Free Women in Lust by Rachel Kramer Bussel Page A

believe him, but I risked changing by my locker finally and except for a wisecracked,
“Well, shit, look who’s finally joining us out here,” there were no other comments. I mean, what was I even expecting?
    Except maybe the way my mom used to cut her eyes at me when I’d be getting ready for school in the morning, wondering why I bothered with doing my hair or putting any color to my lips—looking at me like I thought I was the Queen of Sheba, when I was really such a cow.
    With Jimmy, there was something else going on. He’d look at me like I was beautiful, the way someone pauses, kind of dumbstruck, before a stunning work of art or a breathtaking sunrise, stops to really be present with that spiderweb caught with morning dew stuck up there between the peeling paint and cracked window frame of your first apartment—you know. I mean, the only person who’d ever told me they thought I was beautiful was my dad, and that was when he wanted me to let him watch me in the shower. And then, in high school, if some guy liked you, you knew that as soon as he told you how pretty he thought you were, you’d hear him joking about you with his friends. I used to hate that feeling, how the big openness of longing and being longed for got dropped, reverted back into a kind of pit of loss and shame and embarrassment; when I realized that maybe they were just kidding after all—do you know what I mean?
    But things with Jimmy were strange and different, and of course, he was hard to believe. When I tried to cover myself, he used to just say, “Wait—please, Steph,” and even though I’d keep my hand on the sheets, I wouldn’t pull them up over me, over my curves, the pushes of flesh around my belly, the little hairs darkening my thighs, or, sure, the split of my pussy or my breasts. Over the months we were involved, I got more comfortable, even sometimes spreading myself wider for him, more open—like I deserved to be so displayed, like I was exquisite, unique.

    Sometimes he’d touch himself while he looked, his cock hardening behind the fabric of his boxers and khakis with its preternatural twitching, and I would clench inside myself, feel the rose blush spread from my chest.
    Don’t tell me you don’t know what it was. I knew. But still, I loved it.
    He’d brush his fingers through my thick pubic curls, loosening the free hairs, and then he’d bend forward, dive in. His body would sort of fold. He wanted inside me and sure I know that as a whole person, I didn’t exactly exist anymore when he got into that wet fleshy focus, but at the same time I knew in that moment that I was being revered.
    Now, like I said, I had reason in my life to believe that my body would never be reverenced, so when he put his mouth on me that way the very first time, when his throat opened and his warm, damp breath eased and heated across my pussy, propped up and open as I was in my little chilly dorm room, I just about started to cry. I mean, the wet prickled all around my eyes and my nose started to run. When I sniffled, Jimmy raised his eyes up to me sharply, not exactly in surprise, but not exactly knowing either. He just smiled, pulled one hand off my thigh and caressed my cheek.
    “You are so beautiful, Stephanie—”
    And this is what happened in my head: now, I know that I am supposed to be a self-actualized woman, and it doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t, whether a man wants me or not or thinks I’m cute and yes, I know, I’m smart and believe in the power of reasonable footwear and warm clothes in bad weather and I was raised on feminism and will never disavow my own inner strength, but—and it kills me that this has turned out to be true—I got so wet when he said that to me, so thick and soft and open, so scared that maybe he didn’t really mean it and, oh, I just wanted
to quit thinking so much and feel what he was about to do.
    Jimmy helped me with that right away, dropping his head back down between my thighs and letting