In a bright, busy shopping mall was a stall which sold calendars. They were displayed in racks and divided into sections: TV show calendars, movie star calendars, landscape photograph calendars and—taking up four rows—calendars that featured sexy women. In contrast, the woman selling the calendars was short, tough-looking and had small suspicious eyes. Her long, bleached blond hair was tied back in a ponytail which may have suited her when she was twenty, but she wasn't twenty now.
It was her experience that the shoppers came in waves—sometimes it was busy and sometimes there were lulls. When there was a lull, a woman who worked in a nearby shop would come out for a chat. She was dark-haired but about the same age and height as the blond woman and the two of them would enjoy a few moments of complaining about the shoppers.
One day, the blond woman was in full swing complaining about the lack of people willing to spend money when the dark-haired woman nodded to indicate that there was someone behind her. The blond woman turned and saw a gaunt man with lank hair holding a calendar in both hands. His fingernails were dirty.
'How much?' he said.
The blond woman glanced at the calendar. It was the
Christina Fabulosa
calendar from the sexy girl section.
'Nine pounds, ninety-nine,' she said.
The man held out a ten-pound note. Making a mental note to wash her hands afterwards, the blond woman put the note into her money belt and handed the man a penny change.
'Do you want a bag for that?' she said.
The man stared at her blinking. Finally realising that she hadn't said 'fuck off', the man bobbed his head and smiled. Keeping her expression fiercely neutral, the blond woman snapped a thin blue plastic bag open and dropped the calendar into it. She held it out so that he could take it without their fingers touching.
'Thank you!' said the man. 'Thank you very much!'
He bobbed his head in farewell as though she were a duchess and hurried away holding the calendar to his chest. The blond woman watched him disappear and then turned to her friend. The brown-haired woman looked back at her.
'Yuck!' she said.
***************************
As soon as the man arrived home in his tatty apartment, he ripped open the bag and took out his calendar. He sat on a grime-coloured sofa and stared at the cover picture of his dream girl.
Christina Fabulosa was wearing a bikini and kneeling on a beach somewhere, the water lapping around her knees and feet. She had the look of a teenage girl who had just burst into the full flower of womanhood. Her breasts were large and round, her body was curved and slender, and her full brown hair looked smooth and soft. But it was her smile and the look in her eyes that really got to him. She seemed to be saying:
Look at me
Look at me
I want you to look at me...
The man propped the calendar up against a cushion on the sofa, unzipped his pants and began to masturbate. As he did, the awareness that he was half-lying on a sofa jacking off in front of a calendar faded into the background. He felt himself transported to another reality ... a reality in which the luscious Christina Fabulosa was kneeling before him on a beach and smiling at him.
I love what my body does to you
