Skin Deep

But then she was pulling out of him. No. That wasn't accurate. He had shriveled out of her. She had been riding him, rubbing her clit against his shaft, but now, there was no shaft left. He had deflated again, his cock turning to Jell-O. It had turtled up, gone back into its shell.

He couldn't look at her. He turned his face away. He desperately wanted to cover up his nakedness, too.

But as he sat up, ready to make a beeline for his pants, she held him in place.

"Huh-uh," she said. "You're not gonna run from this one, Brian."

She was looking at him the way she had in the train, her eyes probing, searching, scanning. His physical nakedness felt like nothing under the weight of that stare. She was seeing way past his skin, his floppy failure of a cock. She was seeing straight through to his heart.

"You're gonna talk to me, Brian. I told you earlier that I think I can help you, remember?"

He just sat there.

"Remember?"

Yes. He remembered.

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-two," he said. He was ashamed to admit it. Shouldn't he have accomplished something of real value by now, by the age of thirty-two? But what had he accomplished, really?

"How old do you think I am?" she said.

Shit. He hated when women asked him that. You could never give the right answer. If you guessed too old, they were insulted. If you guessed too young, they might be flattered. But they might be pissed, too—for a whole host of reasons. What could he say?

"I'm forty-six," she said.

Forty-six? No way! She looked his age. How could she be forty-six?

"I used to be like you," she said. "Always wanting people to like me, to like what they saw when they looked at me. I wanted to walk into a room and see all the guys' heads turn. I wanted to see tents in the crotches of their jeans and know I was the one who had put them there. So you see? We're really a lot alike."

"But I . . ."

"You need to get your head out of your ass is what you need, Brian," she said. "You're actually a cute guy, do you know that? And I know what your problem with your cock is. But it's not too small, Brian. It'd work just fine if you'd let it."

He was speechless. But underneath it all, he felt redeemed. She had given him a compliment. She had even complimented his cock. Maybe he wasn't so bad, after all.

She shook her head, sighed. Had she noticed the slight change in him, the turn his thoughts had taken? Was he really so transparent?

"It shouldn't make a fucking difference, one way or the other, what I think of you, don't you know that?"

No. He didn't. He really didn't know that.

"You have to like yourself, Brian. The fuck with me or anybody else. But first, you have to know yourself. It's kind of hard to like someone if you don't know them first. You spend so much time worrying about measuring up to everyone else's expectations, trying to fit in with whoever you're with . . . how can you even know what you want?"

Yeah. Like the way he wanted to buy a cowboy hat today, the way he spoke "southern" while in Carolina. The way he said words like "yo" and "cool" when he was around people who talked that way. He normally did not, but if the people he was with did . . .

He suddenly felt like he needed to share something. It was mind-boggling that he hadn't even noticed these qualities about himself before. He felt them, maybe, suspected them. But he hadn't ever taken a step back and looked at himself objectively.

He laughed—not out of joy, but out of something else—regret. Longing. Wistfulness.

"When I was in high school," he said, " I really wanted to join the tennis team. I hadn't really played tennis much, but I always liked it when I watched it, y'know? The angles of the game, the symmetry, they appealed to me somehow. But when I told my dad about it, he told me I couldn't. He said tennis was a sissy sport, and if I wanted to go out for a team it should be football or basketball—something like that."

"So what'd you do?" Susan asked. But her expression told him she already knew the answer.

He shrugged. "I didn't go out for the team. Didn't go out for anything."

He expected her to flame him again, tell him he was a sorry excuse of a man. But she just sidled in beside him, snuggled up to him, and kissed his cheek. He couldn't figure her out. As soon as he thought he had her pegged, she did something to throw his entire picture of her out of whack.

"What was that for?" he wanted to know. He liked the feel of her body pressed firmly against his. Damn, she was beautiful. He still couldn't wrap his head around the fact that she was pushing fifty years old.

"Like I said, you remind me a lot of myself."

He snorted. She seemed as different from him as anyone he'd ever met. She was confident, assertive, went after what she wanted. She was real, not a phony like him. Not someone who changed her speech patters to fit in with the crowd, or listened to counsel she didn't agree with.

"I want to show you something," she said.

She slid away from him, stood up, padded across the floor to her handbag. He admired her nakedness, the way her tits didn't sag, the firm roundness of her butt cheeks. He wondered if she'd perhaps been a model when she was younger.

She pulled something out of her bag, came back to the bed. Again she cozied up beside him.

"Look at this picture," she said. It was clearly an older picture—it had an old-school look about it. It was a photo of a young woman, homely, with a bulbous nose, glasses, stringy brown hair, and crooked teeth. Her breasts were small, and she was skinny. Tall and skinny.

