The Bucket List

by Georgia Clark

  “Let’s do questions at the end of the presentation,” Murphman says without looking at her.

  Steph stiffens.

  He gestures to the wall. “—placed under the muscle through an areolar incision.”

  The next set of boobs appears, and the next and the next, a never-ending series of nipples from more breasts than world cultures in the It’s a Small World ride. It has the effect of completely desexualizing boobs, making them seem almost alien. I’m unsure how many of these women are previvors, like me. Next to me, Steph’s foot is jiggling the carpet.

  The presentation ends. The lights flick on. Dr. Dan Murphman smiles with all his teeth. “Thoughts?”

  Steph looks like she’s just eaten something bad. She hates him.

  I ask, “What kind of reconstruction would you recommend for me?”

  The doc says, “Let’s take a look,” and hands me a paper gown to change into.

  Steph hovers, unsure. We’re not the kind of friends who swim naked together. “Should I wait outside?”

  “If you want to be involved, you’re probably going to see them eventually.” I steel myself, and start unbuttoning my shirt. In less than a minute, I’m sitting half-naked on an examination table, tits out. Steph gives me a brave smile. There’s an almost imperceptible blush coloring her cheeks.

  The doctor glances at my tatas with quick dispassion. “Implants,” he replies. “You don’t have enough fat for flap.”

  This is what I’d already assumed: “Flap” surgery rebuilds your breasts using fat from your thighs, your tummy, your butt, wherever you can spare it. It’s the most natural-looking reconstruction, and it leaves you with breasts that are soft and warm, aging as you age. But it also takes the longest to recover from because you need two surgeries, and it’s complicated keeping the flap of skin and fat alive. Regardless, it sounds like having a couple of butt-boobs is off the table for me.

  Murphman recommends expander-implant reconstruction. “Temporary implants called expanders are placed in pockets formed under the chest muscles. Over several months, the expanders are gradually inflated with saline to stretch the skin and muscles, each time requiring an in-person appointment.” He sounds like he’s reciting information from a textbook. “During a second, shorter surgery, the expanders are replaced with implants.”

  “And how many of those have you done?” I ask.

  “Plenty,” he says. “Like I said, the key to a good outcome is leaving me tissue to work with.”

  “Isn’t the key making sure she doesn’t get breast cancer?” Steph asks.

  Murphman grins at her as if she’s just made a joke, and indicates my left breast. “I’ll be able to fix this asymmetry.” I didn’t even realize the girls were asymmetrical. “Give you more of a lift here, and here . . . You’re a, what, 32B?” He guesses correctly. “We could easily take you up to a C cup.” He points to the picture of Kourtney. “Or a D cup.” Salma.

  “I don’t think I want to go bigger,” I say.

  “I can make you any size you want,” he says.

  “Yes I know,” I say, “but I think I’m happy being part of the Itty-Bitty Titty Committee.”

  Steph snorts.

  “To be perfectly honest, most women want to go bigger,” he says. “Big breasts are beautiful.”

  Steph rolls her eyes.

  “Right,” I say, “I’m just not sure if they’re for me.”

  “If you’re on the fence, go bigger. Trust me. Breasts are what makes a woman a woman,” Murphman says. “They’re the most fundamental part of a woman’s anatomy.”

  I know this isn’t right. But I remember the way Elan’s face started to change in his apartment, before I told him about the bucket list. The burgeoning sense of what had to be disgust, as the truth of my plan played out in his mind. Maybe going bigger is an option. The upside for having two massive scars for the rest of my life—

  “That’s total bullshit.” Steph’s voice surprises us both. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Being a woman has nothing to do with how big your tits are. And let me tell you, as a woman who has been blessed with a couple of boulders, it’s not all fun and games.” She ticks off her fingers. “I always have to wear a bra, even though I hate them, I get chronic back pain if I’m on my feet all day, and I get catcalled a million more times than girls with small tits.”

  Dr. Murphman holds up a hand. “Young lady—”

  “Fuck you,” she says, and turns to me. “Lace, you don’t know how lucky you are, having small tits. You choose when you want the world to see them, respond to them. I don’t get that choice. Guys think big boobs is a constant invitation, like, if I’m born a double D, I’m obviously a fuck machine. Why do you think I wear T-shirts all the time?”

