She’d already fucked him, Marcus.
And on those rare occasions when Marcus caught my eye and I wanted to believe he was looking at me?
Well, he wasn’t.
He was looking through me.
At her.
3
‘Can you see my ass in the mirror?’
This is what I say to Jack in the hope of attracting his attention.
He’s propped up on the bed one evening, shortly after the beginning of the Fall semester, reading some report or other.
I’ve just come out of the shower and I’m lying naked, face down across the bed, with my arms folded in front of me and my head resting on them so I can look up at him. I’m displaying myself for him the way Brigitte Bardot shows herself off for her estranged husband, Michel Piccoli, in Contempt. I’m feeding Jack lines from the movie to see how he responds.
It’s a game I like to play. Not to test his love but to interrogate his desire for me.
He glances up at the mirror, briefly, says ‘Yes’, and goes straight back to his reading material.
But he’s not getting away with it that easily.
Do you like what you see, I say.
‘Why? Shouldn’t I?’ he says, without even averting his gaze from the page.
Does my ass look fat, I say.
‘You’ve got a beautiful ass,’ he says.
But is it fat?
‘You’ve got a beautiful fat ass.’ He looks at me – at me, not at my ass – smiles, and returns to his papers again.
How about my thighs, I say.
I reach back and stroke my thigh just below the ass and, while I’m at it, I pull the cheek apart just a tad so he’ll get a glimpse of my plump little pussy from behind.
‘They’re great,’ he says. This time he doesn’t even look.
That’s all, I say, just ‘great’?
‘What do you want me to say?’ he says.
I might be feeding him questions but I’m not about to give him the answers.
Do they look thick, I say, as thick as tree trunks?
‘They look just fine,’ he says.
Whatever he’s reading, he’s engrossed in it – the way I wish he would be engrossed in me.
I roll over onto my back, arch my shoulders and cup my breasts, pushing them up into two rolling hills, and jiggle them a little.
Which do you prefer, I say, my breasts or my nipples?
My body is still flushed with heat from the shower and the areolae are pink and round. I brush and circle my nipples with my thumbs until I start to feel them swell.
‘Does one come without the other?’ he says, showing not the least bit of interest.
If you could choose, I say.
‘If I could choose between nipples without breasts or breasts without nipples?’ he laughs.
Yeah, I say, if you could have a girl who was totally flat-chested or one with tits so big the nipples were almost non-existent.
‘You, or someone else,’ he says. But, perhaps deciding this isn’t a conversation he wants to have anyway, he doesn’t wait for an answer. He says, ‘I like them just the way they are.’
Damn you, Jack, I think, pay attention to me. Look what I have here for you! And you can have it on a plate. For free. No strings attached.
The less attention he gives me, the more childish and petulant I become.
I’m thinking about shaving my pussy, I say, sliding my fingers into my bush and tugging at the tight brown curls of hair.
I say it because I know he won’t like it, because he finds completely hairless girls a real turn-off.
‘Don’t,’ he says, curtly.
Why not, I say.
Now I’m just trying to be provocative. Anything to get a reaction. And it works.
He stares at me over his knees, annoyed.
But he doesn’t say anything and it doesn’t make any difference because, now I know that I’ve got his attention, I decide to push him further.
I might do it anyway, I say, as casually as I can.
‘Don’t,’ he says again, in a way that says, this is not up for discussion. In a way that says, leave me alone.
I stretch my arms up over my head, then roll onto my side, just to deny him the pleasure of seeing my breasts, my bush. I want him to kiss my ass instead. And I lie there, pretending to ignore him. As if he even cares.
That’s the way it always seems to be with us right now.
No communication. No copulation.
I totally get why. Jack was working hard all through the summer vacation at the campaign office, and now the Fall semester’s started, he’s got even more work to do. Even less time for me. It’s rare that I pick him up from the office any more.
Jack’s playful, up to a point. But try as I might, I can’t rouse his interest in taking it any further. I can’t make him show a whole lot of interest in fucking me. It’s not like we don’t have sex, or that it’s not good when we do. It really is.