wouldn’t give any of them back for anything. Not a chance.
However, there is now the issue of my ass, which I suddenly find myself staring at in a way I haven’t ever before. It is still shapely, plump perhaps but not in a bad way, more round than large. Sort of like Beyoncé. I have always been curvy, which is fine so long as you are not lumpy, which I have certainly never been, nor am I now, but as I look closely at my ass, it seems to be headed if not for lumpiness then at least toward bumpiness, and I’m not sure I would be any happier to be bumpy than lumpy in these photos I am taking.
My husband travels all over the world nearly every week, and if I don’t want him to look at pornography, or younger, pretty girls, it only seems fair that I hold up my end of the bargain. Ours is that sort of a marriage, has been since our first Valentine’s Day, when he bought me the slinkiest negligee ever from Victoria’s Secret. It was two sizes (at least) too small, so I sneakily exchanged it before I wore it for him and when I did, it drove him absolutely mad with desire, and I loved that. Scott is a brilliant man, and powerful, but I can turn him into a trembling boy, the one he was in business school, before the bonuses and stock options and Range Rovers and speedboats. In short, we both know who wears the pants in our house: My husband does. But there is equally little doubt which of us really has the power.
So he will love this gift and he will love that I thought to give it to him. Now I just need the courage to go through with it. Which brings us back, once again, to my ass, which I am staring at now in the cramped little room off to the side of the nail salon where they do my waxing. The salon is owned by Sarah, a lovely Korean woman who almost met my twins before I did; she was giving me a pedicure when my water broke. That sort of experience creates a bond, and on top of that I occasionally bring Megan in for manicures—I started when she was only three—so Sarah has watched my family grow and I, too, have watched hers; her grown children are always in and out of the salon, and I adore how proudly she speaks of the daughter who is a nurse and the son studying to be a lawyer. I feel Sarah and I have shared quite a lot over the years, and yet I cannot imagine exactly how I am going to tell her why I am here today.
Because if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. The photos will be tasteful and, hopefully, beautiful. But let’s face it—they are going to be more about sex than art, and if I want my husband to choose them over smut then we need to smut them up, at least a little. There will be nothing splayed, nothing gaping, nothing vulgar, nothing of that sort, but there will be full frontal nudity and with that NC-17 rating comes an obligation.
Bring on the wax.
I’ve never done this before, but I have friends who have, and they have told me to just remove my pants and underwear, that no one bats an eye at the nudity. So I did, and then I sat on the cushioned table that was covered with a long sheet of paper, and I waited.
Sarah entered the room with a huge smile on her face and a thirteen-year-old girl by her side.
“Hello, Brooke!” she exclaimed, apparently oblivious to my state of undress. “This is my niece! She wrote a paper on the origin of the steak knife and I knew you’d love to read it!”
There is obviously no chance that is what she actually said, but sometimes her English is a bit of an adventure.
“How lovely,” I said, nodding and frantically tugging down my tank top. I didn’t offer a hand because I didn’t have one to spare. “Do you live around here?”
The girl nodded. She did not speak at all. Neither did Sarah—she just stood beaming at her niece. But the trouble was that pretty soon it had been too long since anyone had spoken, so I did again.
“Well, Sarah, we’re going to try something a little