Faking It (11 page)

"No, I don't know. What kind of help do you need? I mean, I know you had a rough time after Andrew cheated on you..."

Leave it to my mother to use those words...

"...but you're fine now. You're working and paying your bills and going out."

"Mom, it's--I'm--I wanna better myself. What's wrong with that?"

"I just think you're wasting your money, that's all. You're fine."

Apparently I'd gotten good at faking it with everyone, including my mother. Rather than turn my snowball lie into an avalanche, I refrained from saying anything about bartering my services and instead signaled the waitress to order a big cookie.

"Should you be eating that?" she asked when the waitress returned seconds later.

As I stared her down, mentally ordering laser beams to shoot out from my eyeballs, I chomped into my cookie and said nothing. Hell, yes.

***

The following Tuesday, Devin called and asked if we could move our meeting time to around seven-thirty.

"What, no client tonight?" I asked.

"I cancelled."

"Why?"

"I thought I'd show you the finer pleasures of a bathtub date."

"You're kidding me."

"Dead serious."

I pulled the phone away from my ear for a second and dropped my mouth open.

"And you can't do this at two in the afternoon?" I asked.

"It's not the same when it's so bright outside. You need the proper atmosphere--candles and that sort of thing."

I agreed to meet him, and then called Maggie immediately afterwards to tell her.

"Can you believe he actually cancelled a client for this? Do you know how much money he loses when he does that?"

"Obviously he wants to be with you instead," she said. My heart fluttered, although I shrugged off the notion.

"I'll bet his partner's going to be pissed," I said.

"He probably got someone else to fill in for him. Face it: this is no ordinary escort."

"You know, I just thought of something: should I bring a swimsuit?"

"Why would you do that?"

"Well, it's either that or get naked."

"Isn't that the whole point?"

"I guess so. What have I gotten myself into, Mags?" I asked her that at least once a week since I'd started meeting Devin.

"Bring a change of underwear, just in case."

"In case what?"

"Well gosh, if you have to ask!" Maggie said with a laugh. My face burned in the privacy of my apartment and I abruptly ended the call.

***

I showed up wearing jeans, a light blue tank top, and flip-flops, but brought no wardrobe changes. My hair had grown out quite a bit, almost long enough for a ponytail. It fell in waves and I kept it out of my face with a headband. Devin looked comfortable in his usual jeans and a faded U2 Elevation concert tour t-shirt. He was barefoot and sporting a salon-induced tan, his brown hair perfectly coiffed, as always, with a few orangy-blonde streaks in his bangs.

For my portion of the session, I introduced the concepts of argument and classical rhetoric, and we discussed
Phaedrus
, Plato's slam against the sophists and philosophical foray into provisional vs. absolute truth, which confounded Devin.

I explained, "The sophists were the talk show hosts, televangelists, and motivational speakers of their time. The
Stephen Colbert
s. Orators for hire--have quill, will travel. And they were regaled as rock stars with their grandiloquent ability to move the masses and make them swoon."

"Sounds like a good gig."

"Plato didn't think so. He's saying that sophistry is nothing more than 'cookery', a bunch of bells and whistles, and that rhetoric is not so much a pursuit of truth as much as a means of persuasion."

"So, when you called me 'a modern day sophist,' you weren't paying me a compliment?"

I started to open my mouth but then stopped short. Good fucking memory.

"But here's the cool thing," I said, ignoring his comment. "If you really study the text, Plato is
teaching
, and he uses metaphor and tropes used in rhetoric to do so."

"So?"

"
So?
Do you realize that this is the stuff that I'm still teaching to this day? Metaphor? Rhetoric as a means of communication and persuasion? He paved the way for guys like Aristotle who systematized the whole thing, modes of discourse and all."

"And truth?" he asked.

"What about truth?"

"Is rhetoric a means to truth or not?"

"Plato didn't think so. He thought sophistic rhetoric actually got in the way of the search for absolute truth, which sort of contradicts what I teach today. I say language is a way to make meaning, to express truth in many forms. Plato sought to use rhetoric analytically and dialectically. Read the text again and you'll see it--look at the dialectic between Socrates and Phaedrus."

