Tuesday Erotica Club

by Lisa Beth Kovetz

  “I gotta go, Brooke,” she said. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

  It was time for Supportive Panties. In her hand it looked tiny. Like a little girl’s summer short set except the tube top was attached to the pants. Margot took off her shoes and slipped her feet into the legs. The fabric stretched up her hips and then stopped. As Margot jumped around the room, tugging and praying, her turquoise dress, which she had thrown across the bed, slipped to the floor. Margot pulled, Margot swore and still the rubbery girdle, which might be useful next Halloween as a dominatrix costume or in the summer if Margot went scuba diving, would not slide up her skin.

  Margot hopped into the bathroom and looked for something to make it slide. Body oil would smell nice but might bleed through to the silk of her dress. Hand cream? Margot considered her magnificent array of products. Creams, gels, scents, soaps, none of it would do. Then she saw it. An inexpensive bottle of the perfect solution! A full body dusting of baby powder finally got the latex flowing up the hips and over the breasts.

  “Thank the goddess!” Margot gasped.

  She breathed out and then could not breathe in.

  “Oh my,” Margot said, having second thoughts about her new underwear. It was slimming, but terribly uncomfortable. Still, breathing aside, Margot felt wonderful and packed tight. As she leaned over to snatch the dress where it had fallen to the floor she realized there would be no sitting down tonight. The fabric would bend and flex easily but all the extras of Margot’s body (internal organs and such) had no room to shift as her body bent. Her posture would be perfect all night, her back ramrod straight, her stomach sucked, and her breasts at attention because Margot risked passing out or damaging a kidney if she attempted the very tricky sitting down maneuver.

  Who needs to sit at a party? I’ll just dance all night, she told herself. She was going to look fabulous, if she could figure out how to bend low enough get the turquoise dress off the floor. In the end, in a modern dance maneuver that might be described as “Worm Burrowing Across Carpet,” Margot slid into the turquoise dress. She managed to limbo herself back onto her feet, and then headed out to conquer the world.

  “I’m going to Long Island. I’d prefer to take the FDR to the Triborough,” Margot told the taxi driver, and was pleased with his grunt of third-world macho disgust at her bossy tone and wanton appearance. He did as she instructed and turned the cab towards the FDR.

  “What are you doing, lady?” the cab driver asked when he could not see her head in the rearview mirror.

  “Nothing,” Margot said, stretched out across the backseat of his cab so that she could continue to breathe.

  The night was warm and she carried only the thinnest shawl and a small clutch bag set with real turquoise stones. If it got chilly she would borrow Trevor’s jacket. The cab drove up to the address in the invitation.

  “Are you getting out?” the cabbie asked.

  “Of course I am. Just give me a minute.”

  Margot waited until the car in front of her unloaded and drove off.

  “I’ll need you to open the door for me, please.”

  The driver looked in his rearview mirror and saw no one. Crazy half-naked lady, he thought but he got out of the car and opened the door for her. Margot slid herself like a body on a slab, feet first out of the cab. She tipped the cab driver extra because, although his eyes had bulged, he did not laugh.

  There were drinks and hors d’oeuvres before the ceremony. Margot, looking around for Lux, bumped into Brooke and Aimee just as Brooke was tipping a bottle of vodka into her glass.

  “This is fabulous!” Brooke announced loudly. Clearly it was not her first tip. The vodka was frozen in a block of ice that had been carved into a bucket. The bucket had small metal pivots on either side that were set into a stand, allowing even the most inebriated guest to continue pouring frozen vodka into a glass by just putting a few fingers of pressure on the neck of the bottle. All around the ice, penguins fashioned of hardboiled eggs and olives cavorted on a mountain of Crisco and slid into an ocean of caviar.

  “What’s Lux wearing?” Margot wanted to know.

  “Haven’t seen her yet,” Aimee said.

  Trevor’s ex-wife waltzed by.

  “Hey Candice!” Margot waved and got a glare in return.

  “What was that about?”

  “About enough evil energy to fry her eyeballs,” Brooke laughed.

  “Margot, I think that woman hates you.”

  Good, thought Margot, let her hate me. I hope she has reason to.

