Nude Men

bad-looking. But not right for me. He’s old enough to be my husband.”
     
    I f the word is ‘infatuated,’ meaning that you’re infatuated with someone and it’s a problem because the person doesn’t like you back, well, the word tells you that your problem is in fat you ate, meaning that you’ve got to eat less fat, so you’ll be less fat, aI1d the person you want will want you back. The last piece, id, just means that the solution is sort of psychological.”
     
    S ara is like those freaks in circuses, like women with beards. She’s a child with the body of a woman, or a woman with the face of a child.
    She is a goddess. She’s unreal. She’s so beautiful. Her womanly curves are wrapped in child’s skin. It must hurt the young child’s skin to be stretched over all those curves. It must itch. It looks as though it might burst. I have never seen a woman’s body with skin so tight. It looks very strange. It looks strangely much like a Barbie doll. I am overwhelmed by her and in awe of her. I am even sometimes intimidated by her.
     
    I am not in love with her. I cannot be, because of her unmarked face, her low number, and her body, which doesn’t have enough defects for my taste. She also hasn’t enough past for my taste. Past is an attractive quality, you know, which people often don’t realize because they are seldom confronted with too little of it.
     
    I f her head were perched on the body of a child, her face would not seem particularly innocent. But perched on the body of a woman, it looks like the face of a newborn.
     
    “I f the word is ‘ugly,’ meaning that you are, or you think you are, ugly, the solution is uh, glee, meaning that you must try to be gleeful and you’ll seem more attractive to people. The uh just means that the solution is not obvious.”
     
    I feel comfortable with her, just as she feels comfortable with me, because we are both freaks. I’ve noticed, these past few weeks, that I depend heavily on her affection, for emotional support, when I’m depressed. When everything in my life seems to be going badly, I have one consoling thought: “At least Sara loves me.”
     
    I sense that in a way she is vulnerable, that she is uncomfortable and embarrassed about her body. I want to console and protect her.
     
    T onight, like last night, Mom goes to bed and Sara comes to my room and talks for two and a half hours. She makes me sing songs in French from the Donkey Skin movie, and in between the songs, sometimes even in the middle of the songs, she suddenly says, “I want you to like me, and I want you to love me.” We sing Donkey Skin some more, and then I go out on the balcony to get some air. When I come back in, she climbs up on my knees, for the hundredth time since I’ve known her. She kisses my cheek, lays her head on my shoulder, and whispers near my ear, “You are a little boy in the body of a man. I am a woman in the body of a little girl. We are perfect for each other.”
    She got that wrong. She’s a little girl in the body of a woman. I swear to God. Her body is the body of a woman. In fact, so is her inside, I mean her soul. Her soul is a woman, not a little girl. She is a woman in the body of a woman.
    She plops down on the bed and says, matter-of-factly, “My mother took me to the doctor a few weeks ago to get a vaccination and a checkup. I took off my clothes and put them on a chair. The doctor picked up my panties, which were lying on the chair with my other clothes, and brought them to my mom and said, ‘Her panties are soaking wet. She’s ready.’ ”
    I look at her, open-mouthed, thinking: Huh, I didn’t know doctors did that. The world really isn’t as I had imagined. I got it all wrong.
    Then Sara says, “I’m only kidding. That was just a dream I had. A really awful and embarrassing dream.”
    She climbs back on my knees and whispers in my ear, “Eighteen to thirty-six, fifty to sixty-eight, seventy-two to ninety. Do you know what these numbers are?” And before I can answer, she says, “They are the difference in our ages. I calculated them all. There’s not such a big difference at all. Eleven to twenty-nine is the only one that seems big, but it’s only an illusion.”
    I stare at her, paralyzed, not knowing what to do, not even able to wonder what to do. I feel like an object without the power of thought. Finally, a clear thought comes into my head, and I say, “You should get interested in boys your own age.”
    “What