  Murphman opens his mouth.

  Steph holds her hand up. “Take your big-boob wankfest and shove it up your tight bleached arsehole.” She gets up, opens a door to the walk-in bathroom, closes it, opens the actual door, and hurries out.

  * * * *

  “Steph! Wait!” I catch up with her in the elevator bank.

  She spins round. Her face is the color of a tomato. She looks dazed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  I’m dumbfounded. “What just happened?”

  “I just couldn’t stand him talking to you like that.” She peeks back in the direction of the office, wild-eyed. “Did I just tell a surgeon to shove something up his arsehole?”

  “Yes.” The elevator dings open. I pull her in, grinning. “And it was brilliant. Thank you. You’re right: fuck Barbie boobs. Fuck that guy.”

  The elevator doors close. I flush, angry and confident and grateful for my friend.

  19.

  * * *

  March

  It’s generally understood that every Hoffman House employee, even the interns, are well-rounded in the vocabulary of New York. We can rave about our favorite dishes at the hottest new restaurants (toasted kasha salad! cavatelli with ’nduja!); we’ve seen the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Guggenheim (“Often conceived as a visceral, instinctive painter, he’s a much more considered artist than once believed”); we’re excited about DVF’s S/S collab with RiRi, and if you don’t know the abbreviations, don’t even bother. The prohibitive cost of this knowledge is never discussed. It takes an incredible amount of cunning to appear casually connected. To this end, I spend Saturday at the Met. But I can’t focus on the paintings. I can’t shake the thought that all these timeless, priceless works of art are all just dots and swirls. That when you break it down and look up close, everything is just . . . a mess.

  Every time I call Mara, she screens. I know I have to tell her—for her sake and for Storm’s—but I’m terrified she’ll be angry with me for getting tested without her permission. She doesn’t want to know. Even if I do tell her, she probably won’t get tested, so all this information will accomplish is her being mad at me and ensuring I see even less of my niece. I’m at a loss.

  I refocus on the outfits and get the user ratings back up to a four, just barely. Vivian’s satisfied. It feels like a chore. I remind myself that hundreds of ambitious young women want to be in my position, working on a hot new start-up with Vivian Chang. Women like Olivia, Jordan, and Calley, college pals who visit for a weekend, all four of us jammed into my tiny studio. They are in awe of my life, which Olivia decrees “perfect” and Jordan declares “even better than it looks on Instagram.” I step out of the way of their jealousy and let it dress me, secretly ashamed. Only I know this designer outfit is actually a knockoff.

  After my disastrous meeting with Dr. Murphman I put researching the Big M on the back burner. My considerably more successful threesome with Camila 4 Cam has me keen to keep on with my bucket list, but with whom? How? Elan never wrote back after my text about the threesome, and Cooper is inexplicably in Berlin for a few weeks. Do I cast a net out via online dating, which I and everyone I know hates with a fiery passion? Hang around bars and wait to be bought a dri
nk—“Dirty martini, extra dirty”? Drive up and down Fifth Avenue screaming, “Does anyone want to engage in mutually respectful carnal pleasure?”

  This is what I’m turning over in my mind, takeout lunch special in hand, when I hear someone call my name. In the middle of the faces streaming across Mott Street in SoHo on a sunny Tuesday, I am suddenly face to face with Ash Wilson. My college boyfriend.

  “Ash!” I gape at him. “What—? Where—? Ash!”

  He laughs and gives me a hug. I’m rocketed back five years, to skinny dorm rooms and bad cafeteria food and being the old married couple everyone made fun of but secretly wanted to be. He smells the same: pine soap and trustworthiness.

  “Holy shit.” I squeeze his arms. “You’re jacked.”

  “I started working out.” He gives me that goofy modest Ash smile, and I melt a little, just on instinct. He was always so cute: face like a teddy bear, blond flop of hair. Stocky but not fat. And now, fit.

  I pull us out of the way of another wave of hungry office workers: me, the New Yorker, him, the tourist. “What are you doing here? Are you visiting?”