  “Lot of people from work,” Brooke commented as they filed into the hall for the ceremony.

  “Oh god, is that Lux?” Margot asked suddenly.

  “Rabbi’s secretary,” Brooke said.

  “I didn’t know Trevor was Jewish,” Aimee said.

  “He’s not,” Margot informed them. “The bride is.”

  “The ceremony’s starting,” Brooke said as she helped herself to a little more of the penguin’s stash of frozen vodka.

  “Well, let’s go in,” Aimee said.

  “Hold on, one more dip in the caviar,” Brooke begged.

  “You’ve got a black smudge of it on your mouth and, oh god, Brooke, look at your teeth,” Aimee said, digging in her purse for a pocket mirror.

  Brooke wiped her face and did a quick swish around her mouth with the last bit of her frozen vodka.

  “Where’s the ceremony going to be?” Brooke asked.

  “In there,” Margot said.

  They spoke in lower tones as they entered the festooned sanctuary.

  “So, where’s the reception?” Aimee whispered.

  “Right here,” Margot said. “There’s another room over there.”

  Margot pointed to the back of the synagogue, to a wall with accordion pleats.

  “Bar mitzvah room. Wall pulls back. Full bandstand. Rotating disco ball and everything,” Margot said.

  “Cool religion to keep a rotating disco ball on hand for significant events,” Brooke said.

  They quietly took their seats on the groom’s side. The synagogue had been decorated with long ropes of Pepto-Bismol-pink garlands of over-dyed roses and ribbons that made it impossible to enter the pews from the inside aisle. You had to go around to the outside or be strangled by flowers.

  “It’s very Long Island Jewish Princess,” Aimee whispered to Brooke and Brooke said “Shush!” with a slight giggle.

  Brooke and Aimee and Margot sashayed to the center and found seats close to the flower garlands. The music began and the hall grew quiet. The flower girl entered, eyeing the guests suspiciously and dropping a single petal from her large basket of flowers every ten feet. An aunt and an uncle passed by, and then a slightly bewildered old lady, looking lovely in a lavender gown, stopped in the middle of her trip down the aisle as if she had suddenly forgotten where she was going. The pink chain-link of roses on either row of seats afforded her only one destination, the rabbi smiling at her, waiting to marry someone.

  “But I’m not Jewish,” the old lady said to Margot who was standing at the end of the row.

  “No dear, Teddy is marrying a Jewish girl. This is Teddy’s wedding,” Margot replied.

  “Teddy?”

  “Trevor’s son.”

  She looked at Margot blankly and reached for her hand. As Margot struggled to get to the other side of the roses, Trevor suddenly appeared and led his mother down the aisle. Thank you, he nodded to Margot over his shoulder, and her eyes filled up with tears.

  “Wow,” Brooke whispered. “Put me down before I get there.”

  “Shush!” Aimee and Margot ordered at the same time.

  Trevor managed to anchor his mother to something and make it back in time to walk his son down the aisle. Teddy’s look of nervous excitement was nothing compared to the pained looks on the faces of his parents. Too much family all in one place put the happy event on overload.

  Teddy, Trevor had confided to Margot, would never settle down. Certainly would neve
r marry. He’d been living with a graffiti artist when his parents’ marriage fell apart. Suddenly he was in an MBA program and then engaged to this very traditional girl from Long Island.

  “I don’t like it,” Trevor told Margot when she asked about the wedding. “She’s too ordinary for him.”

  Trevor looked brave, and Margot wanted to reach out and touch the sleeve of his tux as he walked by, but those enormous pink roses put a stop to any contact. When all were assembled, the lights got a little lower and the strains of the bride’s processional began. Then suddenly the lights went out. A moment later a sharp spotlight hit the back of the synagogue, revealing the bride standing there alone dressed in blinding white. Trevor’s mother gasped.

  “Christ on a crutch!” Brooke whispered. “It’s Wedding Gown Barbie.”

  Still overwhelmed by the effect of the spotlight and the as-if-by-magic appearance of the bride, neither Margot nor Aimee criticized Brooke’s outburst. If the bride heard, she wasn’t showing it through her dazzling smile, freshly bleached for the occasion.

