As I step into the bar they’re all staring at me. There is a hunger in their eyes as they take in the sight of this flimsy dress and my body beneath it. They want me, and I want to be wanted.
The suburbs haven’t been good to me, they’ve been dull and dreary and the same thing day in and day out. I need more.
So a trip to the city and an escape from who I was really seemed like the best option. I bought myself a cheap little costume and mingled with all the people, finding myself feeling more excited than I had been in ages.
He is the first to approach me, his words so close they tickle my ear and his hands running over my side. There is the touch of his bare skin on mine and I realize that when I stumbled outside my dress tore. All of them are staring for so many reasons, but one of those reasons is that I’ve been exposed.
I let him take me into the back. I let him tear the dress from my body. I let him pin me up against the sink and I let him do everything to me.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this alive. I don’t know if I can go back anymore. The feel of him on me and the feel of those others watching. All of them seeing me become someone new.
A woman without reservations or inhibitions.
Excerpt
“Hey there beautiful,” he smiled at me, “I saw you from across the bar and I just had to ask if I could buy you a drink.”
I blushed hard. I knew that in my current appearance I looked good but I probably had a decade on this guy and my mind wouldn’t quite accept that a man like him could want a woman like me.
There were so many pretty women in this bar that were his age, all in college and all bouncing with that youthfulness that women in that situation had. My months of solitude in the suburbs had made me feel old before my time, and I felt like there was a wide gulf between the two of us and didn’t know how it could possibly be breached.
But still I nodded, almost as if an unseen hand was guiding my actions, puppeting me towards what I wanted even if I couldn’t admit that I wanted it. I nodded and let him guide me over to the bar, ordering us two drinks and grabbing them before steering me through the place over to a quiet corner so we could ‘have some space to get to know each other.’
And as he walked me I felt my grip tighten on the glass. He was steering me with one hand on my back and I could feel the unmistakable sensation of skin on skin. My mind raced as I tried to rationalize this, searching back to the image of my reflection in the mirror and trying to figure out why this was the case.
Because my outfit might be thin and it might be flimsy, but there was definitely cloth there. In spite of the cheap manufacturing it was still a dress and dresses normally covered that spot just over my ribs that his bare hand was slowly and gently caressing.
He led me over to the wall and guided me up against it, positioning me with my back to the wall and him standing there between me and everyone else. As he took a sip of his drink I chanced a glance down at my outfit and everything connected all at once and I realized what had happened.
The tumble outside. The sound of the rip. The feel of his fingers on my bare skin.
When I’d fallen my dress had ripped. It’d been so tight that the sudden movement must have split the seams initially and then the rest of it just sort of followed.
Everything was still contained and covered, but there was a large gash in the side of my outfit leading up from just above my waist up to the side of my breast.
If I moved just so and leaned just right then the fabric would lift away from my body. It would bare a substantial amount of my breast to anyone who happened to be in just the right position to see it, to take advantage of their good luck.
Oh god those men who had been looking at me, those men who had been watching me. All those people seeing me like this.
What they must have thought.
They didn’t see the woman my husband did. They didn’t see a housewife living in the suburbs. They didn’t see a woman in crisis, unsure of where she went next.
And I couldn’t tell you what they saw precisely, but I knew at least that they saw me as an opportunity.
Was that such a bad thing?
I knew it was wrong to feel the way that I felt about this stranger in this bar or the way those other men had looked at me. I hadn’t actually crossed any lines yet and I could still walk out of here and walk back to my life.
And I knew that the longer I stayed the more those boundaries of fidelity would be pushed. The temptation of being there and the lure of him looking at me like he did would make me gradually start to accept little cracks in the foundation.
One crack and the structure holds, but each additional one increases the chances of it crumbling.
The thing was that right there and right then I wasn’t sure if that would be a bad thing. I knew that I wasn’t happy with the way that life had gone for me, and I knew that there was something missing that I needed in my life. Something to thrill and excite me. Something to make me feel just an ounce of desire and longing that someone could have for me.
He had that for me, this stranger. He was so close to me and so present and I hadn’t felt this witnessed in a long time.
This stranger may not even know my name but he knew so much about me in a heartbeat. He knew me in a primal way, as a man knows a woman.
And he knew what I needed.