Don’t zoom in on the flaws, I advised myself, the way I would Bella when she compared herself to her skinniest friends. I remembered a study I’d reported on years before, data that showed a trick American men play on themselves when they look in the mirror. Unlike women, men see a stronger, more muscular body than they actually have. They smile and suck in their beer bellies, as if they’re still twenty-four. American women do the opposite, magnifying the parts of our bodies we hate, falling victim to a body dysmorphia brought on by years of seeing airbrushed models in Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions and thousands of Photoshopped glossy ads for products we don’t actually need.
Imagine you are better than you are. Trick yourself like men do.
I tried it.
I paused in Eagle Pose, a twisty one-legged position where you wrap your arms and legs around each other, turning your body into a figure-eight hourglass. I felt as if I were noticing myself for the first time.
Wow, I had curves. My waist cut in nicely. My hips flared out. The skin wrapping my hipbones and ass was as smooth as it had been when I was eighteen. The triangle of blonde pubic hair seemed . . . discreet and tasteful, seductive, promising.
I saw a grown woman in the glass. Not a sexy twentysomething body that you’d find strutting on the Victoria’s Secret catwalk. But even through my prescription lenses, the body I saw was curvy, soft, and appealing. This was me. If my forty-nine-year-old body still turned me on, it was a short hop to imagine it had done the same for Dylan, and could do the same for other men, if I (and they) were so lucky in the future. Not every man on the planet. But definitely one or two.
The woman in the mirror smiled at me.
Or maybe even five.
DRILLING AND BLASTING
Like warmth from an invisible sun, I felt someone’s gaze as I walked to the drugstore after an early Sunday morning jog around Center City. I was sweaty with snarly hair, wearing a black camisole over a pleated, aqua-colored athletic skort. I looked up and down the sidewalk. Empty. Then I noticed movement across the street. A thirtyish man, walking a speckled hound dog, was staring at me. Staring. I gave a little wave. He grinned sheepishly, caught in the act.
What did he notice that I couldn’t see? Neighbors and parents I’d known for years passed by these days without recognizing me. Everyone said I looked taller after I got divorced, which was puzzling, because I wasn’t, of course. Did I really look so different now that I wore lipstick and had lost a few pounds? Or was something else going on?
Being noticed these days—as if catching my reflection in a societal mirror—felt like that shock of getting splashed with sprinkler water on a hot summer day. Especially when the attention came from men. I’d spent my life evading male interest, starting at fourteen when construction workers leered at me on the sidewalk, and later when older male colleagues invited me to one-on-one lunches and dinners even though we had no business to discuss. Avoiding flirtatious men and unwanted sexual advances signaled my commitment to my career and husband, while sending a message that I was trustworthy to female coworkers and moms I liked and whose respect I needed.
Now, being shamed or pressured into short hair, loose dresses, and modest one-piece suits at the pool struck me as a perverse form of objectification. Not a pornographic type of diminishment—women as crude sex object—but the opposite, women as nonsexual object. Up until now, it had seemed dishonorable, or antifeminist, to take pride in my body, to enjoy it hedonistically, or even to be at home in it. Today, that fleeting second of being noticed by a stranger across the street made something in me hum with the joy of being female.
In line to check out at the drugstore, I spotted Tara, one of my favorite moms from the kids’ school. Tara’s husband had gotten an MBA at Harvard alongside my Minnesota friend Trish. For years, we saw each other every week or two at charity fund-raisers or parties for the kids, but our paths hadn’t crossed in months. After mutual friends heard about our divorce, I got left off dinner and cocktail party guest lists I’d been on for years. No one was intentionally trying to hurt me. Yet how could friends think a recent divorcée wanted to be excluded from social activities?
