-Vacation-
I am standing on the 10th floor of the Holiday Inn Express, looking out the window. The Hyatt is two blocks away in the southeast direction, where people my own age flock to socialize and be present, existing in their social circles, famous for the moment. But, I am traveling with my family, and we’re staying at the Holiday Inn Express, where the air conditioner only knows one temperature ‘Sub-Zero’ and the room smells of an ancient mold. The hum of the blizzard generator keeps time with my thoughts. I’m feeling rather wild; yet all my energy is contained, balled up inside my chest, sitting in a tight bundle, waiting to be unlocked, pressing against my throat. My larynx contracts as the walls press against my peripheral vision. I am confined, claustrophobic, trapped. For a brief moment, to expel this feeling I think to myself how I should flash my breasts. My eyes dance along the city skyline looking for the next miserable fool that dares look in my direction.
I wonder how a bystander’s day might change if they saw a woman expose her breasts from the 10th floor of the Holiday Inn Express on Walnut St. in central Philadelphia, on Memorial Day weekend.
Perhaps I will make eyes with a man, battling his job, working late into the evening. “Fuck this god damn job, I’ve had just about as much as I can take,” he might be thinking, then upon looking up from his desk, with dreary red eyes, he would find a moment of clarity as his brain shut down, and his world turned off.
It would be at the moment he snapped back, that we would make eye contact as he looked into my room in the distance and I would remove my camisole and press my skin against the glass.
There would be shocked dismay, as I hurriedly closed the blinds, because I may be wild, but I am not crazy, and I wouldn’t dare stare back for too long after I’d tainted this man with my indecency.
Maybe he would think, “Fuck this job, but this office view is great!”
I would be satisfied that I had brightened his day. But as preferences change which each person, maybe a free show could have been the worst thing for him,
“What the fuck is wrong with this city? I thought hookers were supposed to be paid in full before they performed. Even the ladies of the night in this goddamn town are lawless against their own laws.” Then he would shake his head, thinking to himself how he ought to return home to his small town in south Pennsylvania and enjoy the quiet life. As he promised himself to spend time with his family, and watch the suns fall into the horizon.
Or, he might be a religious man, saving himself for marriage, and my breasts, without warning, may have been the first pair he’d ever laid eyes on in the real world, and there they were, pressed against a rented piece of glass, now with a smudged outline of 3 circles, 2 from my breasts and 1 from my stomach, where the oils from my skin clung as a reminder of my stay- affirming this man of his stolen innocence.
Perhaps I would make eyes with a woman. Maybe she would be in a similar circumstance as I, and if she were of heterosexual persuasion, perhaps she would find great comedy in the weirdo that flashed her chest to the stranger three buildings down to the right.
“How the hell did that just happen?” She might wonder to herself. “Who is that lady? What a freak! Who does something like that?” She might go out later that week, having moved on with her life instantly after it happened, simply laughing it off. But, after 2 gin and tonics with her girlfriends, the memory would flood back, and as she retold the tale, to all her girlfriends around her, the one more serious friend might ask, “Do you think she was mentally ill? I hope she’s okay, that is such odd behavior.”
The group of women might collectively chuckle, shaking their heads in distended disbelief. “No Sylvie, I don’t think she’s insane, maybe just super horny.” The wild friend would say, cueing more laughter.
Or instead my image, my display of sexual freedom, would haunt her, because she is, as most of us are, a sexual being, eager to be devoured; and maybe her husband (or boyfriend) started with a grand appetite for the flesh around her bones, but has grown fat or complacent with the meal he is offered every day to intake, and now, he spends his time scanning the streets for even a small glance of a more appetizing meal to be offered up.
As she grew inspired by my senseless act, she might want to flash her own body to someone she’s never met, maybe even that evening, she would go home and display her ‘common place entrée’ as something decadent. Perhaps she could convince herself as she walked down to her car, from her office building, that she was in fact a rare piece of perfectly aged veal, rather than the store bought baked potato her lover had led her to believe. Maybe this passion would inspire her mate, as courage and confidence can be contagious, and the two of them would reconnect on a deeper, more intimate level than they had ever thought possible. And all of this sparked by my wild release of energy in a hotel room against the city skyline.
But then, what if she were a lesbian? Or the male I mentioned before, gay? What if my naked body repulsed him, and he shook his head, “That fucking wench! I’m so glad I don’t have to see that every night of my life,” as he shuddered the image out of his head, attempting to recall a good looking man with fair chocolate skin and muscles like speed bumps, begging his fingers to proceed slow ahead.