  “No. I live here.”

  “What?” I slap his very solid arm. “Since when? Why didn’t you email me?”

  “Since ten days ago,” he says. “I have a sublet in Bushwick while I find something.”

  “That’s awesome,” I say. “Not the part about Bushwick—bit too rustic for me—but it’s awesome you’re here. Is Michelle with you?”

  His face shifts. “Michelle and I—we called it off.”

  “Oh. Wow, I’m so sorry,” I say automatically. This stuns me. Ash has always been my go-to example of a Nice Guy. Nice Guys don’t call off engagements. Or leave their very needy extended family behind in Ohio to move to New York City. “We should get a drink. Catch up.”

  “I’d like that,” he says, and I can tell he means it. “I’ll text you.”

  “Do.” I’m squeezing his arm, again. “It’s really good to see you.” I let our gaze linger for a few seconds longer than necessary before I turn away, a long and lazy lasso tossed around his torso.

  And just like that, the bucket list is back in play.

  * * * *

  We arrange to meet the following Friday. I actually get a few butterflies as we shore up our plan.

  I know exactly what I’m going to get him to do with me.

  Ash and I were not what you’d define as a passionate couple. Stable, yes. Sweet, for sure. But save for a few hot, gropey, very tipsy make-out sessions when we were first getting together, backstage after rehearsals (we met in drama club), Ash and I bypassed the honeymoon phase in favor of the domestic-bliss stage. And that’s because we were mind-blowingly inexperienced when it came to any and all parts of a sexual relationship. We didn’t know how to talk about our relationship, and by that I mean we never talked about it, not objectively. Ash’s family members are strict Lutherans. They were technically okay with sex before marriage but not at all practically. We weren’t even allowed to be in a room by ourselves with the door shut, even in the middle of the day during a hot and heavy game of Risk or Settlers of Catan. We ended up doing it, but it was furtive and awkward and 100 percent missionary 100 percent of the time.

  Honestly, I didn’t even really mind. In a way, I was grateful. We were always super careful. I was on the pill and we used condoms, so I was never worried about STDs or getting pregnant. And I got to sidestep the awful sex-in-college phase. One by one, my smart, kind girlfriends were falling for absolute dingbats who couldn’t give less of a shit about them. The girl in the dorm next to me lost her virginity to someone dressed as the Joker at a Halloween frat party. She was blackout drunk and never even found out, exactly, who it was. We all knew it was rape, really, but she never wanted to do anything about it. Watching her try to laugh it off as if it was funny and wild was the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen. That was sex in college, in a nutshell. Hooking up was supposed to be fun, but it just made most—not all, but most—of my friends sad and anxious. I’d cuddle into Ash with a bowl of microwave mac-and-cheese, streaming old episodes of Sex and the City on my laptop, and thank my lucky stars.

  But that was years ago, and I’m different now. My body and I are slightly better acquainted, and I’m (slightly) less embarrassed talking about it.

  I suggest we meet at my place. I’d love to “show it to him,” dot dot dot.

  * * * *

  On Friday night, my ex arrives right on time, in a pressed collared shirt and dark jeans. The old Ash wore baggy sweatshirts and faded chinos. I answer the door in a drapey chiffon robe dress, and yes, you can see my bra. His eyes go to it immediately. He looks startled.

  I’ve changed too.

  “Come in,” I coo. “Entré.”

  “Cute place.” He slips off his shoes. “Very . . . contained.”

  “We’re not in Ohio anymore, Toto.” When I accept the bottle of wine he hands me, I let our fingers graze. “It’s so good to see you, Ash.” I give him a Very Meaningful smile.

  Dinner is roast veggies and a quinoa salad: nothing too heavy, the boy’s bench-pressing. I dim the lights when he’s in the bathroom. We curl into my love seat, my legs hooked over his. “Michelle was a great girl, but when I thought about spending the rest of my life with her . . .” He lets out a breath. “I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking it was cold feet, that I’d get used to the idea. But it just got worse. I felt paralyzed.”

  “You poor thing.” I stroke his arm. “Poor Masher.” His pet name.

