Nightmare Brunette
Ana Cuba
/Three Pieces
"We met at the hotel bar..."
By Nightmare Brunette
We met at the hotel bar, which was nearly empty. He slid me a napkin that read "panty display."
I spread my legs but the skirt of my dress fell between them so I lifted the hem and held it several inches above the stocking rim on my right thigh.
"Spread your legs," he said. “Stay that way.”
There was a table of four men behind us who'd eyed me when I came in. I was the only woman in the restaurant. My back was to them. My client was across from me with his back to the wall.
“Do you know why I let you sit there?” He said. “I’m not worried about your embarrassment. But I don’t want them to see. I want to be the only one.” When we first met, he told me liked thinking of how I’d pass men in the lobby on my way out, and they might think something approving or lustful, but no one else in the hotel besides he would actually know what I looked like naked.
After several minutes, he slid me another napkin. On it, he'd written: "Go to room. Key inside."
“I’m not coming with you,” he told me. “Say goodbye to me here.”
He'd written a series of instructions and left them on the bed. They involved taking off all my clothes except my panties, putting on a blindfold and standing with my arms behind my back in front of the window, with the door’s long locking piece swung open so the door stayed ajar. I was to think of something I’d never told anyone and be ready to tell it. The window bit was funny even though I’m not surprised by synchronicity anymore; I’d told him the story of the men with binoculars while we sat at the bar, after he’d already written out this plan but before I’d seen it.
The eye mask wasn’t tight and light seeped in through the gaps below my eyes. I watched the street, which I’ve done many times with impunity in various stages of undress. City people never look up. A man approached his car, got in, started it, then idled. I could see the bluish glow of his phone’s face through the sunroof. He darkened the screen and pulled away. Under the mask I closed my eyes.
I alternated between searching for something to say and tuning into my body. I lifted and spread my toes. I pulled up my kneecaps and drew my shoulder blades down my back. I wondered if yoga had ruined any sexual charge I might get from these types of held positions. No—not ruined but removed. There’s calmness now in being left inside my body, a confidence. Even discomfort feels familiar and manageable. And deeply internal. If I’m in a pose, I automatically forget other people.
But I did have an assignment I couldn’t forget, and all the stories or thoughts that could pass for scandalous had already been shared, with partners or friends or here. I tried to think of it in the form of PostSecret. What line sounded revelatory and private? One of the possibilities was something I'd not verbalized before, but had been living with particularly intimately as of late: I'm afraid I'll only ever find sex sexy if it's with a total stranger. A real stranger, not a client, not even a new one. Not someone whose legal name and profession and tastes I’ve been told before we’ve met but someone entirely unknown who is not paying.
The other had less weight: Only one man has ever made me wet by kissing me and I didn’t even let him fuck me. This is the one I chose.
*
Jacob wanted to spend the night. He was sleepy with vodka and flight fatigue.
"What time does your plane leave?"
"The car's coming to pick me up at 6, so I should leave here at 5."
"Ok," I got into bed while he peed in the bathroom. He left the door open.
"Where are you?" He said as he slid in between the sheets in the dark, scooting across the wide mattress to spoon me. I squeezed his hand and wrapped my feet around his. It felt like sleeping with my boyfriend. I closed my eyes and he took his hand away and tugged at the corner of the pillow between my legs.
"What's this?"
"I sleep this way. I have wide hips. I have to have some padding between my legs."
"Wide hips...?" His hands started moving over my skin. One of them cupped my right hipbone, fingertips over the edge and pressed into the gap inside.
"I like this," he said of the sharp ridge.
"My handles?"
"Yes. Is this alright?"
"That you're touching me?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
I spread my legs but the skirt of my dress fell between them so I lifted the hem and held it several inches above the stocking rim on my right thigh.
"Spread your legs," he said. “Stay that way.”
There was a table of four men behind us who'd eyed me when I came in. I was the only woman in the restaurant. My back was to them. My client was across from me with his back to the wall.
“Do you know why I let you sit there?” He said. “I’m not worried about your embarrassment. But I don’t want them to see. I want to be the only one.” When we first met, he told me liked thinking of how I’d pass men in the lobby on my way out, and they might think something approving or lustful, but no one else in the hotel besides he would actually know what I looked like naked.
After several minutes, he slid me another napkin. On it, he'd written: "Go to room. Key inside."
“I’m not coming with you,” he told me. “Say goodbye to me here.”
He'd written a series of instructions and left them on the bed. They involved taking off all my clothes except my panties, putting on a blindfold and standing with my arms behind my back in front of the window, with the door’s long locking piece swung open so the door stayed ajar. I was to think of something I’d never told anyone and be ready to tell it. The window bit was funny even though I’m not surprised by synchronicity anymore; I’d told him the story of the men with binoculars while we sat at the bar, after he’d already written out this plan but before I’d seen it.
