Romance Anyone?
TWO stories about the vagaries of love - 4 minutes
Two micro-stories from the 🌿LEAVES archive of January 2024. If you’ve already read them, thanks so much! If not, have a look! Just for a laugh. A four-minute read.
First Date
She smooths the liquid makeup evenly over her face, taking time to carefully blend it in at the neckline and ears. It hides her naturally rosy cheeks, so she adds an artificial blush. She glues on long eyelashes, draws black lines around her eyes, artfully fills in her eyebrows with a tiny brush, then adds a kiss-me red lipstick over her silicone-injected lips. She winds the ends of her bleached blond hair around a curling iron, pins in a few extra tresses to add volume. She sprays her entire body with light rose-water mist, to mask her natural, feminine smell.
Earlier today, she had whitened her teeth, painfully removed every bit of unsightly hair from her body, polished her fingernails a glossy black. She now puts on her laciest push-up bra, the one with the torturous under wires, and slips into thong underwear that uncomfortably lodges where no garment should ever lodge.
She now steps into a skirt with a hemline that just barely covers her bottom, and adds a low-cut sequined blouse that shows off the black widow tattooed on her left breast. She hangs earrings from the many holes she’s had punched in her ears. Her silver necklace has an arrow pendant that points into her cleavage, in case the cleavage should be overlooked. Finally, she slips on black stiletto heels — shoes that hurt her feet just to look at them in the closet. Some anorexic 17-year-old guru on YouTube told her they’d make her legs look five inches longer.
She views this sexy creature in the mirror and — finally, she likes what she sees. She has successfully hidden all trace of her real self.
~~~
He, on the other hand, getting ready to go out to meet her, sniffs at his arm pits and decides he doesn’t need a shower. He takes off his ragged Raiders t-shirt, exchanges it for a clean, slightly newer one. He runs a comb through his hair, throws on a leather jacket and is out the door. He is what he is.
~~~
She’s too young to know, poor thing, that none of her extensive metamorphosis is necessary. None of it! The yammering influencers that she follows on Youtube are monumentally wrong. If she wants to turn this young man on, she only has to do one thing. Show up.
The Gateway
Moonlight led him to the pond again. He saw her there just as before, barely visible through the shimmer of leaves. He was curious, but kept to the shadows.
She unpinned her red hair, letting it fall around her shoulders. Slipping out of her dress and leaving it on the stones, she waded into the water in her shift. The reeds lightly brushed against her legs, the perfect round reflection of the moon on the water scattered in pieces. Like a pale water lily, she floated under the clear light of the moon. He watched her a short while, then turned away, leaving her to the quiet.
He returned to watch her the following night, and then once again. Tonight she is standing in the pond, half-hidden by ferns. He watches her under the stars, and admits to himself that he has been captured.
I see you there, she says softly. It is all right.
I mean you no harm, he whispers.
Come then, she says. Come!
He crosses the clearing and stands before her.
Are you ready to go? she asks.
Yes, I am.
She takes his hands and together they enter into the unknown deep.
Thank you
for letting me use your “LOVE” photo at the top of the page!
Ahhh the unknowledge of the innocent young females! Such a contrast beautifully stated with the male.
"...thong underwear that uncomfortably lodges where no garment should ever lodge." TMI!