  “She didn’t take it well,” he says, draining his wineglass. “Tried to run over me with the car. She says it was a visibility issue but . . . she did.”

  “Awful.” I shake my head. “Just awful.” I’m channeling every seductress I’ve ever seen on TV. Every word is as slippery as silk.

  “I wanted it to work, Lace.” His gaze is intense. “You don’t know how much I really, really wanted it to work.” We’re staring at each other. His eyes flick to my lips, back up to my face, and at the exact same moment, we close in on each other. His lips feel soft and familiar, like a comfy pair of slippers. He opens his mouth. I pull back.

  “Hold up,” I say. “I want to try something.”

  “Lights on?” He looks nervous.

  I tell him about my bucket list. Not the reason for it, just its existence. “And so, because we’re friends, because we know each other, I was wondering . . .” I can feel my face going red. “How do you feel about . . . role-play?”

  He sits back. “Role-play?”

  “It’s basically the same as drama club, except we’re acting out sexy scenarios instead of Guys and Dolls.”

  “What kind of scenarios?”

  I unhook my feet and tuck them underneath myself. I’m more tongue-tied than I want to be. “Basic scenarios. Standard scenarios. Boss and, um, intern.”

  “I’m the boss?”

  “Actually, I’m the boss.” My gaze pinballs around the room. “I have this fantasy that I’m a power bitch, and a sexy intern—you—seduces me. I try to resist, but you’re just too hot and I give in and we do it on my desk.”

  “I haven’t done any acting since college,” Ash muses. “What’s my backstory?”

  I’d laugh if I didn’t feel so awkward. “It’s not really about the acting, Ash, it’s about . . . creating a rich fantasy world where we can play out different power dynamics. It’ll be fun.”

  Ash frowns at me, thinking it over. If it’s not an immediate yes, it’s obviously a no. Vague discomfort deepens into real humiliation.

  “Forget it,” I say. “Dumb idea—”

  “I’m in,” he says. “I want to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. This is my new life. I want to try new things.” He gets to his feet purposefully. “Let’s go.”

  I slip into black pants, heels, and a white button-down, unbuttoned to expose a peek of my bra: power-bitch chic. Already I’m simmering: equal parts nerves and something else. I posit
ion myself at the desk, flip open my computer and adopt Patricia’s excellent posture. Everyone wants to be my boss, and channeling her is surprisingly sexy. The idea that I can fuck and fire someone makes me feel expansive. Already I’ve summoned my ex from the New York chaos and made him appear here in my apartment. This small but powerful act makes me sit even taller. I’d chosen this bucket list item because I figured it’d be easier to get out of my comfort zone with someone I’m comfortable with. But as I pretend to study a spreadsheet, I realize I’m not that comfortable with Ash anymore. He’s grown up, and so have I. And that’s a good thing. That makes all this even more exciting. I’m not exactly turned on, but I’m alert. My heart’s beating a little faster.

  If I play my carnal cards right, maybe tonight’s the night Ash and I don’t just have very quick, slightly shameful sex.

  Maybe tonight’s the night we fuck.

  Ash knocks on my wall.

  I bark, “Enter!”

  He’s adopting a nervous posture, blinking shyly. “Ms. . . . Whitman?”

  I break character. “Babe, no, it’s not really me. Make up a name.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

  We reset.

  He knocks again. “Ms. . . . Huffington?”

  Sure, whatever. “Yes?”

  “I have those reports you were after.” He hands me my electric bill.

  I peer at it. “This is very poor work. Very poor. I’m sorry, I don’t think this is a good position for you.” I recross my legs and arch an eyebrow. His cue to seduce me.

  Ash clasps his hands together. “Please, Ms. Huffington. Please don’t fire me. My family’s relying on this paycheck. I’ll have to go on food stamps.” He’s doing some sort of Southern accent. “Ma’s got dysentery of the bowel; Pa’s in jail for killing a man over rat meat—”

  “Cut, cut.” I wave my hands at him. “This isn’t Oliver Twist. It’s meant to be sexy.”

  “I was going to do a whole ‘if there’s any way I can change your mind’ thing,” Ash says. “I’ll do anything, anything at all—”