The eye mask wasn’t tight and light seeped in through the gaps below my eyes. I watched the street, which I’ve done many times with impunity in various stages of undress. City people never look up. A man approached his car, got in, started it, then idled. I could see the bluish glow of his phone’s face through the sunroof. He darkened the screen and pulled away. Under the mask I closed my eyes.
I alternated between searching for something to say and tuning into my body. I lifted and spread my toes. I pulled up my kneecaps and drew my shoulder blades down my back. I wondered if yoga had ruined any sexual charge I might get from these types of held positions. No—not ruined but removed. There’s calmness now in being left inside my body, a confidence. Even discomfort feels familiar and manageable. And deeply internal. If I’m in a pose, I automatically forget other people.
But I did have an assignment I couldn’t forget, and all the stories or thoughts that could pass for scandalous had already been shared, with partners or friends or here. I tried to think of it in the form of PostSecret. What line sounded revelatory and private? One of the possibilities was something I'd not verbalized before, but had been living with particularly intimately as of late: I'm afraid I'll only ever find sex sexy if it's with a total stranger. A real stranger, not a client, not even a new one. Not someone whose legal name and profession and tastes I’ve been told before we’ve met but someone entirely unknown who is not paying.
The other had less weight: Only one man has ever made me wet by kissing me and I didn’t even let him fuck me. This is the one I chose.
*
Jacob wanted to spend the night. He was sleepy with vodka and flight fatigue.
"What time does your plane leave?"
"The car's coming to pick me up at 6, so I should leave here at 5."
"Ok," I got into bed while he peed in the bathroom. He left the door open.
"Where are you?" He said as he slid in between the sheets in the dark, scooting across the wide mattress to spoon me. I squeezed his hand and wrapped my feet around his. It felt like sleeping with my boyfriend. I closed my eyes and he took his hand away and tugged at the corner of the pillow between my legs.
"What's this?"
"I sleep this way. I have wide hips. I have to have some padding between my legs."
"Wide hips...?" His hands started moving over my skin. One of them cupped my right hipbone, fingertips over the edge and pressed into the gap inside.
"I like this," he said of the sharp ridge.
"My handles?"
"Yes. Is this alright?"
"That you're touching me?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
Ana Cuba
His hands felt curious at first, friendly with a confused sleepiness, very high school. He tugged me like he wanted me to roll over and face him but I stayed on my side and he kept touching. The refusal to be deterred reminded me of high school as well. Then the tone of his touch changed.
I didn't say anything. I just held my human sized pillow and felt myself getting wet. He began to use his mouth to light up the lattice of nerves under the skin of my neck and its slope down to my shoulder. No part of me wanted it to stop.
"You like being kissed here?" He said, stroking that curve for a moment with the full flat of his palm.
"You're very good at it," I said. It was like nothing I'd ever felt—or at least nothing I remembered, and I'm sure I would remember something like that.
I rolled underneath him as he rolled over me, reaching back to unhook my bra as he pulled off his T-shirt. He pinned my wrists above my head and I got wetter. When I felt him working his way down my body on his way to lick me, I locked my thighs around his hips and stopped him. He moved back to my side and curled his fingers into the slick between my legs. I arched up against it with my breasts bare in the cool air and realized I could come like this, posing myself and writhing against him, but I wasn't sure I wanted to.
Finally I said, "We should stop."
"Sorry," he said, plunging his fingers inside me a few more times. He stopped, then did it again. Then he stopped and rolled onto his back. I lay on my side and reached an ankle back to hook around his calf. He flexed his foot at me, welcoming it there.
*
This is what it was like: he was young-looking and young, tattooed with nearly shorn hair and boyish, slightly goofy. His body was knobby and tailored like all runners’ but broad in the chest like a swimmer’s, his obliques thick ropes sliding down inside his hip bones. I couldn’t stop touching his stomach. I said, “I can’t stop touching your stomach.” He should have been in the military. I mentioned it to him and he said it was a big regret of his that he hadn’t joined, that he decided to owe money instead of time when he went to medical school.
As we stood kissing, I squeezed his erection between my thighs and its head pressed out under the ledge of my ass. When I asked if his size had ever caused any problems, he replied, “that’s nice of you to say.” I said, “you mean, never…” “I’ve never had any feedback like that,” he said. And I just sort-of hit his stomach with incredulity, then relaxed my palm and fingers out over the muscle, biting a knuckle on my other hand. At one point I was so turned on I thought I would come without being touched, and I trembled and tried to hold myself still against his chest so I could wait until he was inside. Once I did come, it was an orgasm with intentions to last forever, and my hand fell away and then came back, and then his hand replaced mine and after his cock was no longer hard he finally pulled out, reluctantly.