"So?" he said. "Who's that supposed to be?"

She smiled. "Me."

He blinked, once, twice, several times. He looked at the photo again, then at the beautiful blonde beside him. How . . .?

"That picture was taken of me when I was going to college. I was twenty-one. Not so easy on the eyes, was I?"

He coughed, and she laughed.

"Exactly," she said. "Remember how I told you I wanted to be pretty, wanted the guys to be attracted to me, wanted people to like me? Well, I felt like those were just pipe dreams. I mean, I was ugly. So I just applied myself. Got a 4.0 GPA, and made a success of myself. I wanted to make a lot of money, and I did. You know why?"

He just sat there, waiting for her to go on.

"So I could save enough to get my face worked on, to get my tits worked on. These aren't real, you know." She squeezed her tits.

"They look real enough," he said lamely. They had felt real, too, when he'd touched them. At least he'd thought they had.

"Thank you," she said. "Like I said, I earned a lot of money. Went to the best surgeons. These aren't real, either," she said, and smiled, showing off her mouthful of white, perfect teeth. "This mouth cost me a fortune, Brian. And you already know I'm not a natural blonde."

So it seemed, yes . . .

"And I had my nose done. They made it too pointy, but it's better than what I had, don't you think? And of course the fingernails are fake. And I've had work done on my face, and my ass . . . So you see, Brian, there's not much real about me, is there?"

He said nothing. What could he say?

"You know, I don't usually show this picture to my lovers." She looked away from him. "I just let them think I'm genuine, that it's their lucky night, y'know? Maybe that's why I haven't had a serious relationship with anyone, all these years. I'm too afraid to let them see me. The real me."

"But you showed me," he said.

"Yeah." She looked at him again. "So . . . do you want me to leave? I wouldn't blame you if you did."

He swallowed. No. He didn't want her to leave, and he told her that. He also said: "Besides, you remind me a lot of me."

She laughed, gave him a nudge. But it was a good nudge, a friendly nudge.

He kissed her cheek, her pointed, surgically-repaired nose, her forehead, her lips. At first she was nonresponsive, just letting him kiss her. But then she kissed him back, and there was a hunger in her, a passion. It radiated through her, through her lips, which, like a conduit, passed it on to him.

He kissed her neck, worked his way down to her fake breasts—which looked and felt so real. Imitation to mimic reality. A show to look good, to fit in with what society wanted, to get the approval of others. He felt a wave of compassion for this woman, and, for the first time in years, for himself.

He stuck out his tongue, licked her stomach, down to her belly button. He inserted his tongue into it, and she giggled, reached down, ran her fingers through his hair.

He kissed her hips; her smooth, hairless, mound; her inner thighs; and then licked the lips of her vagina. She was wet, so wet.

"Mmmm," she purred. And he realized, he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anyone. He wanted to fuck her like there was no tomorrow, to let loose as he never had before.

"Fuck me, Brian," she said, as if reading his thoughts.

And he did fuck her. He fucked her deep into the night. They fucked missionary style, then she rode him, then he took her doggy style, then standing up. And not once did he worry about his dick, his shortcomings as a lover, his old insecurities that had always risen up in the past, stripping him of pleasure. He just fucked her, pleasured her, loved her.

And when it was through, when the fire and lust of lovemaking had been replaced by the easy, pleasurable glow of post-coitus, they snuggled together on the bed, the first, shy hints of dawn streaming through the window, the city slowly waking up, coming to life, like a great, giant organism recovering from a restless nap. Voices rang out from the street, rising, filtering into the room. Car horns honked. Another day. Another beginning. Another chance.

Only this time, he knew, he would seize it. He already had.

She was sleeping now. He looked at her, at the mask she wore, fitted and perfected by the plastic surgeons. But he wasn't seeing the mask. He saw beneath it, behind it, saw the insecure college girl in the old picture, with the crooked teeth, the stringy brown hair, the unsightly nose, the skinny, curveless body. And he couldn't resist. He didn't want to wake her, but he couldn't resist.

He kissed her.

She stirred, blinked, moaned, as if trying to register where she was, who she was . . .

"Ugh," she said, turning her face away. "I must look awful."

"So . . . what's your take on abortion?" he asked. "Or the death penalty?"

She turned to look at him.

"Hah. I knew it would work." He smiled.

She slapped him on the thigh. "Asshole," she said, but she was smiling, too.

He leaned in to kiss her. "You look beautiful, Susan."

And then, thinking about the past twenty-four hours, the journey they had shared, the discoveries they had made together, he said the only thing he could think of, the only thing that seemed appropriate . . .

"Thank you."

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She hugged him, hard, holding him close, so close. "No, Brian," she said. "Thank you."