<<<STARTS: 10.1.02
NOVEMBER 26, 2002
MY SUMMER WITH THE MOVIE STAR
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ezra and Carol picked me up on Friday night, as usual, after my first time at yoga class, which is the most rejected way to spend 120 minutes that you can possibly imagine. Because I was new, they merely gave me some breathing exercises to do all by myself, over in a corner, and wearing my regular school rags.
The school was just plain cheap, with no décor, and bare floors, and freezing inside and, on top of that, you were expected to purchase your own black leotards and bring them with you. I had in mind phasing myself out, if I could think of a way to do it, such as dropping a brick on my foot. To sum it up, it was super-boring, and the only way I got through it was to think about what might conceivably happen, to break the monotony, up at Ezra's that weekend. Slow-learner that I was!
When they drove up, I was already waiting in front of my house, with my little fake alligator case, containing the usual items: striped boy's pajamas which I prefer, clean extra bra, two pair of underpants, toothbrush, incidental cosmetics, hairbrush, and my good, white cotton shorts I washed and ironed just in case I had a chance to sit by the pool and collect my thoughts.
Before we left, my mother came out to the car, and said hello. She was trying to say all the right things, and not doing too badly because she is no idiot. But I was impatient because I wanted to get going. Essentially, I am the idiot in this particular accounting. I remember how she waved goodbye as we steamed off in Ezra's Cord automobile, me jammed in the middle. She stood there, out on our corny front lawn, and watched us pull away, my modern, trusting mother. I swear I will never believe anything my own kid tells me, even if she is sitting on a white cloud two feet above my head, wearing a halo, with "Jesus Christ" tattooed on her ass.
Friday night at Ezra's was, as they say, a non-event. I already had an early dinner at home, so "cook" which is what they call her--not "the cook," but "cook," gave Ezra and Carol a little something out in the breakfast room.
There were more notes waiting on my typewriter stand for me to start on, but Ezra said they could wait until tomorrow, and I was free to do whatever I wanted. They were getting the cards out for their eternal gin rummy.
So I rolled up my hair, just on the ends so it would flip up, although it was already getting too long, and I went to bed. To help me sleep, I read from a book of Ezra's, USA, by John Dos Passos. Now he is someone who could have written Ezra's precious life story for him and, if necessary, probably typed it up for him, too.
***
I got up early, but I took a shower this time because I wasn't in such a fantastic hurry to make the coffee and arrange the breakfast things that Ezra just took for granted anyway.
I was leisurely about it because I loved getting dressed in the guest bedroom, and especially fiddling around in the guest bath. You see, it wasn't anything like either one of our squirrely one and a half baths at home. It was done in stark black and white because Ezra is a man, and there's nothing frilly or pink about any room in his house. He also had a big, white--antique, I guess--bath tub with carved feet like claws that he must have had specially installed because the rest of the house was modern. There was a prehistoric fern in one corner that thought it was in a jungle because of the steam from the shower and tub, and the warm lights set in circles around the ceiling and even inside the shower. There were shelves all the way up one wall, to the very ceiling, containing men's cosmetics, and big, white towels with his monogram on them, such as I wore that fatal day, and a whole row of books and other reading material. I hoped they were for reading in the tub because the idea of people reading on the toilet is pretty repulsive. It implies they enjoy the act, and want to drag it out, while I personally barely pause to touch the seat, I am always in such a hurry to get it out of the way for another day, or two, if I'm lucky. I had to admit the books looked good on the glass shelves. If he hadn't been a movie star, he could have been an interior decorator, Ezra. Definitely before being a writer which, as I have pointed out, was at the bottom of his talent list.
While I was drying off, I indulged myself in--you guessed it-- one of my famous fantasies. It was a new one, based on the situation at hand. I suppose what kicked me off was the sight of my own breasts in the full-length mirror, while I was bending over to dry. They actually were bigger!
They were big enough to swing free of my body when I bent all the way down. I did that for a minute, bent down to my feet, and swung my chest both ways to see how much they would move independently. And that was that, my one way ticket to Sylvia's Fantasyland.
I must say I was getting more adventurous all the time because this was the first fantasy to ever seriously involve the lower regions. It begins with me, just as I am, stark naked. and bending over drying, after my shower and with my back to the door, exposing my entire privates from the rear. And for the first time, the fantasy man is Ezra. Ezra opens the door and just calmly walks in, like I am in there doing my needlepoint or something, and I knew he's watching, but I keep bending over anyway, so he doesn't miss a thing. After a while, I stand up and turn around, toweling my breasts luxuriously, but not hiding them in the process. I say something like: "Oh, Ezra, darling, I am so glad you're home for dinner early. Cook will be happy too. How was the golf?"
He says, "Sylvia, will you try not to whine when you speak and, for God's sake, learn to stand up straight."
Reality was already beginning to take its toll on me, since Ezra was instructing me on how to live even in my fantasies. Maybe Ezra wasn't the best material to work with, after all. Let's just say, his attitude toward me, at the moment anyway, was scarcely conducive.
(To be continued)
