by Aurelia Westlake
(3/21/01)
I was four years old when the woman in the department store told me I had beautiful eyelashes. I said nothing, only looked at her with a puzzled expression. My mother broke the silence, telling me to thank the nice lady. I did, in my tiniest voice, the one I used to say things when I was supposed to be taking my afternoon nap in kindergarten.
That night, in front of the bathroom mirror, I looked at my eyelashes for the first time. Long, dark, curling nicely -- but what could be beautiful about them? I tilted my head back and forth to get a better view. Then I knew what to do. I pinched my thumb and index finger around some of my eyelashes and pulled. Three or four dark hairs were now in my fingers, and I smiled. I plucked out all the rest of my eyelashes that way, until I had none left. My mother saw my naked eyelids the next morning and yelled for half an hour about why I shouldn't have done it. She said they might not grow back. I kept the proper remorseful look until she was done. When she left, I smirked. I hoped they would never grow back. But they did. Long, dark, just as before. My mother says the bottom lashes grew in even longer.
Since then, though, I've always been the same way about beauty. Compliment my wit, my strength, my intelligence, my charm, and I will thank you. Compliment my beauty, though, and I will simply glare. I am not beautiful. I am too fat, my fingers are too short, my feet too big, and calling me beautiful will not change that. I will never stay with a man who calls me beautiful. I have told each of my lovers this long before they ever told me, but each in turn made the same mistake.
It's always the same, though the faces, the voices, the settings are different. They wait for a moment when they think it's safe, a moment when I am totally in love, when I am beginning to think that this one, this one I'll spend the rest of my life with. Then they say it. It's a different thing each time. "Your eyes are gorgeous," said the first. He would not be the last to make the same fatal error. They never bring up my ban on such compliments -- they simply think I'll forget about my single prohibition. I never do. They think at first that they've won. I don't break it off right away. But within a week, the relationship is over.
My new boyfriend, Nick, won't last long. I can tell. I haven't even slept with him yet, and still, I can tell he's getting dangerously close to those forbidden compliments. It's in the way he'll look at me, come close to saying something, and then cut it off before any real sound can get out.
I am at his house, on the tan suede sofa. I've never seen his bedroom, but the way he's acting tonight, I think I probably will before the night is over. He's always moved so slowly before, with too much hesitation. But tonight, he's kissing me more deeply than he ever has before, he's exploring my torso with his fingertips, then his hands.
Suddenly, he breaks away and takes my hand. He leads me back into the dark bedroom, and starts to undress me without turning the lights on. The room is completely dark, and I feel more comfortable like this, knowing he cannot see my nakedness, my ugliness. He's naked now, too, and he is kissing my neck with an intensity I never knew he possessed, laying me down on the bed. He pauses in the middle of my throat, lingering there, his mouth barely touching the skin.
It surprises me when he abruptly stops, walking a few steps away. And then I realize where he's going. He's at the light switch. "No," I say. "Leave the lights off." I can see his smile as he ignores me. Oh, good, it's a dimmer switch, and he's only turned it up maybe a third of the way -- and then I see. I look at the ceiling. It is a vast mirror, and now I know why he wouldn't show it to me before. I cover my body, at the same time feeling rather silly for doing so -- after all, am I afraid of seeing myself?
Nick sits at the edge of the bed, his fingers tracing a line up my thigh. "You see," he says, "you don't want me to tell you you're beautiful. So I guess you'll have to see for yourself."
I point to my reflection in the ceiling. "Look at me," I say. "I'm not beautiful. Not even close. I..." and he cuts me off, putting a finger to my mouth.
"You haven't let me finish," he says, taking the finger from my mouth and moving it around my face. "The moment when a woman is most beautiful is when she comes. You've never seen yourself come, have you?" I shake my head slowly. He continues, "There is no woman who doesn't look stunning at that moment. I won't tell you you're beautiful. I'm going to make you tell me. And we won't even need to fuck. Just watch yourself, keep watching. I want you to tell me that you're beautiful."
I look into his dark green eyes, with an emotion somewhere between excitement and fear. He smiles a little, then moves his mouth to my right breast. I'm looking at him, his light brown hair and his face, as he sucks at my nipple. I've never been this excited, this aroused. All of a sudden, he turns his face toward me. "Don't look at me," he commands. "Look at yourself."
"But I...I can't," I say softly.
"You can, and you will. Or else I could just stop." I immediately turn my head toward the ceiling. Yes, I am there, still ugly, still me. His reflection is there, too, again at my breast. I am breathing faster now, and he begins moving his mouth slowly downward. I spread my legs, watching in the mirror as he kisses my belly, then the line where my pubic hair begins. I feel his tongue now, entering my folds, my most secret regions. He flicks his tongue near my clit, not quite coming into contact with it. He remains there for a few minutes.
I let out a moan. "You like this, don't you?" he says. I can't make my mouth form a reply, and I nod furiously. "Let's see what I can do to make you like it more," he whispers, and he is instantly at my clit. He plays with it gently, circling. I know I'm getting close, and it is as if he is reading my thoughts as he moves away from it, putting his tongue inside of me, exploring and licking. I'm still looking into the mirror. Maybe I'm not as ugly as I had thought.
He moves back to my clit, and this time I can tell I'm going to come. His tongue caresses it, gently at first, and then it moves in harder strokes. My cries are becoming louder and more frequent, and I am incredibly close. I watch my face in the ceiling.
And then it happens. I feel myself melting, overcome by pleasure, and I have to concentrate to keep my eyes on the mirror. I tell him, half-gasping, that I'm coming. He continues the movements of his tongue for a little while longer, and then I see something in the mirror, in myself, that I had never seen before.
I look down toward him, and he raises his head and his eyes to meet my gaze.
"I'm...I'm beautiful," I say, still breathing hard. I look back to the mirror. It is true.
"I don't suppose it would do any good to say 'I told you so,'" he says. I shake my head and laugh. He kisses my mouth and then grins.
He whispers, "I told you so."
