Vladimir

by Julia May Jonas

It wasn’t as though I thought I could become more alluring; it was more that I wanted to erect a fortress around my body—a fortress of care and grooming. A fortress of corporeal dignity. I utterly failed, however.

I drank glass after glass of water, as though the liquid would do something to adjust my molecular structure, would melt the frown marks from around my mouth, the puffiness underneath my eyes—all of which I tried not to look at as I passed the mirror.

I slept fitfully, furious with myself when I thought about what I would look like the next day with no sleep, my self-directed anger making it all the more difficult to drift off.

It felt like young love, I thought—responsibilities looming, the mounting anxiety of your life building while you clung, lolling pointlessly in bed, to a new someone who gave you a sad and fearful pleasure.

She had dancer’s or runner’s legs, muscles at the top of the calves, indentations above a strong-looking knee, a clear line running up the thigh separating the front muscles from the back. I always noticed that line because I remember a boy I knew in high school telling me how alluring he found it. I didn’t have it, and as he was telling me, I found myself understanding a new sort of truth: that there were all kinds and types of bodies, different aspects of physical form, that could spark arousal. That women’s bodies were to be noticed and scrutinized and found attractive in all sorts of ways that I had not heretofore conceived. Chins, hands, throats, bellies, asses, legs, feet, all were to be considered and fetishized or dismissed.

You have to be willfully ignorant of certain truths to be successful, you just have to, and she seemed to me like the kind of woman who could not be ignorant of anything. The kind of mind that could paralyze itself.

Compliments made you supplicant, equal, and master all at once. Supplicant because you are below, admiring; equal because you have the same taste; and master because you are bestowing your approval.

I remember those nights as half-lit, sparkling and sultry, my body elated with the romance of romance.

I have found that no matter how much one tries to prevent such mishaps—to ensure that one’s pants don’t pinch the waist, or that one’s shapewear doesn’t show through with an unsightly seam, some photograph will be taken in which you realize that you do, after all, look ridiculous: bulgy, baggy, and effortful.