He frowned. You'd think I'd offered him a second helping of liver. "I'll pass," he said in feigned politeness.

"It's an acquired taste," I replied.

When our writing session was finished (first I had him describe the Warhol painting without using any of the words typically found in an art review; then I had him write an impromptu speech--he even created a metaphor inspired by the Platonic "cookery" which impressed me further), Devin left the livingroom to prepare the bath, while once again I circled the loft to admire his art collection. He'd added a new piece--a small, square-shaped oil on canvas that featured various shades of hot red layers broken up by a yellow stripe running across the top, looking like torn paper. Very abstract.

"Ready," he called.

I entered the bathroom. The room glowed with votives strategically placed around the massive jet-stream tub brimming with suds, and smelled of lavender and vanilla. Thick, plush towels were folded spa style and relaxed at the tub's edge. Soft, jazzy music reverberated off the walls, and I couldn't even find the speakers. I sucked in my breath.

"Wow," I said, my voice barely audible.

"You like?"

I nodded. "Heaven."

"Well, get in."

I looked at him hesitantly.

"Am I supposed to get naked?"

"It would kill the mood to wear your clothes, don't you think?"

"Do I have other options?"

"Did you bring a swimsuit?"

My face flushed. "No."

"Then no, you have no other options. If you were so concerned, why didn't you bring a swimsuit? It's not like you didn't know what was coming."

"You didn't tell me to."

"That's because a swimsuit defeats the purpose."

"Well geez, this tub is about the size of a pool."

He laughed and looked at it with approval, as if he'd built it himself. "So, are you getting in or are you waiting for an engraved invitation?"

I looked at the tub, the bubbles making fizzy, muffled, snap-crackle-pop noises, and contemplated my decision.

Why not?

"Okay. Don't look," I said. He left the room. I stripped naked, leaving my clothes in a small heap at the base of the tub and stepped in, careful not to let the suds or any water spill over. The water was warm and smooth like velvet; I gathered as much foam as I could to cover myself, and then leaned back against the terrycloth pillow, closing my eyes.

"Okay," I called. "I'm in."

Devin came back with two Mikasa flutes--ginger ale for me and champagne for him (he had started keeping ginger ale in his fridge just for me). He looked at me, delighted. I blushed in the shadow cast by the candlelight.

"How's the water?" His voice, mellow and sonorous, matched the mood.

"Divine," I replied, giving in with every passing second. He kneeled beside me at the edge of the tub before I closed my eyes again. I could almost feel a magnetic aura around him, pulling us together.

"So, whattya want? Want me to sponge your back, shampoo your hair, rub your feet... what?"

"You really do this with your clients?"

"If that's what they ask for, yes."

"What else do they ask for?"

"To bathe other body parts."

While my imagination filled in which parts, I opened my eyes and sat up slightly, my softened muscles contracting again. Devin dropped his hand into the water and swished it back and forth.

"Aw, Andi, you were beginning to let go--I could see it on your face. Now you're all tense again. How come?"

"In my house, we didn't talk about 'body parts.' GTO parts, yes. Guitar parts, absolutely. Not body parts."

He rolled his eyes, then muttered, "Good God, it's a wonder you were even conceived. Where were your parents when Vatican II came out?"

Where was my mother?
I thought. As I recalled dinnertime conversations, it seemed that my father and brothers dominated my memories, as well as the conversations. I couldn't remember my mother ever interjecting other than to ask who wanted seconds or to clear the table. Come to think of it, I couldn't remember ever getting a word in edgewise. Why? It's not like my brothers ignored me completely. Rather, they often invited me to come with them to Howard Johnson's for an ice cream soda with their friends, or let me sit and watch when they rehearsed. Their interests interested me. It just didn't seem reciprocal.

"I don't know," was the only answer I could muster.

"It's just a body, after all," he said.

"A body is one thing. Body parts are completely different, though. Just saying the words 'body parts' makes you wanna take a shower. At least in my family, it does."

