The Naked Truth

by Leslie Morgan

  To my surprise, that felt perfectly okay to me, too.

  * * *

  Back in Southampton, washing breakfast dishes one morning after ferrying my kids to the beach parking lot, I nearly dropped the dish soap on my big toe. I’d been randomly remembering how my ninth-grade boyfriend, Lyon Nash, used to kiss me and surreptitiously slip his hand up my shirt at school when no one was looking. Although I’d been boy crazy since first grade, Lyon had been my first true boyfriend. He’d driven me nuts. First with lust. Then with rage.

  Out of nowhere, I suddenly understood Lyon as I never had before. With a clarity that made the backsplash tile seem a more vivid blue, I knew why I needed not one but all my “boyfriends” now.

  We met in pre-K. Lyon was a six-year-old with floppy blond bangs. We used to sit in an old Buick that was part of the playground equipment, giggling together and pretending to know how to drive.

  I didn’t recognize him at first when he showed up again, ten years later, at my high school. Our two-hundred-student school was such a fishbowl, everyone tracked the new tenth-grade boy’s movements as if an invisible camera man had a klieg light trained on him throughout the school day. Lyon was over six feet now, large-boned, with dirty-blond hair that fell below his ears. He looked like a Viking, impossible to miss or ignore.

  Lyon was one year ahead of me, but an entirely alien species of boy compared to my classmates in their neat polo shirts. He landed with us after getting kicked out of a hippie New England boarding school. Not that Lyon told me any of this. I picked it all up, like candy wrappers that had missed the trash can, as he talked to tenth-grade girls between classes and before football practice. I stood at the edge of the huddle, figuring no one would notice me, a psychotically shy ninth grader who loved to write.

  So it was a shock when the phone rang one Saturday afternoon.

  From behind the study door, I heard Mom answer in the patrician Manhattan coo she saved for strangers on an elevator. I lay across the couch, reading The Grapes of Wrath for the second time.

  There was a pause from the kitchen. I stopped reading midsentence.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stiffened as I heard Mom say, with the hint of a fake British accent, “Well then . . . I’ll get her.”

  Mom called through the door for me.

  “Les? There’s a boy on the phone for you.” Her tone implied believe it or not. “His name is Lyon Nash.”

  Asking to speak to me. And then it got even better—he asked me out.

  Our first date was filled with awkward silences, but I was thrilled the whole time. I’m on a date! I kept whispering to myself. We went bowling, and then out for ice cream sundaes. I told no one. I didn’t think any of my ninth-grade bookworm friends would believe that I had a sixteen-year-old boyfriend whom all the senior girls flirted with. On our second date, my mother dropped me at a pizza place, and then afterward Lyon walked me to the bus stop. On our third date, Lyon took me home after school. I had told my mother I was teaching a gymnastics class to second graders.

  I had never lied to my mother before.

  Lyon’s house was empty.

  I was taken aback by my audacity, the way I had felt as a kid at camp, about to grab the rope swing that dropped you twenty feet above the swimming hole.

  Holding my hand, he led me down a set of rickety wooden stairs to his basement bedroom. I tried as hard as I could not to look at Lyon. Or, wait for it—his waterbed. The scent of the bed—Lyon’s oceany, chlorine-laced, plasticky smell I’d first noticed during my days sniffing him in the school hallways—filled the room and made me feel almost high. Sitting on the edge of the waterbed, Lyon lifted me up and around so that I was facing him, sitting on his lap, one knee on either side of his. He put each of my arms around his neck, like I was a doll. I let him kiss me over and over again. If I’d read that someone else’s saliva could taste good, I’d have puked. But with Lyon, it was true.

  I felt like I’d gotten a part in a play I’d never auditioned for. I was fourteen. I weighed a hundred pounds. I owned one bra, which I almost never bothered to wear, because I had little to fill it with. I focused on kissing him, because I didn’t know what else to do. I felt the soft patch between my legs warming like chocolate melting, a feeling I’d never had before. I wanted to crawl inside Lyon’s T-shirt like a kitten, and I craved his hands on me. Yet I couldn’t bear for him to unbutton my shirt and look at, much less touch, my uncovered breasts. It felt like my body was pleading with Lyon to do what most petrified my mind. At the same time, I was equal parts terrified of making a mistake myself, and abjectly terrified of touching his penis, which had to be somewhere inside his pants, right?

