At heart, she is a scared little girl, trying to keep her vulnerability secret, someone who wants someone to sit with her and hold her through the night, keeping her company on her couch or in her bed, someone she can count on to be there when her hamster brain goes haywire in the early morning hours.
And to date, she hasn’t found a man (or a woman) who has lived up to that expectation. Men mostly use her, and then go home to their wives, leaving her to spend the lonely night in anticipation of what the early morning hours will bring.
She doesn’t mind the sex, but it disparate for the affection, the tender touch, the caress that is more than just a come-on, something more meaningful than foreplay.
Yes, she wants to feel important and to be recognized for her talents, but she also wants to be appreciated as a woman, not just for sex.
Each time she invites someone up to her apartment, she expects it to turn out that way, hoping that man or woman will spend the night, cuddling before sex and after, snuggling on the couch as she and that person take in something on TV (Netflix perhaps) and yet, almost always, she finds herself locking the door after they leave, hearing the thud of their steps hurrying down the stairs, the slam of the front door, the roar of their car as they hurry home.
This may explain why she got drunk last night before she went to the part, dressing up for the $1,000 a plate political fundraiser her boss put on, just as she dressed up last summer when our office threw a launch party for our latest magazine, showing off her new earrings and black dress for her friends before she plunged into the uncertain world of political high finance the Virgin Mayor is building around him, she serving as eye candy for his potential donors, she as she served that role when she played with the band a few years ago.
The whole idea of her not needing a man went up in smoke when she told her close girlfriend in Spanish that she had taken on as a lover someone she was tutoring, perhaps part of a pattern that has been with her her whole life, her friends telling her “no le digas a nadie” or “manténlo en secreto.”
She made a big deal of her attending the fundraiser last night, sounding very much like a girl who had gone to her prom, her friends and family giving her words of encouragement as they admired her makeup, her black dress and yes, her new earrings.
Her mother and friends went on and on with party suggestions, and she built up her role at the event in a way that made it seem the party was for her instead of for the mayor or that she played a more important part in it than she really did.
She may even have believed this herself as she stood looking at herself in the mirror: “Espejo, espejo en la pared, ¿quién es la más bella de todas?”
No doubt, she must have looked stunning.
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