Posts Tagged ‘seduction’
by hannah
June 28th, 2010
From Sex, Life, & Hannah::Volume 1, Spring Season (CHAPTER 12: POST-EJACULATORY REMORSE)
I’m in my closet preparing for my date with Mr. Smyth. It’s been nearly three weeks since our last date, and it’s our two-month anniversary. Not that I think he’s keeping track, but…
I grab a short dress (as in, I-thought-it-was-a-sweater-when-I-first-saw-it-on-the-rack short) and hold it against my body. Yup, it still falls just below my ass. I smile; it’s perfect.
I throw on the three-quarter-sleeved black cashmere aphrodisiac and a pair of strappy black heels to match. I head to the bathroom.
My face is better, but there’s still a yellowish-green tint around my eyes and nose. I grab the MAC cosmetics bag filled with the all-new makeup I bought the day after my accident, and try to remember how to apply everything in it. And generously—just like the full-figured goth girl behind the counter did. My phone rings.
“Something strange happened today.” It’s Jack.
“Strange? To you?” Jack saying something strange happened to him is like Rocco Siffredi saying he likes having sex in front of the camera.
“Anyway…I get on the plane—”
“Oh, so you finally decided to leave Maui.”
I’m still not happy about that. After Holly proclaimed she never wanted to go back to Montreal and Lola prodded her on by saying we were all welcome to stay as long as we wanted, Holly convinced Jack to stay there with her an extra few days.
“Stop being bitter.” Jack sighs. “Anyway…I find my seat and start putting my bags away, when this stewardess saunters up to me, her full ass swaying from left to right, and says in this thick French accent: ‘Sirrr, I theenk yuu ave ze rong zeet.’ And then she ushers me to first class!”
Of course. Jack gets to extend his vacation, fulfill some childhood fantasy he’s been hiding about my sister, and nabs a ride home in first class. I on the other hand, get to rush home to a job I hate; riding in a cramped seat, sipping on a small plastic cup of ginger ale, and munching on a bag of preservatives.
“But that’s not the strange part!” Jack interrupts my self-pitying ruminations. “Halfway through the plane ride, she whispers in my ear ‘Get te ze batrum, an liiv ze duur apen.’”
“Great accent, Jack.” I mean it. “You could almost pass for a French slut.”
“I’m trying to give you the full flavor of the situation.”
I tell Jack I prefer not to taste anything he’s ever been involved with.
“Whatever—I get up and look around, and there’s only two other people in first class; one’s asleep, and the other is grooming himself while reading some boring financial paper.”
“No other stewardesses?”
“No, they were all busy serving the poor people in coach.”
I put Jack on speaker phone to try my hand at the concealer.
“So I get in the bathroom, and I have no idea whether to get naked or start washing my hands. Five minutes pass, which feels like an eternity when you’re stuck in the only type of bathroom smaller than a port-o-potty, and finally the door starts to open and I pray it’s the busty French airline tramp and not the gross fat man picking his ear.”
“And…” I prod…
by hannah
June 11th, 2010
From Sex, Life, & Hannah::Volume 1, Spring Season (CHAPTER 11: TALLER, PRETTIER, BUSTIER, CURVIER)
I’m sitting on the counter of the guest bathroom that joins mine and Jack’s rooms. I beg Jack to fix my face for the big shindig Lola is throwing tonight. I’ve been wearing my sunglasses for over a week straight and it’s getting old. Jack—who used to do hair and makeup for the Chicago Luvabulls before all the big games and events—tells me that under the circumstances, the best he can do is make me look like a high-priced prostitute. I decide it will have to do.
“So what’s going on with your boyfriend, and why is he really in New York?” Jack digs, applying dark shadow to my eyelids.
I grab the Mai Tai next to me. “It’s his aunt’s birthday. Apparently she throws a big annual to-do that’s really an excuse to get the family together.”
“Did he invite you?” He asks running a brush over my brows.
“We’ve had two dates.”
“What happened to ‘I think I’m in love’?”
“I don’t know how I feel about anything anymore. I’m not saying that I am or that I’m not. This whole thing with The Ex…”
“Stop right there.” Jack stops whisking his brush around my cheeks. “You pinky promised you were done and moving on.”
“I am moving on. I just don’t know what that looks like right now.” I look in the mirror. I do look like a high-priced prostitute—from the seventies. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing…
by hannah
May 26th, 2010
From Sex, Life, & Hannah::Volume 1, Spring Season (CHAPTER 10: LOVE IN AN ELEVATOR)
I’m sitting on the floor of the elevator with my head tilted back against the wall, the ice pack covering my face again. The Ex is beside me, his dress shirt back on, his undershirt glued to my nose. The bleeding has stopped, but the elevator hasn’t started. According to the maintenance man The Ex got ahold of, it’s going to be a while. Apparently all the elevators are down, and a woman in labor is stuck in one too; so we’re not a priority. I close my eyes and try to imagine myself elsewhere.
I always thought The Ex was The One. When I was thirteen, we had to make a poster of what we wanted our future to look like, and he was it: tall, dark, and fashionable. Not that my whole collage was of the perfect man—I had included my fantasy wardrobe, too—but the male model I’d cut out of the October issue of Cosmopolitan was the centerpiece. And when I strolled up to the Beverly Hilton concierge that fateful Saturday morning looking for directions, I had an eerie feeling I’d just met my centerpiece.
We were in love—through the growing pains and the glory. Even when he broke up with me eighty-seven days ago and I ran after him, tears, mascara, and eye shadow streaming down my face, screaming: “Are you sure? Because this is it!” and he stopped, and I went on: “There’s no going back after this! I’m done. No need to hang on to that engagement ring! Are you sure this is what you want?” and he paused, staring at me, and finally said, “I’m sure,” his voice cracking and his head turning away quickly, and I yelled out: “You’re dead to me!”—I still believed we would be together forever.
I sigh deeply, wondering how the hell we got here: broken-up, broken, in a broken elevator.
“How’s Genie?” I ask flashbacking to our last drama that took place on an elevator. We were at Nieman Marcus, going up to the men’s shoe department, when The Ex’s annoying little micro dog decided to take a whiz all over Charlie Sheen’s shoes. I started apologizing, and The Ex started yelling at Genie, before picking her up and realizing she was getting pee remnants all over his new polo…and pushing her onto me. Then he blamed me for not taking her out for a walk earlier, and I reminded him it was his dog. And worse, just another trendy phase he was going through. He handed Charlie his business card, apologized, and said he’d comp him an all-inclusive weekend stay at the Beverly Hilton. I rolled my eyes.
“I moved into a new place that doesn’t take pets, so I gave her to one of the front desk girls at the hotel.”
Figures. I move the ice pack, and then turn my head around to face the brushed steel interior of the elevator wall. I am immediately horrified. “I look like the pet project of Dr. Frankenstein gone wrong.” I want to cry. “I’m probably scarred for life. I’ll probably need plastic surgery.”
I feel him squeeze my arm. “Hey.” He tugs me to face him. He puts his other hand under my chin. “You’re still sexy as hell.” He smiles.
My stomach curls into an anxious knot. Sitting next to The Ex, on this sterile elevator floor, stuck between floors two and three, on this first day of spring, exactly three months before our six-year anniversary, in the midst of this chaotic night, and painful memories, and awkward small talk, I realize that…I am still in love with my ex-boyfriend…