  After an hour making out in his dark basement, my hands accidentally brushed the front of Lyon’s jeans. The denim felt warm and soft, the jeans so loose the folds formed vertical hills and valleys. I let my palms press around his hips, pulling our bodies together. Then my hands brushed his zipper, which felt cold compared to the blue jean material, and I let them rest on his penis. I was taken aback by how hard it felt, like he had a skateboard stashed sideways between his legs.

  “Oh. My. God,” Lyon groaned, startling me. Then his body shuddered and he collapsed against me. Holding me heavily, he didn’t move for a few long seconds. Then he buried his lips in my neck.

  I waited a moment. “What . . . happened?” I whispered tentatively in the basement gloom.

  “I . . . ahh . . . I came,” Lyon whispered huskily. Was it wrong to make a boy come in his pants? Was that gross? Weird? My neck and chest flushed hot with shame. Then, to my surprise, Lyon said something I’d never envisioned any boy saying about me. Ever.

  “Damn, you’re sexy.”

  Me? Sexy? I had tangled blonde hair. Goofy no-name jeans. A cheap blue and yellow winter jacket handed down from my cousin. Zero makeup. Braces on my front teeth. I was most definitely the “before” picture in a Seventeen makeover.

  “I’ve never come like that before,” Lyon whispered, like he’d scored the winning touchdown in the homecoming game. He sighed and wrapped his arms around me as if I were a cone of crumpled paper. His body was huge, his arms like oblong cushions, warm like the basement. His embrace filled me with relief and a new kind of inspiration, hope for my future as a woman.

  Eventually, after I’d lost my virginity with him on that waterbed one chilly Valentine’s Day weekend, I learned that I wasn’t the only girl Lyon made feel special. We got back together after the first time he cheated on me. His mom had left his family and moved back to Boston, by herself. This made other girls feel sorry for him, which translated into Lyon getting into the basement waterbed with them, as he had with me. He couldn’t say no to any of us, as if he needed a never-ending parade of high school girls to make up for his mother’s abandonment. Each Monday morning, the school buzzed about another girl Lyon had taken into a back room at a party over the weekend. Did he also tell every one of them Jesus, you’re sexy? It was humiliating and infuriating, because his cheating didn’t make me any less crazy about him.

  Three decades later, standing at my kitchen sink, I saw Lyon for who he was. Who he’d been at sixteen, anyway. Lyon had turned to me and other women for comfort, for self-esteem, for affirmation that he was lovable in the wake of his mother’s baffling exit. He’d eventually righted himself, marrying and fathering two daughters. Thirty-three years after we’d broken up, dealing with a different kind of disappointment, I was doing the same thing. I was crazy about men now the way Lyon had loved each of his high school hookups. Including me. Each of the men in my life was a chip of self-worth, helping me rebuild myself.

  Why had it taken me almost fifty years to validate my sexuality and the psychological gifts men gave me? Fulfilling my desire to connect with men, sexually and emotionally, following my and Marty’s breakup was possibly the healthiest thing I’d ever done for myself. Dozens of male friends and colleagues had turned to women in the wake of divorce, without any long-term plans or commitment. Why was this
response less socially acceptable for a woman? Men and women are built no differently when it comes to the rewards of sexual connection. Yet in nearly every culture, sexually active single women are disproportionately targeted by society’s judgment. Was divorce at forty-nine making a man out of me? Absolving me from caring what the village thought of my sexuality? Or was I learning what it truly means to be human? Maybe all of the above.

  * * *

  Tonight?

  Every two weeks or so, Mishka would text me, or I’d text him, this one word. If I was free from kids and work obligations, I’d drive to South Philly, park the TT, and sneak up to his loft. He’d make me dinner and then we’d take our time making love. Then I’d sneak out and slip back home under the cover of darkness, feeling like I was a teenaged girl again.

