I'm flat-chested. When I say "flat-chested," I don't just mean that I have small boobs. I mean I have
no
boobs. I found on the Internet a description of a girl like me. It said, "If she takes off her clothes, stands sideways, and sticks out her tongue, she looks like a zipper." That pretty well sums it up. I am
seriously
flat-chested.
I could have told you other things about myself. That I'm 5'5" tall and brunette, that I'm an assistant manager at a deli downtown, that I still live with my parents and brother and they're very nice, and that I love roller coasters and any kind of ride that makes you think you're going to throw up. And I'm saving up money to buy a motorcycle.
All those things about me are true and they're important, but none of those was the first thing I told you about myself, were they? The first thing I told you was that I'm flat-chested. That's me. Flat-Chested Jill.
Not everybody knows that I'm flat-chested. I always wear a bra with silicone inserts, so I look more like a small B-cup. I compensate in other ways too. I dress like a girlie-girl, with rings and necklaces and bracelets, with my hair and nails done up and just a little makeup. I wear pretty skirts, frilly tops, high-heeled sandals. I'm really very cute.
Here's something else about me that's important-- I really like old movies. I have a DVD and Blu-ray collection that takes up 5 feet of my bookshelf, and I have most of the Oscar-winners from the 70's and 80's and a bunch that are much older too. Mom says I spend all my salary on DVD's, but she's just kidding (I think).
Most of my friends have never seen these old movies before, which is a shame because a lot of them are better than most movies you see in the theaters. They give me someplace to live for a couple of hours, outside of my own head, and sometimes I learn something. I watch a movie almost every night, sometimes the same one two or three nights in a row if the characters are interesting. For example, I watched
Groundhog Day
four times in a row (how's that for irony?) thinking about what the girl sees when she looks at Bill Murray, and how he finally learns the right way to behave and make a relationship with her.
Which brings me to another topic-- I have a boyfriend, Matt. This is a big deal because Matt is my first real boyfriend. I used to think that boys wouldn't want me because of my flat chest, but now I know it was my own fault. I was so self-conscious about my chest that I drove them away. If a boy was nice to me, I'd be afraid he'd find out about my chest, so I'd act like I wasn't interested and he'd think I was mean or stuck-up or something. Pretty soon, word got around and boys stopped asking. I really screwed that up. I wasn't doing it on purpose or to be mean like Bill Murray did, but the effect was the same. That's why I'd never had a boyfriend before Matt.
That was high school. That was then but this is now. Bill Murray learned from his mistakes and so did I.
I met Matt at the deli where I work. The deli is close to the community college where Matt goes to school, and he stops there every day on his way to class to buy a sandwich for lunch. Every day, he'd order a different sandwich. I like that. It's adventurous.
I'm adventurous too. Not too long ago, I wanted to be a cop. I wanted to run down perps on sidewalks, drive wild car chases through crowded city streets, and hold unshaven suspects at gunpoint and ask them if they felt lucky today, or maybe tell them to make my day. Dirty Harry. Dirty Harriet. That's what I wanted to beβsomeone with an adventurous life.
I never understand people who order the same turkey-on-white-hold-the-mayo every day. A big adventure for them is when they ask for two iceberg lettuce leaves instead of one. How do they live like that? I bet they've never puked on a Twirl-a-Whirl ride. Matt wasn't boring like that and I was glad.
Matt and I would flirt a little at the deli. One day, he told me to invent a sandwich for him. He said I could make whatever I wanted and he was sure he'd love it. So I made him a smoked turkey on pita with hummus and cucumbers and bean sprouts. He didn't even ask me what it wasβjust took the wrapped sandwich and paid for it. The next day he told me how great it was, and every day after that he let me choose his sandwich for him. Roast beef with Boursin on French roll with baby spinach and watercress. Sliced chicken with mango chutney and shredded carrots on 7-grain. I even made him peanut butter and jelly once, but I put it on toasted Jewish rye and used expensive whole-cherry preserves instead of cheap grape jelly. And I gave him a bag of potato chips. You have to eat potato chips with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Every day, something new, and every day he told me how good it was. Every day his lunch was a small adventure.
He found out that I liked old movies, and one day he told me that
Little Big Man
was playing on campus and invited me. Have you ever seen
Little Big Man
? It's got a young Dustin Hoffman growing up among Indians in the old west. Very funny. The old Indian chief is a hoot. The campus shows it every year, and it's a tradition that the audience smokes weed while they watch. The auditorium is so full of smoke that you can get high just breathing.
So we went, and that's how we started going out. He held my hand at the movie, just like people used to do at movies. Very romantic. That first time we went out, I promised myself that I wouldn't drive him away and I've kept my promise.
I have sex with Matt. That's also a big deal because he's the first boy I've ever had sex with. When we first started going out, we'd go back to my house and do some heavy kissing. I really liked it and it got me all horny and I really wanted to do more with him, but I wouldn't let him. Guess why? That's right-- because I was embarrassed for him to find out that my bra was fake B-cups and I had no boobs. So I let him feel my (fake) boobs outside my shirt, but that was all.
Lucky for me, Matt understood what I was doing. In the middle of one of those make-out sessions he just stopped kissing and said to me, "I know your boobs are fake."
I was stunned, partly because he knew they were fake, but mostly because he came right out and said it. I don't remember what I did then. Probably, I just stammered something incoherent.
So he went on, "I can tell by the way they feel. Don't worry. I like small boobs. It's ok. Really. Don't be shy."
His smile was so sweet and so sincere that I just melted. I think I knew then that I loved him, even though I'd only known him for a few weeks. Nobody had ever understood me like that.
He saw that I was worried so he hugged me and held me and it felt so good. Then he broke the hug and pulled back and said, "Can I see them? Let me take off your top and see those pretty little boobs. OK?"
I had never let a boy see them before. Hell, I'm not even sure I'd ever let another girl see them. I wanted so much for him to do it, but then I remembered -- he'd said he liked
small
boobs but he hadn't said he liked