  The bride’s dress, a bright white bias-cut sheath with spaghetti straps, fell all the way to the floor. Still, the bride had insisted on getting a full leg and deep bikini wax which had stripped her bare all the way from the tiny hairs on her big toes to the thick and curly hairs that grew in the cleft between her vagina and thigh. She should have gone to the salon the day before but Teddy had dragged her to some art show in the city. She’d rescheduled a full wax for 8 a.m. but slept through it. Canceling her meeting with the rabbi, the bride raced out at the last minute to the salon for the total hair-ripping treatment.

  It was a mistake. She was horrified by the little, raised red pinpricks that covered her legs, toe to vagina, wherever a hair had been yanked out. She had intended to be sexier than hell that day but ended up looking like a plucked chicken. As the hour of her wedding grew closer, the red welts faded, but a slight burning sensation kept her from putting on pantyhose. Therefore, under her dazzling white bias-cut sheath with spaghetti straps, the bride was barely wearing a simple white thong.

  Margot noticed first but Aimee said it.

  “My god, Margot, she’s wearing the same dress as you,” Aimee observed after the ceremony as they strolled into the bar mitzvah room for dinner and dancing.

  “Who?” asked Margot, as if she didn’t know.

  “The bride.”

  “No way. Hers is…”

  “White,” Brooke informed her.

  “What can I say? She has excellent taste.”

  Brooke, Margot and Aimee were seated at Table 11, with other friends from the office. There was no little ivory card with Lux’s name spelled out in calligraphy on the table.

  “I think I’ll just take a lap around the party before I sit down,” Margot told her friends as they made themselves comfortable at the table.

  The room, which may not have been so beautiful in daylight, looked elegant in the darkness. There was, as Margot had predicted, a slowly spinning, mirrored disco ball in the center of the room that splattered jeweled patterns of light across smiling faces of well-wishers. Margot stood. She would stand all night. She was pretending to listen to the band when Trevor came up from behind and hugged her.

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed at his warmth. “Thank you for what?”

  “My mother.”

  “Oh yes. Of course. I would have done more but—“

  “—the flowers.”

  “Yes,” she said

  “Very sturdy roses.”

  “Ridiculously sturdy. You all right?”

  “Ah. Sure. My ex-wife is as angry at me now as she was when we were married. I’m not sure why we bothered to get a divorce.”

  “Dance with me,” Margot said, not caring that it was a non sequitur.

  “Oh yes, please,” Trevor answered, and took her in his arms.

  He put his arms around her waist. She nestled a hand in the collar of his tux as they swept out onto the floor. Margot wore high heels almost every day of her life, so she could glide gracefully in the spiked shoes that brought her almost up to his height. He felt a warm, strong body beneath his hands and did not know that a fraction of the effect was created with spandex and rubber. For a moment they roamed the dance floor like a single tiger stalking the jungle. The father of the groom has limited responsibilities on the night of the wedding, but Trevor and Margot danced right into one of them.

  “May I cut in?” the bride asked. For a moment Margot looked at her blankly, hiding her outrage at being bumped out of heaven by some twenty-three-year-old vixen in a bias-cut sheath. Then Margot graciously stepped back and watched Trevor sweep away this young girl and her nearly identical dress. Margot smiled and looked relaxed while planning her escape.

  Brooke and Aimee waived her back to the table but she couldn’t go sit down with the girls and start drinking because she couldn’t sit down. Watching Trevor dance away, Margot’s smile grew a little rigid, and she stepped out of the hall. She looked around the synagogue, searching for the bathroom.

  The ladies’ room was filled with cousins and flower girls and young bridesmaids. No one was pissing, they were just lounging by the mirrors, gossiping about boys and twirling their hair. One girl was smoking and showing off a new earring that was stuck through her eyebrow. Margot thought about making her way through the crowd in the ladies’ lounge and hiding in a toilet stall, but there too, she would have to sit down. There would be no solace in the toilet tonight.