  There were many joys of a minimalist boyfriend who wasn’t really a boyfriend. Mishka and I did not go out to dinner, or a movie, or stop by the grocery store together. I didn’t know what kind of car he drove. We didn’t fight over how to load the dishwasher or hang the toilet paper. Our relationship was unadulterated: we ate, we talked, we made love. Not always in that order.

  Plus, he cooked for me, and everything he made was delectable.

  Sara said I was getting slivers of intimacy from Mishka, trying out vulnerability in doses I could handle. Her take was that I’d never had true intimacy with Marty, even in the good days, because he’d used condescension as a wedge from the beginning.

  “Over time, you’ll want more, and you’ll be ready for more,” she told me, with confidence I didn’t feel myself. “Doesn’t uncomplicated closeness with a man feel good to you?”

  It did.

  “Those eyes,” Mishka told me once, kissing me as he cradled my face in his hands. “And this body,” he said, running his palms down my hips. Even that momentary connection made me feel like a flower about to bloom.

  One night, when it had been over two weeks since I’d gotten one of those Tonight? messages from Mishka, I texted him I miss you so badly my stomach aches.

  Why? he asked back, fishing. I knew he was smiling at his phone.

  Because you’re sexy and funny and I love to hear what you think about life.

  He sent back a smiley face, followed by And you’re gorgeous and laid-back and smart.

  I saved that text for the next time I missed him. Was this the ideal relationship? At least at this moment in my life, it was.

  Mishka and I usually made love slowly, drawing it out as long as he could last. He always looked in my eyes when he came, finding them no matter what position we were in. Once he stayed inside me for an hour of bliss before reaching orgasm. Another night, when the kids were at Marty’s, I fell asleep and woke up at three in the morning, the lights still on. Mishka was snoring and had his arm thrown casually around my back as if I slept there every night. It felt like we’d created a secret, and completely safe, world together.

  “It’s going to be hard to get married if no one knows about us,” Mishka said when he woke up next to me. He ran his hand over his hair and cupped my hips to pull me in for a full-body kiss.

  This marriage thing again. He’d been joking about it for the entire time we’d been seeing each other. He was teasing, right?

  “You told me you never want to get married,” I kidded him back, pulling his hair.

  “Ouch,” he said, holding my hands in his. “I’m beginning to change my mind.” He smelled like wood chips and safety, strength. It elated me to hear him say that—and it alarmed me. This wasn’t a relationship that could survive the harsh light of kids and fights about money and who should take the wheel on long car trips, even though it was probably the sweetest connection with a man I’d ever experienced.

  We made love again before I had to leave. He lay on top of me, inside me, looking at my face as if he couldn’t get enough.

  “I love you,” he whispered, his brown eyes meeting mine. I whispered the same three words back to him. To my amazement, I meant it. What was happening between us?

  The early-morning breeze rippled the curtains by his bedside windows.

  “Do you ever want more, Mishka? To see me more often?”

  He leaned down to kiss me.

  “Leslie, the truth is . . . no,” he said, affection making his eyes go soft. “You know how much I like you. I love this.”

  He ran his hand over my bare lower belly like he was smoothing sand on the beach. It was where I had the most cellulite. Mishka never seemed to notice my body’s flaws.

  “But I don’t actually like being with people too much.”

  Did Mishka deliberately limit our relationship? Did I? Was that so bad? I couldn’t come up with any reason why it was. Between his work and my travel and my weeks with my children, it would have been a strain for both of us to find more time for each other. But every time I left Mishka’s bed, I wondered: was that the last time? Despite what he’d said, that morning when his loft door banged shut I felt as I always did: I didn’t know for sure when, or even if, I’d see him again.

  * * *

  “I’m taking you guys to Mexico!” a man’s voice boomed from my speakerphone. The kids and I were playing cards and watching a rerun of Almost Famous one rainy Sunday afternoon. It was my little brother Mac, who had been six inches taller than me for thirty years. Mac sold beer at Candlestick Park and his voice had gotten permanently three decibels louder as a result.

  “What?” The kids and I looked at one another.

  “You heard right. I have a buddy in Ixtapa. And I got a big bonus. I’m spending it on you nutbags. Mexico is cheap now.”

