Sure, I knew that I had taken advantage of her. I had manipulated her. I had used her. I had made her the subject of a twisted experiment, of sorts. But did I really deserve those final words from her?
She always had some sort of thing for me. That's how it started. I was just in that particular time in a guy's life when it was easy to see myself as a hot commodity. I thought I was important. It was easy to feel that I really was worth all the adoration and affection thrown my way by girls like her.
Even now, I remember her on the bed in the hotel room. It's three in the morning and she still wants more. I get up and go to the sink to pour myself another glass of water. When I return, the light on the nightstand is turned on. It casts a pornographic glow over her skin. She wants me to see what she's offering me. The sprawled, rumpled sheets tell a story of their own.
If I could glimpse her face, I would know that it shows that same expression I've been wondering over all night: her mouth just slightly open, her eyes full of craving, and strands of her hair stuck to her forehead from perspiration. She's stopped worrying about how she shows herself. She's stopped worrying about whether or not I find her attractive.
That's why when I come back from the bathroom I discover her on all fours on the bed, and her high heels are on again. She's wearing them like some sort of sex-kitten who's been waiting for nothing other than me to notice her all night. I see her round, beautifully plump butt facing me, legs slightly apart. There are no words from her. No face to look at, no cue to tell me what she wants. There's nothing other than her shadowed rear and her moist pussy lips, which she's offering to me, and I can't help but gorge myself on after just standing there a moment, taking in the scene, committing it to memory. I made this, I think.
Truthfully, it helped that I was from the good side of the tracks, and she from the bad. She said I looked like a Greek God, while she -- at the time - was just a plain, forgettable someone. She had a stupid boyfriend who could barely tell her she was beautiful; I once took her to a five-star restaurant and made her laugh over a bottle of wine and lobster. His friends thought the world revolved around TV; my friends at least acknowledged her. She was one of several girls whose orbit crossed mine on occasion. I remained what I imagined as tantalizingly unavailable to her and others like her.
She married her boyfriend. Less than a year later she filed for divorce. Emotionally, she was crushed and predictably her self-esteem had bottomed in some dark place. I had a plan. I had an experiment to try. She had an insurance settlement from an old accident that she used to pay her bills. In a moment of arrogant surety I convinced her to take a chunk of the money to get her breasts enlarged -- it was her idea to use the rest to liposuction the fat out of her little belly. It all worked, in its own way; it transformed her.
I just blurted the words out: I think you should get your boobs fixed. Incredibly, she listened. I saw her face fall in a demoralizing show of self-loathing and then the idea took hold and I recognized how much my fractured opinion mattered to her. I could tell she thought it was a way out of where she was. Within hours, she had the names of doctors she would call the next day. Any guilt over my ruse passed in an instant. Get 'em big, I said. Really big.
On her diminutive frame, I wondered over the logic of that, but it was part of the plan. I pictured how obvious they would be, how she might be pigeonholed the rest of her life. It didn't help that she was blonde and came from a trailer park. The world can be an unkind place. To a poor and naΓ―ve girl with huge boobs, it was probably brutal in a sugar coated way. I did know - at least - that her naivety would fall away - replaced by what, I had no idea.
The insurance money was sitting in the bank because she said she had slipped in a restroom and twisted her back. I wondered about that. It seemed like a scam, especially when she never complained of pain or lack of movement. I was savvy enough by then to recognize that she was a 'user' of sorts, as my older brother would say. She was a good person, just somehow shorted in life.
There was a hole in her, and I could tell how she fixated on trying to fill it. When we all went out and she knew I was picking up the bill - which was always - she would order a desert or extra side dish and just ignore it - let sit without a single bite. It was as if she were taking perverse pleasure in neglecting a kindness. There was this feeling she gave that said 'I'm broken'. I imagined sleeping with her -- she telling me she was on the pill -- and then nine-months later being hit with a paternity suit. It had happened to my best friend in high school, and his messed-up life was like a shipwreck that warned people of the jagged rocks just beneath the surface.
