I stare into the mirror countless times a day, inspecting all the raw elements of my body. All the time wasted obsessing over the extraction of blackheads, the removal of hairs, trying and testing out the elasticity of my skin, stretching the wrinkles back five years, and cupping the back end that wasn’t nearly as big a few years ago, and all the while I wonder if my husband knows that I used to be sort of a hottie. Apparently he thought I was at the time he married me four years ago, but a lot has changed since then. I’ve adapted to his eating habits, I don’t have money for contacts, I don’t have time to exercise, I’m no longer tan but have the pasty complexion of an insider, and my apparel is slightly reminiscent of a librarian, and not the sweet and sexy kind either, just the frumpy grumpy kind that will harass you over late fines while her pantyhose are slipping down her chunky thighs and unshaven shins. And it’s only been recently, with my more engaged time with the imperfection reflection, that I’ve realized more boys like me than I ever thought was possible at the time when I was actually living it. I felt so sorry for myself that no one ever showed any interest in me, but now I know better, and I know a little bit more about how male minds work, but not entirely. I should’ve been content with myself and I should’ve stopped fussing over whether boys liked me or not. All boys, except for my husband, turned out to be trouble anyway.
But the other day I was thinking of one of those boys from high school. I was thinking of what a jerk he was, and how he brutally harassed me in the quiet, class-is-in-session hallways of our high school. He wasn’t always a jerk, and he didn’t always slam me into the lockers or knock my books out of my hands or make fun of my awesome change-colors-in-the-sun surfer tee shirt I got at Thrift Town. No, he saved that for after we went to the Pink Floyd laser show at the planetarium, and we sat next to each other in the dusty, broken down reclining seats.
His hand was placed on my knee, safe for a minute until the heat from his palm burst through the cotton-spandex of my pants to the soft and shaven skin of my thigh. His huge hand roughly gliding up my thigh until I picked his hand up and dropped it back at the safe zone. A few more rehearsed tries of his hand skating over my pants, and me dropping it back to either my knee, or as the laser show progressed and me desperately wanting him to get the idea, I even dropped his hand back in his own lap. Then, believe it or not, but mostly believe it since we were in high school and he was a teenage boy, he leaned in for the kiss. I pushed him away, and the lights went on, and my mind was no longer befuddled by The Wall or the boy who couldn’t learn. And as our group walked back to the car in the cold crisp downtown air, I kept my distance from him, and his lanky form strode next to his friend as they laughed and talked about the universe, or what have you. After that night, after dropping his ego back in his lap, he tormented me.
