Page 13 of Last Night
‘Hair,’ he says, and nods toward my black Lycra crotch, the hosiery stretched as taut as a trampoline.
‘… Hair down there?’
‘Yeah,’ Zack says. ‘Do you wax?’
… What? Onearth? A pre-nup for pubes. Oh God, I feel ancient. I suddenly feel like thereisn’t ten years between us, but generations. I have time travelled. I’m trying to shag my grandson.
‘No?’
‘Oh. Sorry, I shoulda said!’ Zack says, conversationally, like he’s explaining he meant to give me the shortcut directions to the supermarket. ‘I usually do say up front, on Tinder, but you know. You got in touch tonight. And I was, like, yeah, she’s hot.’
Zack pauses for my reaction. I gather I’m meant to think this is a major silver lining to this cloud. The silver lining, Zack, is how little I wanted to have sex with you anyway.
‘Only now I’ve thought, I didn’t say about the hair thing. Yeah sorry, like, no hair for me. I can’t do it.’
‘What, like … physically couldn’t get it up?’
‘Uh. Yeah? I guess. My friend who is into the … you know … Stepmom Porn likes it. But not for me.’
‘Stepmom Porn?!’
Zack’s eyes widen, conveying: wow, you really are antiquated, huh (and proving my point).
‘Jesus.Stepmoms. That’s one for his therapist.’
Zack may not be the sharpest but he’s caught the edge to my attitude easily enough. He eases me off his lap and as I stand up he says: ‘It’s nothing against you, OK, horses for courses. You do you.’
‘Yeah, looks like I’ll have to, huh.’
This is lost on Zack, who blinks.
‘But you’re … sex is sex. Wouldn’t you make do and get on with it?’ I say. ‘Where’s your Blitz spirit?’
My need to solve this riddle is fighting my need to not sound like I am desperate for him to get on with it, because I absolutely don’t want anything from him but answers.
Zack shrugs.
‘It is what it is. I’m grossed out by a bush. Like, some guys like blondes. Some guys like … guys.’
‘What would happen if you’d forgot to say and then saw pubes?’ I say. ‘Would you scream, as if I had theRatatouillerat in my pants?’
‘To be honest, Eva, uh, I feel like you’re shaming me.’
‘You’re the one who called a screeching halt to sex based on my body, so I don’t think you’re one to talk about shaming.’
A pause.
‘Do you have hair?’ I say.
Zack shakes his head, elastic band slipping from his man bun as he does, and he re-ties it.
‘No, man, I have it all off. Clean as a whistle. Butthole too.’
He looks proud, as if this is a great personal achievement. As if he could listWhiskerless Anusunder ‘What makes you right for this role’ on a CV.
There’s not many moments in my life I’ve managed to assert myself. Susie still talks in awe of the time I got bollocked for my cheese scones and told my Domestic Science teacher she was a complicit instrument of patriarchal control, like Serena Joy inThe Handmaid’s Tale.
Mrs McNab called me a ‘smart arse’ and I saidwell I am smart and I have an arse so I’ll take it. Ten days of detentions, ten whole days.