  Margot prowled through the synagogue, smiling a frozen smile at friends and strangers alike. She looked through the window into the locked Hadassah Gift Shop, pretending to be interested in cups and candlesticks and books about Hanukkah. I would buy the candlesticks because they’re pretty, thought Margot shopping in her head. And I like those braided candles. Everything else was a little too fifteenth century retro to really interest her. Then her eye fell on a door behind the gift shop that looked like it lead to a different bathroom. Margot tried the door and found it unlocked.

  A dressing table with a mirror was the focal point of the room. The mirror was surrounded by a ribbon of lights, like those in a backstage dressing room. The bride’s street clothes were thrown around the room and Margot noticed that the bride, like Margot, wore size four slim, Gap jeans. Margot looked at herself in the mirror and wondered at the difference between twenty-three and fifty.

  Nothing. More money, more power, more peace. What have I lost? Margot made a list in her head.

  1) Giddiness.

  2) Poverty.

  3) Inexperience.

  4) The ability to make the wrong choice quickly.

  5) A wide-open playing field full of bad options, dead ends, and heartaches that obscure the right paths.

  6) An inability to focus.

  7) The possibility of wasting fifteen years discovering that one has married the wrong man.

  Nothing worth keeping on that list, Margot thought. I’m at least twenty-five years older than this woman that Teddy is marrying. In those years I’ve gained so much; surely I’ve lost something too. Margot looked at herself in the lighted mirror. She had to twist and lean to see her face, but declared to herself that there was very little difference between the flashing white of the bride and the deep mature turquoise of her guest. She pulled out the chair and tried to sit in it, but the bondage of spandex was stronger than Margot’s will. She just couldn’t bend it.

  There was a door at the other end of the room, slightly ajar with something shiny on the other side. A larger mirror, Margot hoped, full-length and well-lit. Opening the door, she flipped on the lights and found a small private toilet, with a door leading to another room. Margot entered the bathroom and poked her head into the room beyond. The rabbi’s private study. And this must be the rabbi’s private bathroom, Margot thought. Well, semi-private bathroom, as he obviously shares it with the brides during their weddings.

  Clearly the brides dominated the décor, as the tiny
room was wallpapered pink and one whole wall was taken up with a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Margot stood there and looked at her whole self. She thought she looked fabulous and young. Still she was unsure. Of late, Margot had grown increasingly farsighted and she had not brought her glasses. She stepped back to get a more focused look. And then another step brought the toilet up under her knees. She stepped up onto the toilet to get the full effect and scrutinized her loveliness for signs of decay.

  The body is perfect, Margot declared. The face, unlined after an excellent facelift. Her plastic surgeon had recommended she gain a little weight, that at fifty she had to choose between a tiny tush or a fuller, younger looking face. Her dermatologist suggested the same, telling her that the creams he could recommend or prescribe needed to be augmented by better, if not simply more, nutrition. But after so many years of dieting, Margot found food hard to swallow. When her primary care physician gave her the lecture about brittle bones and a potential dowager’s hump, Margot managed to slide an extra pound or two onto her frame. The effect on her face had been lovely.

  So what is the big deal about young flesh, Margot asked the mirror. Why would Trevor want Lux when he could have me? The physical difference is in millimeters, Margot told herself as she pictured the bride’s thin arms stretching out of her spaghetti straps. The skin on those arms had a tiny fraction of an inch more fat in the skin and less on the muscle. The bride’s freckles are a few millimeters smaller than mine and a few shades browner. Ok, so she has girlish freckles and I’m starting to have the spreading stain of age spots. Her hair is longer (no big deal) and shinier. Margot covered the gray of her hair well but could do nothing about the thick, wiry texture that had replaced her own once-glossy mane. But that was just hair. Everything else was totally camouflaged. And the twenty-three-year-old bride had a little pouch of a belly sticking out, while Margot’s belly was flat as spandex.

  Suddenly Margot pulled the turquoise bias-cut sheath off her body and dropped it to the bathroom door. She stood on the rabbi’s toilet in her modified dominatrix girdle and started to shake just a little. She suddenly felt stuffed and fake. If she took a lover home tonight they’d have to go in separate cabs so he wouldn’t see her laid out on the back seat like a dead fish because she could not bend enough to sit down. And he’d have to give her at least a half an hour head start so she could strip her girdle off before he got there. Either that or make spandex tug-of-war into sexual foreplay.