I bit my lip. I wanted to see him naked. That’s what I wanted and it just crept up on me like a wildfire, flaming, hot, and destructive. Crap.
Behind me Marla cleared her throat, and then clearly tickled, she said, “Come on, lovebirds; I’ve secured us a dressing room.”
With the spell broken, I traipsed behind Marla and Ben, feeling totally embarrassed. For sure my cheeks pinked up. The man hired me to play his girlfriend and all it took was a few hours before I was legit hitting on him. And not like for show. His mother wasn’t even with us. What was wrong with me?
Standing outside of the dressing room, Marla ushered Ben in and said, “I’ve already hung the costumes in there, so go on.” I hung back, thankful for a few minutes apart from Ben to try to reclaim my dignity. But Marla turned to me and said, “You too.”
I reacted by scrunching up my face awkwardly and kind of flailing my arms around like no, no, no.
Marla laughed at me. “Oh, Jess, you and Ben are almost thirty and you’ve been dating for close to a year. You don’t really think I’m pretending you don’t know the nakedness of each other’s bodies, are you?”
I swallowed and shook my head, and then with tight lips and my head held high, I followed Ben into the tiny little room.
When the door closed behind me, he whispered, “Fuck, Jess. I’m sorry.” I shrugged but stayed silent. Still trying to be quiet, he asked, “Do you want me to turn around or close my eyes while you quickly change?”
I nodded, pulling a Wilma Flintstone costume off the hanger. With my back to him, I pulled my shirt over my head and replaced it with the white dress. Not realizing that he had embarked on a similar switcheroo, I turned back in time to catch a glimpse of his rippling back muscles. Double crap. This man was a goddamn honey trap, all sweet and sticky, begging for me to get stuck.
When he faced me in Fred’s giant orange outfit complete with crooked turquoise tie, I felt drawn to him. I took a step in his direction and as I reached my hands up, he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“Your tie is crooked,” I said, fixing it.
“So it is,” he croaked, looking down at my hands on his chest. I could feel a heart pounding, but I’d lost track of whether it was his or mine. What was I doing?
Outside the dressing room, Marla once again broke the spell by calling out, “Are you two decent? Can I see?”
Haunted by my inability to maintain my distance from him, I stepped back and held out my arm, encouraging him toward the door.
“I guess we should give the woman what she wants,” I said.
Glancing in the mirror, Ben shook his head and said, “I’m going out there now, but there is no way—no way—I am wearing this to the party. It’s a dress. I’m not wearing a dress.”
I snickered at him, certain that we’d find something to suit his fragile male ego.
Ben
My dad took to Jess just as quickly as my mom had, hugging and laughing and chatting it up like they’d known each other for years. He met us in the driveway, grabbing Jess’s lopsided bag from her as he said, “Allow me, darling.”
My dad grew up in Texas and sometimes around a pretty girl he reverts back to this weird southern gentleman thing that seems both odd and delightful, considering he looks like an older version George Harrison in the seventies, with long shaggy hair, an oversized jean jacket, and a collection of beaded necklaces. Gathering my suitcase and the plastic bag from the costume store, I prepared to trail them into the house, but instead they were headed around the side of the building after my mom who had already headed off in that direction.
“Hey,” I called out. “Where are we going?”
My dad looked back at me like I was insane and quirked his head in curiosity before answering, “The studio. Did you forget where your room is?”
Of course I hadn’t, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me that my parents would put us up in my old space. When I hired her to come with me, I didn’t really think any of it through. Usually I was overprepared for all things, but somehow this situation evolved in ways that I just couldn’t seem to understand. I didn’t picture how Jess would make my mom glow or how it would feel to have a woman pretend we were intimate, physically and mentally. Jess was overwhelming. She was chaotic, yes, but she was also like a whirlwind of beauty, spinning light and color all around me in a way that made me both terrified and intrigued. That said, one thing was certain, I did not want her in my childhood studio.
I moved into the studio when I was ten, and before I lived there, we called it the guesthouse. My tenth year was the year that I explained to my parents that I wasn’t like them. While they favored days that bent to their whims and stream of conscious thinking, I needed structure. I needed to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. I needed routine and punctuality. I needed formality and rules. Certain that they could not comprehend the existence that helped me function, I suggested that we take our meals together and spend structured time together, but that I live out back in the guesthouse. They thought it was a phase, so they agreed.
It wasn’t a phase. I lived in the studio until I set off to college at seventeen. The studio was my sanctuary. It was the only place in the world where I felt completely free of prying eyes and it was the very first place where I created art alone. Kids don’t usually have time that belongs to them—with no one watching or commenting. I did. I was allowed to develop as an artist in a vacuum, to play out and stretch the ideas zooming through my young mind, completely free of outside perspective. It was magical and it provided me with a solid foundation of skills to shape and mold by studying the very best theorists and masters.
I treasured the studio, and I kept it very private. When I lived there, no one came and went but me and a cleaning lady named Virginia who had worked for my family forever. The works of art that lived there were part of the space. It was like my very own museum of my own history as an artist. Obviously at this point my parents had spent time there, but in general it was still a space that remained closed off to the majority of the world. I had never shown those early paintings to anyone.
Watching my father and Jess cross the lawn toward the two-glass-paned French doors that served as entry to the studio, I panicked. I didn’t want a stranger in my space. She was a stranger. What if she got up in the middle of the night and took pictures? What if she plastered images of all my early follies to the internet, making a mockery of the artist I had become?
I called after my father, “Do you really feel it’s appropriate for us to sleep in the same space?”
He thought I was joking. He laughed, looking back over his shoulder at me. Picking up on something uncomfortable in my expression, he stopped moving toward the door and asked, “Wait, are you serious?”
I stuttered, “Uh… Umm.” It was a ridiculous comment. My parents knew Jess and I weren’t virgins. Of course we had to sleep in the same room. How did I not realize this was going to happen?