Letters Home
I work the closing shift as a cocktail waitress, so in the mornings I lounge around in bed for a couple of hours with the TV on and the shades pulled tight. Usually I do this until about noon when my muscles start needing to move. Today after I shower, I make a last minute decision: What the hell. It's a warm day, it's a silk blouse; I'm not going to wear a bra.
Even alone in my house this gives me an edge, a little secret. I can pretend all sorts of things.
When I walk to the neighborhood mailbox, I can feel my breasts swaying and the silk rubbing there makes my nipples hard. Five out of the six cars that go by are driven by men alone and all five of them stare at me far longer than is safe. I might just cause an accident.
They keep driving. In my neighborhood during the day, it's just garbagemen, workmen, repairmen, gardeners---me and my boobs.
Two men in a cable repair truck go by and the passenger leans out his window towards me.
"Owwwww," he moans. Like he's going to die, slaughtered by the swaying of my breasts against purple silk. I can see the headlines: "Man Slain by Wild Breast."
I have been working on becoming more patient. I think of this because I realize it's something that's particularly hard for men, especially with anything related to sex. A woman walking alone carrying a stack of envelopes. She's got nice breasts. Better fuck her. Can't let that one get by. Then they moan because the conventions of society won't let them club me over the head and drag me back to their basement apartment.
After we have sex, my boyfriend says, "A vagina is like a good home."
"That's so romantic," I say. I tell him: I think I'm going to cross-stitch that on a small panel surrounded by voluptuous flowers and hang it over the kitchen sink.
I have achieved the level of patience where I can cut my rose bushes back all the way and wait an entire year to see any blooms whatsoever. My boyfriend says I will truly be patient when I can begin my own rose plant and grow it properly from the beginning instead of trying to nurse whatever scraggly plant happens to be outside the house I rent. He works at a gardening store, but he won't help me with my plants because he doesn't like to bring his work home. Once he did bring me home a box of Beaute-Bloom, but he didn't tell me what to do with it.
Dear Mom. I'm glad you liked Robert. We're doing pretty well together so who knows. To answer your question, Robert plans to finish at the community college and then apply to regular college. He thinks he wants to study horticulture, but right now he's taking business classes so he can someday run his own greenhouse.
I throw my shoulders back and make my boobs dance to the tune of "Three Blind Mice." I make my own fun.
His last girlfriend was a saint in the patience department. She sat and carefully printed his name and invoice number on all 412 of his boxes before he moved cross country. Once, when they didn't have a cooler, she tonged endless ice cubes into an empty milk jug so they could have cold water to drink on their road trip.
Translation: She didn't care how long it took him to come. She just kept on sucking. Patiently.
"Anyway," he tells me, "you're stupid to work on a rental property. It's money and energy down the drain."
Yeah, I'm stupid. Look who's dating me.
Dear Mom. I don't have the faintest idea where things are going with Robert, so you don't need to keep asking. When I have news, I'll tell you. Either that or you'll notice the big rock winking on my ring finger. Be patient, Mom. It's a virtue.
The one thing Robert does love about me is my breasts. I have to admit it: my face is okay, but my butt is kind of flat and my hair is stringy and flyaway.
My breasts, however, are in the top 99 percent. I'm not being arrogant. Every guy I've ever dated has commented on how primo my breasts are. They all want to do that thing where they rub off between them and shoot up towards my face. I close my eyes.
They're my one asset, and I know they won't last, so I figure: flaunt it while you've got it. My boyfriend doesn't like other people looking too much. Only his friends and only when he's got an arm draped around me, fingers laid casually close to the prized mounds.
After we're done with sex, to dispose of the used condom without mess, he puts it in an envelope and seals it. "Another letter home?" I ask him.
I carry my letters to the mailbox with aplomb and I shimmy when I arrive. I feel my power as four cars go by and three of them honk. Then the mail truck pulls up and my mailman steps out. It's the first time I've seen him anywhere but standing in front of my house slipping bills through the slot.
I cross my arms over my chest. Something about him knowing where all my mail comes from and goes to. When I hand him my stack of letters, one envelope scrapes against a nipple and it hurts.
But my mailman looks down in his little blue mail visor. He's embarrassed. This makes me drop my arms.
I step across to the lawn and bend over to admire the roses growing there. "I wish mine bloomed like that," I say and look up to catch his unguarded gaze down my shirt. I stay bent over a long time, exercising my patience.
Then I walk away humming, and suddenly I remember what I dreamed last night. I'd given birth to a litter of kittens and they were all trying to nurse, working their tiny claws into my flesh. There were six or eight of them, and they'd all found a place to latch on. I couldn't look.
Dear Mom. Robert and I fuck like dogs and stay that way until someone takes a hose to us.
Dear Mom. He's an animal and I like it. I don't think he'll ever marry me and I like that too.
It's not going to work with Robert; I already know that. And I already feel sorry for his next girlfriend, the one who will have to hear about me: The Girlfriend with Big Breasts. I always see it like that, in capitalization, like the name of an important building maybe, in an address.
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