  Timmy had a travel baseball tournament that weekend. So my brother, Bella, and I met in Ixtapa. We snorkeled. We parasailed. We kiteboarded. We got sunburnt.

  It was heaven.

  The last day of our vacation, Mac had booked our flights so that instead of flying straight home, we went through Mexico City so we could spend a day sightseeing there. Scarfing down fresh mango in the open-air lobby of the Nikko Hotel, Bella heard from other American guests that Popocatépetl was erupting. She came to me holding a scrap of paper with several numbers and dollar signs scribbled on it.

  “Mom, I know this is crazy. But Paradiso Pilots will take us on a helicopter ride to see the lava and the eruption. The website says they use American pilots. Please? I know you’re scared of heights. I know it’s a lot of money. But I really think it’s worth it.”

  Mac smiled at me, his salt-and-pepper bedhead hair sticking up, saluting with his guava juice and nodding yes, yes, yes.

  “Come on, mamacita,” he cajoled, like he was in the baseball stands hawking five-dollar cold ones. “It’s the goddess of the inner earth calling. We all need a little molten Mexican lava in our lives.”

  Three hours later, after charging hundreds of dollars to my credit card, we were all strapped in a glass-enclosed flying machine with four strangers hovering over acres of volcanic rock. We had been assigned seats based on weight distribution. My gigantic brother was behind me, flanked by Bella, who was overjoyed to have a window seat, best situated to take pictures to immediately upload to Instagram, plus two strangers. Thank God I was seated up front next to Captain Jeff, who introduced himself in Spanish as Jefe Jeff. His navy blue uniform and gold buttons somewhat allayed my fear of heights and helicopters. I took a couple of deep breaths as I strapped on my harness. It helped that if I breathed deeply, I could get a reassuring waft of Jefe Jeff’s aftershave. It smelled like Old Spice Fiji. I snuck a better look.

  Ay, caramba. Jefe Jeff looked to be in his midthirties, with spiky blond crew-cut hair. I looked at the control panel. He had gnarled thumbs, built up from years of tweaking the helicopter buttons and joystick. What else could he do with those thumbs?

  Jefe Jeff narrated the flight over an earpiece and microphone. He had a melodic, slightly raspy, extremely seductive voice.

  “Molten lava is fourteen hundred degrees, folks. That’s not smoke over there, it’s hot steam . . .” Jeff poin
ted out a former twelve-acre gated community, now covered in volcanic rock that looked like asphalt. Fascinating. All of it. Especially because even though the entire helicopter-load of passengers hung on every word he spoke into the headset, my name cropped up in almost every sentence.

  “Leslie, look at the lava against the snow over there. Leslie, I hiked that trail up Popo last July . . . Leslie, that’s the top of my apartment building . . .”

  I doubted he was sincerely flirting with me. He was too young and too cute and Jesus, he was a helicopter pilot, one entire level of hotness above firemen and country music singers. He was probably looking for a big tip. He’d pegged me as the Money Bag, naturally. I’m sure flirting with older moms carrying designer handbags usually paid off quite nicely. No offense taken.

  After a spectacular hour swooping into the steam above the lava, we climbed out of the helicopter, stiff from sitting, stunned by the natural beauty we’d seen. Bella immediately sprinted to my side. She looped her arm through mine and whispered conspiratorially, “So, found your soul mate, Mom?”

  “He’s a sycophant,” I whispered so he couldn’t hear.

  “Mom, no,” Bella said right away, her eyes wide and deep blue. “He’s got a crush on you. Go get his number.”

  She gave my hip a shove with her butt.

  I could have walked away. Most people would have been content with a cute story about a flirty pilot. I wanted more. After all, this year was about taking risks with men. So I whirled around without thinking and headed back to the copter. Jeff stood outside, smiling at us, like he’d been watching us. He still had on his headset.

  “Hey . . . Jeff?” I said, buying time for my brain to think of something. I crossed my ankles as awkwardly as a girl waiting for a boy to ask her to dance at prom. What to say?

  “Ummm . . . If you give me your email, I can send you the photos we took of the volcano. They’re pretty good . . .”

  I dug in, physically willing my body to stay put despite the fight-or-flight adrenaline coursing through me.