Today, Tara had on the mousy summer uniform I’d worn for nearly two decades: knee-length khaki shorts and an old button-down oxford. Maybe Tara had dressed this way, and eschewed makeup, long before she had added a wedding ring to her ensemble. But to me, her outfit looked like a sandwich board across her body declaring I’M MARRIED. No longer a woman, exactly, but instead a wife who had abandoned paying a nanosecond of attention to how she looked to the outside world. A person who deemed it unnecessary, or a betrayal of her role as loyal partner/mother, to scrutinize her physical appearance. Which of course was her choice, none of my business. I knew there was power in not wearing makeup, not bowing to traditional norms of female beauty. However, I got the feeling Tara was clinging to her identity as a mother in the absence of other selves: she was pushing one of those shopping carts that has a plastic kiddie car attached, even though she had no children with her today and, furthermore, her children were teenagers.
“Leslie!” She practically yelled in her Main Line accent when she saw me. “It’s been so long!” Her face broke into a smile, showing her cute overbite, as if seeing me was the whole point she’d gotten up that morning. “How are you, honey?”
Despite her WASPy-ness, she was always as enthusiastic as an Eagles cheerleader.
Then she looked down at my skort. She wrinkled her brow.
“Are you going to play . . . tennis?” she asked. She looked around for my racket.
“Nah, I’m getting toothpaste.” I smiled at her.
Thank God I didn’t have K-Y or condoms in my cart.
“Why are you dressed like this?” she blurted out, genuinely confused.
I didn’t answer. I was fairly certain that even if Tara understood that I dressed to feel attractive, visible, she couldn’t admit, to me or herself, that she sometimes felt invisible, too. There was something taboo about women, especially privileged women like me and Tara, acknowledging marriage’s disappointments and the need to feel valued by our culture outside the house. After all, there are many greater challenges and hardships in life. Tara and I both had grabbed, literally, the gold ring, by marrying men who were ideal on the surface, seemingly kind, smart husbands who paid their taxes, made a good living, coached peewee soccer on the weekends, and came home to us every night. Men whose biggest flaws seemed to be that they played too much golf, left their socks on the floor, or stayed a few hours too late at the office. How could we be ungrateful that they ignored us? How dare we criticize the men in our lives, or the lifestyle they made possible? These topics were at once too personal and too complex for pharmacy checkout counter chitchat.
“Hey, Tara, it’s always so good to see you. But I gotta jet. Coffee sometime?”
“Sure,” Tara said. Abruptly, she grabbed me for a hug. She held on and whispered in my ear, “And by the way . . . you look terrific.”
As I walked out the automatic doors, she stood by the self-checkout register, still looking baffled by the way I’d changed. By me.
Not even half a block later, another woman called my name.
“Leslie!”
A platinum blonde in black Jackie O sunglasses and supertiny, supertight white shorts and wedge heels waved furiously at me. Her baby-blue T-shirt read PEACE LOVE BORA BORA in huge white block letters. Although it was barely ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, she had on full makeup, a Gucci purse, and four-inch wedge heels. Who was it? I stumbled into a teakwood bench on the sidewalk outside the kids’ favorite ice cream parlor as I squinted at her. Then it came to me: Patti, a mom from Bella’s first swimming class.
“Hey, skinny!” she said after she squeezed me in an enthusiastic hug. She was from Staten Island. Not to stereotype New Yorkers based on their borough, but everything about her was flashy and over-the-top. However, she’d taken Bella home for play dates with her youngest son at least a dozen times, an
d her heart was as big as her hair.
“The divorce diet,” I explained. She was divorced, too. She put her glossy red fingernails on my forearm in sympathy. We traded the usual rapid-fire mom updates: How are the kids? Going anywhere fun for vacation this summer? We should grab coffee sometime!
“I gotta go,” she said, looking at her Cartier. “My new exercise class.”
“What? No more yoga?” This was a thunderbolt. Patti was the one who dragged me to yoga in the first place. “What are you doing now?”
“OMFG the best barre class ever!” she practically screamed in the glaring midmorning sunshine, throwing her arms wide open. “Look at my legs!” She pirouetted so I could see her cellulite-free upper legs and butt cheeks. I had to admit, her ass looked so good I wanted to caress it myself right there on the sidewalk.
“Look at these shorts! I can wear a thong bikini again!”