“Marry me,” was the title of his email when he wrote me the next day. That’s funny, I thought, and I appreciated its funniness. Because he is already married. But then several days later there was another email, this one saying he couldn’t stop thinking of me and that he wanted us to be together in spite of all the obstacles.
This is my unique privilege: it’s easy for me to fall in love with a client and disastrous for them to fall in love with me. I don’t initiate our encounters. I don’t have the responsibility of planning when to meet and where and for how long. That means I can—or hopefully, I have learned to—set that love aside, gently, and wait for a moment when I’m allowed to pick it up again. It means I can wander the city and savor daydreams of the future or memories of the past and ultimately I’m powerless, or I choose to be powerless, to actualize any of what I fantasize. But for them? They’re the ones who make it happen. If they want to lie transparently or lie well to their wives, if they want to skip work, if they want to go by the bank and take out a stack of hundreds, I’m there waiting at the other end. They know I will show up. They can summon me.
The path of joy leads to sadness. All paths lead to sadness. I ached all day over that email.
*
Excerpted from Nightmare Brunette.
I didn't say anything. I just held my human sized pillow and felt myself getting wet. He began to use his mouth to light up the lattice of nerves under the skin of my neck and its slope down to my shoulder. No part of me wanted it to stop.
"You like being kissed here?" He said, stroking that curve for a moment with the full flat of his palm.
"You're very good at it," I said. It was like nothing I'd ever felt—or at least nothing I remembered, and I'm sure I would remember something like that.
I rolled underneath him as he rolled over me, reaching back to unhook my bra as he pulled off his T-shirt. He pinned my wrists above my head and I got wetter. When I felt him working his way down my body on his way to lick me, I locked my thighs around his hips and stopped him. He moved back to my side and curled his fingers into the slick between my legs. I arched up against it with my breasts bare in the cool air and realized I could come like this, posing myself and writhing against him, but I wasn't sure I wanted to.
Finally I said, "We should stop."
"Sorry," he said, plunging his fingers inside me a few more times. He stopped, then did it again. Then he stopped and rolled onto his back. I lay on my side and reached an ankle back to hook around his calf. He flexed his foot at me, welcoming it there.
*
This is what it was like: he was young-looking and young, tattooed with nearly shorn hair and boyish, slightly goofy. His body was knobby and tailored like all runners’ but broad in the chest like a swimmer’s, his obliques thick ropes sliding down inside his hip bones. I couldn’t stop touching his stomach. I said, “I can’t stop touching your stomach.” He should have been in the military. I mentioned it to him and he said it was a big regret of his that he hadn’t joined, that he decided to owe money instead of time when he went to medical school.
As we stood kissing, I squeezed his erection between my thighs and its head pressed out under the ledge of my ass. When I asked if his size had ever caused any problems, he replied, “that’s nice of you to say.” I said, “you mean, never…” “I’ve never had any feedback like that,” he said. And I just sort-of hit his stomach with incredulity, then relaxed my palm and fingers out over the muscle, biting a knuckle on my other hand. At one point I was so turned on I thought I would come without being touched, and I trembled and tried to hold myself still against his chest so I could wait until he was inside. Once I did come, it was an orgasm with intentions to last forever, and my hand fell away and then came back, and then his hand replaced mine and after his cock was no longer hard he finally pulled out, reluctantly.
“Marry me,” was the title of his email when he wrote me the next day. That’s funny, I thought, and I appreciated its funniness. Because he is already married. But then several days later there was another email, this one saying he couldn’t stop thinking of me and that he wanted us to be together in spite of all the obstacles.
This is my unique privilege: it’s easy for me to fall in love with a client and disastrous for them to fall in love with me. I don’t initiate our encounters. I don’t have the responsibility of planning when to meet and where and for how long. That means I can—or hopefully, I have learned to—set that love aside, gently, and wait for a moment when I’m allowed to pick it up again. It means I can wander the city and savor daydreams of the future or memories of the past and ultimately I’m powerless, or I choose to be powerless, to actualize any of what I fantasize. But for them? They’re the ones who make it happen. If they want to lie transparently or lie well to their wives, if they want to skip work, if they want to go by the bank and take out a stack of hundreds, I’m there waiting at the other end. They know I will show up. They can summon me.
The path of joy leads to sadness. All paths lead to sadness. I ached all day over that email.
*
Excerpted from Nightmare Brunette.
- 12/05/2010