Still, I was drawn to her. She adored me. I could see that if not love, it was borderline obsession. She found me hilarious, chivalrous, sophisticated, and stunningly handsome. Perhaps she thought I was her way to some other life she assumed was just beyond her reach. I was her window on a better world that included trips to Europe, fancy cars, a life of leisure, and all the unwanted, uneaten chocolate cake she could ever order. Maybe though, all she wanted was a husband that adored her and a house that she wasn't embarrassed over. If she thought that husband was going to me, she was wrong, but I never told her.
She showed me the bras that she bought at Foley's. The date was still weeks away, but she found these and stuffed them with Kleenex and was putting them on under her clothes to see how she would look. Her doctor had the implants on order and she had taken my advice. They were big - in fact her doctor tried to talk her down a few sizes for aesthetic reasons. Did she think I would be disappointed otherwise?
It didn't seem to matter; she emerged from her bedroom with a giddy smile. Her sweater stretched tight over two stuffed voluptuous peaks and she made a show of half-serious teasing. I laughed with her, but I wondered over what I had put in motion. For the first time when I looked at her I felt an ache for what would be and for what was fading away; she was finding a signature that was lusty and now overtly sexual.
She knew that soon it would be easy for guys to objectify her, to think of her simply as the chick with the huge tits. She was naΓ―ve, not dumb. They would try and maneuver her and position her for seduction. I imagined she didn't care, or perhaps welcomed the coming attention in whatever form it took. She pursed her lips in an exaggerated kiss, found a flashlight sitting on a table and pushed it between her tissue-filled cups. She did this awkwardly, self-consciously, as if imitating something she thought a stripper would do at a bachelor party. We laughed. For better or worse, after those implants 'forgettable' would never figure in her description.
Already, she had made a pile of clothes that she could keep, and those that would need to be given away. A couple of borderline tops sat in another pile, and she put them on and asked my opinion. None of them would fit, not even close. I told her so, but she playfully argued back that she didn't want to hide her new figure. It occurred to me that her natural breasts were probably very nice. She turned around, smiling, looking at herself in the mirror, imagining. It was the first time I knew of that I had seen her wear her hair up, accenting her neck.
THE DAY came and went, and she called me the next morning. I asked how she felt. A little sore and groggy but otherwise fine; she was just going to spend the next few days hanging around her place. Then the inevitable: You want to see them? I said, no. Not yet, anyway. Soon, though. The line was silent for a few seconds. We hung up after a few pleasantries and after I told her to drink plenty of water.
She suggested we go out to dinner the next night, and I said sure, that would be great. The night was cold and she had a coat on, but I could immediately tell the difference. As she stood in her doorway she was smiling like I had never seen. In the car she made a gesture to show me, but I said no, don't worry about it. I could read confusion in her face, was I somehow disappointed? Even I didn't know how to answer.
The restaurant was thankfully empty and we slunk into a darkly lit corner. She pulled off her coat, revealing that same sweater I had seen her wear before, in her practice assessment. Her new breasts pushed impossibly against the material and she studied the way I studied her. The first words from my mouth were, Good Lord. Then I muttered, is that all you? Somehow I was still thinking of the tissue-stuffed bra. She nodded yes, it was all her. She said, its okay to look, this is all new to me, too. She laughed. She said, I keep on touching them; I can't believe it's actually me! None too subtly, she moved to show me in profile. She looked like a bombshell, a cartoon pinup, a sex-kitten, an adolescent fantasy-scribble come to life.
Oddly, I suddenly missed the times when she had been hanging around me at a bar. She was there, but never the focus of anyone's attention, and certainly not mine: just a girl that was part of the group. I could barely picture her like that. Now, unless she made great pains to camouflage her breasts with carefully considered clothing, or just hid under a big coat, she would be very much a part of the foreground and not the landscape. That was just the way things worked. I imagined stupid frat boys circling around her, trying to make her laugh, and laughing too loud and too long at her own silliness.
They're still a little numb and tender, she said. The doctor said that all the feeling should come back within a few weeks or more... Don't you want to see them? Sure, I said, gulping a glug of water. We finished dinner, and then she ordered an extra orange juice that she only sipped. I noticed as I paid the bill, she had left it sitting there, almost full.