I stood in front of Patti and her perfect forty-five-year-old butt, speechless. I’d never worn a thong bikini. I hadn’t put on short shorts since the summer I turned thirteen. But I realized something astonishing: I wanted an ass like that. What had happened to me? Had I become, practically overnight, a shallow, antifeminist Playboy Bunny? Or was I on my way to being a true feminist, loyal to my own rules, for the first time in my life? It was surprisingly hard to know for sure. Then I had an even more startling thought: who cared?
Head spinning from all these thoughts on wifery and womanhood, I headed home, where I found Bella in the kitchen drinking lemonade.
“Why do you have on makeup, Mom?” she asked.
I felt like saying, You, too?
It took me a second to find the answer in its simplest form.
“It’s actually that I used to feel so unpretty. I want to look good now.”
“But Mom, you went to Harvard. You’re a feminist. A domestic violence advocate. Why do you want to look pretty? Why do you want men to notice you? Aren’t you better than that?”
Her face looked disappointed, even hurt, by this facet of my postdivorce personality.
“Honey, my life is not all about looking good for men on the sidewalk. Although I do like that part.”
Bella smiled, showing her dimples.
“It took me a long time to figure this out, that a woman can be smart and sexy at the same time. There’s no disrespect in it. I wear lipstick and eyeliner and short skirts when I’m by myself. Even when I’m writing or doing stuff here, when I look in the mirror, I like to look nice. I’m not dressing up only for men. It’s for me.”
What I felt like saying was I lost who I was for so long, now I need to be visible, even to myself. That was the truth.
* * *
Back to my regular life with regular yoga. The kind with clothes. I was late to afternoon power hour. As usual.
I blasted into the studio foyer in a pissy froth, trying to morph my facial muscles into yoga-zen tranquillity. Your image mattered at Down Dog, Philly’s hottest, and coolest, yoga studio. Inside the exercise space itself—hot and humid already, the way I loved it—I beelined toward the back corner. I had come to Down Dog for so many years that I had my favorite spot, the way ninety-year-old men claim benches in Rittenhouse Square. My place in back was closest to the bathroom. Best situated to catch the ribbon of fresh air that slithered in through the bolted emergency exit. Farthest from the teacher, so when a sophomoric guru spouted a bit too much faux wisdom (“your heart is your most intuitive muscle”), I could safely mutter back “Shut your clabwabber!” without getting busted.
Today my corner spot was taken. Motherfucker. That space was MINE. MINE. MINE.
I felt like cursing out my mat-stealer. I stared at him instead. Yes, him. It was rare to have a man in yoga, let alone a gorgeous, burnt-honey black man. Both his hands were folded, steeple-style, across his T-shirt. Which I couldn’t help noticing were covering a big and barreled chest. His left hand was absent a wedding ring; check mark there, no more married men for moi. He looked to be a few years younger than me, but within KC’s Keep it legal admonishment. Bulky arm, shoulder, thigh, and calf muscles. Tight waist and abs. A tattoo on his upper right tricep read FAITH. He diffused my zombie death stare by shooting me a beneficent, curious grin as the three ohms that signaled the official beginning of class rang out.
I spied on Gorgeous Yoga Man throughout practice. I’d taken the space right in front of him, slightly to his left, along the wall (which I needed for balance, given how tiny my dwarf feet were—they’d stopped growing in fourth grade, probably from the trauma of asking Mom about blow jobs). During Savasana, I lay a foot away from him, synchronizing my breath with his steady inhales. Good, sweaty karma. The connection felt sensual.
I was supposed to be clearing my mind, but instead I plotted how I could talk to him. After class, I’d start with “Nice practice, huh?” If I had the guts.
I dove for the bathroom as soon as Savasana was over. I had to fluff my sweaty hair and put on lip balm to bolster my courage. I came out, nonchalant and casually coiffed, but shaking with adrenaline underneath.
He wasn’t there. How could he have gotten away so fast? If he had noticed me, wouldn’t he have lingered to try to meet me, at least for two minutes?
I must have been wrong about the karma. I made a sad face to no one in particular, since it would have been too goofy to call KC right at that moment to confess my failure.
