on his arm. Then he climbed into his skin next to her. Taking her hand, “We can finally be together,” he whispered.


The Obvious Yet Pertinent Question

The woman, whose heavy foreign eyes and striking hair/eye composition give her the air of a sleepy Scarlett Johansson or a strung out Courtney Love, will kill him.

Here is how:

She will go home with him.

He will tear her gown from her body. Then he will realize that she has wooden legs.

He will not know how to proceed but he will notice that she has grown uncomfortable. He will know immediately that she has become self-conscious.

He will think back to their “dates” and her countless long dresses.

He will recall the way she hobbles about.

Briefly, he will get mad at her (“You could have told me!”).

Then he will compose himself and gaze into her eyes, uttering romantic things. They will have sex. She will stay over but vanish by dawn.

In the morning he will find a splinter in his hand. Rubbing it, he will think fondly of her until his hand becomes infected.

As the infection spreads, he will not wonder if she planned the whole thing; but he should. Then he will die.

But he will not mind. For he will have fallen in love with the woman and her wooden legs.


When the Body is No Longer Marked

Thus he woke to find that the woman’s name he gleefully got tattooed on his arm was now a different woman’s name. (I love you, he had said gazing into her eyes as the needle pierced his skin. He grimaced. But not because he loved her.)

Did you do this? He woke her up. It was of course impossible to alter something as permanent as a tattoo. But she was understanding as she absorbed his accusation. I didn’t. She rubbed her eyes and tamed her hair.

He studied the name. Then he kicked her out, proclaiming undying love for the woman whose name now inexplicably graced his arm.

That night he went to a karaoke bar. What’s your name he asked a lot of women. Then he went home.

Several weeks later he was at a steak house when a woman touched his arm saying that’s my name. She was fat, but it was probably a life lesson he told himself. He invited her to sit down. They talked. He found her pleasant but she was still fat. So when she politely excused herself “for a moment” he grabbed a steak knife and began digging at his tattoo.