"That's ridiculous. Why is a
body
sterile and scientific, or a work of art, but
body parts
are shameful and taboo? It makes no sense. How are body parts any less natural or aesthetic than the whole body?"

"A body is more than the sum of its gross parts?"

"I'm not kiddin'."

"Neither am I, Dev." My on-the-spot creation and use of a nickname for him momentarily surprised me, but I continued. "There are some body parts that I wouldn't exactly wanna photograph and frame. Take the nose, for example. An ugly protrusion with holes and hair in it. Eiw. Did you ever meet anyone who said, 'Whoa, check out the nose on that girl!' Then there's..."

Ignoring my rambling, Devin stood up, stripped down to his boxers, and stepped into the tub, sitting across from me. I sat up as straight as I could without revealing my bare breasts, trying to inch my way back.

"Relax," he said. "There's plenty of room for both of us, and I'm not going to look at or touch any part of you that you don't want me to see or touch. But for the record, I've seen and touched enough naked bodies to know--"

"--to know that all bodies are beautiful. Yeah, you used that line on me before."

"It's not a line," he said, irked. "And I was gonna say, to know how to make a woman forget her self-consciousness."

He had his work cut out for him tonight. And he read my mind at that instant.

"Tell you what. We'll just talk--about anything you want. Music, the weather... you see the game last night?"

We started talking about the Yankee game, and next thing I knew, it was as if we were sitting across from each other at Junior's rather than a candlelit bathtub. It occurred to me then that my initial resistance had little to do with self-consciousness and more to do with the fact that I actually
wanted
him to see and touch my bare body, to find it desirable. Pretty soon I moved closer to him, first running my foot along his calf, then turning around so that he was behind me, caressing a lavender-scented puffy sponge along my neck and down my back while we talked quietly. And, sure enough, I forgot all about my self-consciousness and my naked body and leaned into the protection of his firm, sturdy arms. That night, I understood the secret of why his clients kept coming back for more. Indeed, he knew how to make each one feel sexy, uninhibited, beautiful, and like each one was the only woman in the world.

But how did
he
feel? I wondered. Was he aroused? Fighting to keep from doing more than just sponging my back? Or was I just another client? Had he successfully learned to emotionally and physically detach himself from the women he serviced? Was that even possible? After all, he was a man. Unless he was gay...was that it?

As the votives started to go out and the suds broke up, he stood up and reached for the full-length towel waiting for me. I tried to look for signs of an erection, but he was too quick for me.

"Here." He closed his eyes and held the towel out in front of him and open for me, still standing there, dripping. "Say when."

His gesture struck me; he'd just spent the last hour--or more--with my naked body, and yet he still respected my privacy without judgment. I stood up and moved into the butter-soft towel as he practically hugged me with it before I stepped out.

"My God, this feels good. Did you use the whole bottle of fabric softener?"

"That's cute. Can I open my eyes now?"

"Oh yeah, sorry. Thanks."

"You're welcome." He quickly stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel for himself. "So? What'd you think?"

"I think we should start doing
this
once a week from now on."

He grinned. "You did great. You relaxed and got comfortable with me. I'm proud of you."

I glowed. Then I looked at him, perplexed.

"Why'd you get into the tub with me? You said you don't usually do that."

"The situation warranted it--you needed the presence of a man's body, and to see that there's nothing sinful about it."

"If that's the case, then why didn't you get completely naked?"

"I didn't want to overwhelm you. I mean..." he blushed and looked away, laughing nervously. It was nice to see I wasn't the only one who got flustered.

"You're that good, huh," I said more friendly than flirtatious.

He didn't answer me; didn't need to. I could feel a connection between us at that moment, and liked it.

I then wondered why I'd never spent an evening like this with Andrew. In fact, I don't think I'd ever had such an intimate encounter with anyone. Not that Andrew didn't want to do such sexy, romantic things with me. He would take me out for candlelit dinners or serenade me with a folk song that he wrote just for me, but I'd avoided many of his more personal advances, and suddenly I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Why had I never
trusted
him? I was engaged to him, after all. How could I be more trusting of a man that I've never even kissed, a man I barely knew, than of my fiance?