The truth was I also felt relieved. Trying to hit on men, making the first move, was hard. Before leaving Marty, I’d never once in my life asked a guy out. I’d never told the universe, or myself, I want that one. When I was dating in my twenties, it had seemed more socially acceptable, which at the time felt absolutely imperative, to let men come to me, then to pick the best of that subset. And where had that gotten me? Two decades of a marriage that had felt like a feather pillow held over my nose and mouth. It felt exhilarating to realize I could pursue men on the open market, rather than waiting to see who came to me.
However, despite KC’s coaching, I lacked the bravado to shoot that first arrow. Disappointed and relieved, I trudged outside into the golden summer afternoon, walking past the cavernous redbrick Reading Terminal, the country’s oldest farmer’s market.
And there he was: my spot-stealer waiting to cross the street.
Before fear paralyzed me, I sidled up to him at the red light. I shifted my yoga mat to my other shoulder to make it obvious I’d gotten out of the same class.
“Good practice, right?” I managed to blurt out.
He whirled around as the cars streamed by. His eyes widened when he saw me.
“Oh, yeah,” Gorgeous Yoga Man said, smiling a little. “More of that blissful torture, no? You were right beside me, weren’t you?”
I swear he looked at my ass as he said that.
“Yup. Along the wall,” I said. My heart was racing. I tried to remember KC’s pickup tactics for dummies: act relaxed, keep the conversation flowing, and give him a chance to talk. “Have you been practicing long?”
“Two years,” he answered, his eyes locking onto mine.
Whoa. Gorgeous Yoga Man had magnificent eyes, a deep brown-green with golden flecks. Light brown freckles bedecked his nose and cheeks. The sounds and colors of the buses and buildings around us faded away.
“Really?” I forced out, trying to appear normal. “At Down Dog? I’ve never seen you here before.”
I would have noticed you, my friend. Even when I was married.
“Yep. I usually go to West Philly. But my son has a summer league baseball game near here in an hour, so I hit this studio today.”
He had a son like mine who played baseball? A connection.
The light turned green. We crossed together. The late-afternoon sun turned the crosswalk into a golden path.
Once on the far sidewalk, he put down his gym bag and leaned up against the wall of a Subway sandwich shop. His body blocked the pedestrians who rushed by, creating a protective little triangle for me, like a branch sticking out f
rom a riverbank forming an eddy of calm water.
“Where does he play?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s a rising sophomore at St. Joe’s.”
“My son plays, too. He’s the pitcher. At Friends.”
GYM threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, I know him. Number Four? That boy who cracks the bats?”
“That’s him.” I laughed. Namaste, universe.
“You’re married, right?” he blurted out, taking me by surprise. Before I could react, he said, by way of explanation, “Because you’re such a beautiful woman. You have to be married.”
Ah, slick. But I liked the way he said it.
“I was married.” I smiled, to show I was over it.
“I’m Damon,” GYM said, sticking out his hand for a shake. It was warm and dry, solid and thick.
I had his name. Now I had to give him my number. KC would give me an A+ on this one. I reached into my bag for my card.
“I’m Leslie. Here’s my card. Have fun at your son’s game. Hope they win.”
He reached into his wallet and fished out his card. It had the University of Pennsylvania seal in raised blue and maroon lithograph. His full name was Damon McKenzie.
I was surprised to recognize the last name.
“Did you grow up here?” I asked. “My kids’ preschool teacher spelled her name the same way.”
“That would be my mom,” he said, smiling like he was the luckiest kid on the planet to be her son. “Mrs. McKenzie.”
His eyes, which were actually a froggy green mixed with brown and gold, shone in the fading twilight.
I had to leave quickly, before I tarnished this flawless scene by accidentally spitting on him or farting loudly.
“I’d like to see you again, Leslie,” he said.
“Damon, I would, too.”
He put out his hand once more. This time, when our palms connected, he held on a beat longer. I felt dizzy when I looked in his eyes. I let go and walked up the cobblestone sidewalk, my back to Subway and the most beautiful straight man to ever hold Tree Pose, practically dancing.
The Naked Truth Page 9