The Juliette Society

3

‘Can you see my ass in the mirror?’

This is what I say to Jack in the hope of attracting his attention.

He’s propped up on the bed one evening, shortly after the beginning of the Fall semester, reading some report or other.

I’ve just come out of the shower and I’m lying naked, face down across the bed, with my arms folded in front of me and my head resting on them so I can look up at him. I’m displaying myself for him the way Brigitte Bardot shows herself off for her estranged husband, Michel Piccoli, in Contempt. I’m feeding Jack lines from the movie to see how he responds.

It’s a game I like to play. Not to test his love but to interrogate his desire for me.

He glances up at the mirror, briefly, says ‘Yes’, and goes straight back to his reading material.

But he’s not getting away with it that easily.

Do you like what you see, I say.

‘Why? Shouldn’t I?’ he says, without even averting his gaze from the page.

Does my ass look fat, I say.

‘You’ve got a beautiful ass,’ he says.

But is it fat?

‘You’ve got a beautiful fat ass.’ He looks at me – at me, not at my ass – smiles, and returns to his papers again.

How about my thighs, I say.

I reach back and stroke my thigh just below the ass and, while I’m at it, I pull the cheek apart just a tad so he’ll get a glimpse of my plump little pussy from behind.

‘They’re great,’ he says. This time he doesn’t even look.

That’s all, I say, just ‘great’?

‘What do you want me to say?’ he says.

I might be feeding him questions but I’m not about to give him the answers.

Do they look thick, I say, as thick as tree trunks?

‘They look just fine,’ he says.

Whatever he’s reading, he’s engrossed in it – the way I wish he would be engrossed in me.

I roll over onto my back, arch my shoulders and cup my breasts, pushing them up into two rolling hills, and jiggle them a little.

Which do you prefer, I say, my breasts or my nipples?

My body is still flushed with heat from the shower and the areolae are pink and round. I brush and circle my nipples with my thumbs until I start to feel them swell.

‘Does one come without the other?’ he says, showing not the least bit of interest.

If you could choose, I say.

‘If I could choose between nipples without breasts or breasts without nipples?’ he laughs.

Yeah, I say, if you could have a girl who was totally flat-chested or one with tits so big the nipples were almost non-existent.

‘You, or someone else,’ he says. But, perhaps deciding this isn’t a conversation he wants to have anyway, he doesn’t wait for an answer. He says, ‘I like them just the way they are.’

Damn you, Jack, I think, pay attention to me. Look what I have here for you! And you can have it on a plate. For free. No strings attached.

The less attention he gives me, the more childish and petulant I become.

I’m thinking about shaving my pussy, I say, sliding my fingers into my bush and tugging at the tight brown curls of hair.

I say it because I know he won’t like it, because he finds completely hairless girls a real turn-off.

‘Don’t,’ he says, curtly.

Why not, I say.

Now I’m just trying to be provocative. Anything to get a reaction. And it works.

He stares at me over his knees, annoyed.

But he doesn’t say anything and it doesn’t make any difference because, now I know that I’ve got his attention, I decide to push him further.

I might do it anyway, I say, as casually as I can.

‘Don’t,’ he says again, in a way that says, this is not up for discussion. In a way that says, leave me alone.

I stretch my arms up over my head, then roll onto my side, just to deny him the pleasure of seeing my breasts, my bush. I want him to kiss my ass instead. And I lie there, pretending to ignore him. As if he even cares.

That’s the way it always seems to be with us right now.

No communication. No copulation.

I totally get why. Jack was working hard all through the summer vacation at the campaign office, and now the Fall semester’s started, he’s got even more work to do. Even less time for me. It’s rare that I pick him up from the office any more.

Jack’s playful, up to a point. But try as I might, I can’t rouse his interest in taking it any further. I can’t make him show a whole lot of interest in fucking me. It’s not like we don’t have sex, or that it’s not good when we do. It really is.

Jack is sensitive, caring, thoughtful and kind – everything that makes for a great lover – and before Jack, no man had ever come near to satisfying me in bed. But somehow it still never seems like enough, because I’m wild about him.

I look at Jack and think of Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun; intensely beautiful, square-jawed, the all-American boy. At least, that’s how he looks to me. But it’s not just about the way he looks. Whenever you see Montgomery Clift on screen, he can be doing little else but staring into the middle distance, lost in contemplation, and you can see his mind churning. That’s Jack. And it really turns me on.

When he’s not around, I masturbate like crazy, fantasizing about Jack. Me fucking Jack. Somewhere mundane, somewhere we’re not meant to. At the office, in the canteen at college, in the library, on the train. Jack fucking me. With passion, vigor and resolve.

He doesn’t have any idea about these fantasies of mine, because I do it when he’s not around and we never discuss them. But it’s getting to the point where my fantasy sex life far outstrips my reality.

We live in a tiny apartment. When things are good, it feels like we’re living in a space capsule, locked together away from the world. Our intimacy seems to make the place seem much larger than it is. When things are bad – not really bad, just the little hiccups that happen between any long-term couple living in close quarters – it can feel stifling and claustrophobic.

On nights like tonight, when Jack comes home from class or working at the campaign office and goes straight in the bedroom to catch up on his reading, and stays there pretty much till he falls asleep, it feels like he’s locking himself away from me on purpose, and I don’t know why. I find myself coming up with reasons to walk around the apartment in my underwear or naked even more often than usual. I make excuses to flaunt myself in front of him, anything to attract his attention, arouse his desire and make him show he wants me.

I’ll decide, on a whim, that I’m going to take a shower before dinner and start peeling my clothes off in front of him. But it doesn’t make any difference because he doesn’t even look up and I think he must be blind – blind to my love for him.

I take the shower as quickly as I can, because I didn’t want or need one anyway, and it wasn’t the purpose of this little exercise. I dry myself off and cream and oil my body so it glistens and shines. And I come out naked, smelling of jasmine. And then the games begin.

When we haven’t had sex for a while, I smell sweet. Like a ripe apple or peach, dripping and ready to be eaten. Ready for someone to get to my core. I know that Jack smells me, but I always wonder if other people can smell me too. And if they can’t, how is that possible? If they just think it’s lotion or perfume. They don’t know that I’m ready and ripe and willing. And left wanting.