But then, the lesbian, what if she were lonely? Maybe her lover had left her not too long ago. Would she be saddened by the fact that she had no one close to share this moment with? “A woman in the hotel across from my work just flashed her tits to me and then shut the blinds!” She would text her ex, if she could.
If this woman had texted her lover, Maggie would be her name, although her real name would be Margarita, seeing as how her parents are avid fans of both Jimmy Buffett and Spanish culture alike, and the perfect combination of all three brought Maggie into this world.
Maggie might become flirtatious and think wistfully “This always happens to Char, everything exciting always seems to happen when she’s near, and maybe I can look past those things that I thought were so painful about her, because I do truly love her for who she is, rather than what I want her to be,” and it would be in that moment that Maggie might say something coy like,
“I know another woman who would like to expose her breasts to you too, Char.”
And then Char would smile, thinking how Maggie was always so full of life, and doesn’t this feel right to go back, because isn’t life just a series of struggles in partnerships and if so, shouldn’t the good times just be good? While the bad times can be spent in the company of those you love, and that love you.
There is also a slight chance, that the person I expose myself to could be under age; and maybe the image of my body is so crudely offensive to them, that they relay the message too their parents, and their parents, having had just too much of these city freaks and their weird desires, would count the floors of my building asking plenty of times, “It was THAT window, Little Jimmy? THAT WINDOW? ARE YOU SURE?” and then they would grab Little Jimmy, run into the hotel lobby, take the elevator to the 10th floor, pound on every door, until someone answered, and accuse them of exposing themselves to their son. I would sit panicking in my room, cursing the hotel staff for using box springs instead of bed frames, as my best hiding place would be non-existent. I’m sure in this scenario that I wouldn’t answer the door, as I would be too chicken shit and inevitably attempting to crawl under my hotel bed despite the impossibility.
It would be from down the hall, that my parents would be awoken, stepping out into the chaos I created and they would help Little Jimmy and his family, by pounding on my door, shouting something like, “You’re so sick, Fran! You’re sick! How could you do this to us? On a family vacation no less! You’re out of your mind, this child’s life is ruined, he won’t ever make it to boarding school because of you! All he will ever do is draw breasts, pressed against a hotel window. That image will consume him! How will you live with yourself? You have damned him to a life of perversion!”
And maybe after all those words, I would finally snap out of it, open the door, and try to explain to the inconsolable father or mother about how it was just a joke, and I never meant to hurt anyone, and that I’m not one of those weirdoes that gets off on exposing myself to kids, because I didn’t know that Little Jimmy was a kid, I just thought he was short and how, from far away, doesn’t he look more mature? And, how could I have known that he was only 8 when he looked like a blurred dot against a windowpane?
I’d have to look little Jimmy up and down and say “Little Jimmy, what I did was wrong, but the human body is not something to be ashamed of and sometimes we have strange urges, like I did, that are unexplained and rather exciting! And as long as they don’t hurt anyone, and I truly hope that I didn’t hurt you, then they are okay to express! They are healthy, even! So please little Jimmy…” I will say, getting to the apex of my speech, and holding him close, “Don’t ever make yourself feel bad for actions that you can not explain. So long as you don’t hurt yourself or others, and when I say others, I do lump animals into that category. Because, if you do that, people will think that you’re weird.”
It would be then, that everyone would be moved, because, I held such great insight into the situation, that how, just how could they hate me for it? As I am merely a soul, looking to express my emotional and intellectual wealth with the world, and they, witnesses to greatness.
But, what if, Little Jimmy had been, Little Sally? Maybe she would have stared back at my body longer than Little Jimmy did. I might have reminded her of her mother. Little Sally might have recalled how she often saw her Mother, walking around naked, her bare breasts hanging, large in size, expressed from nursing children, and Sally wouldn’t have see anything offensive, only warm flesh and familiar shapes. By chance, the image would be in her brain still years later, as the moment she saw a woman’s breasts that were not of her own family. After all, isn’t it curious how each body looks familiar yet so different and how she could remember years later, what my chest looked like. Then, one day, as Little Sally turned into just ‘Sally’, she might come to a realization, that at one point in her life, when she was about 8 years old, she saw a random woman’s breasts and that she had seen them, most likely on purpose; and isn’t that just so curious How people at any age have internal conflicts?
Or maybe, the Mom or Dad of little Sally or Little Jimmy would report me to the police, and I’d never be allowed to step foot in a Holiday Inn Express again. They would likely take me, escorting me through the hotel lobby, my head hanging in shame, as the people on the city streets watch me as I’m ushered into a police car and the only thought in my head, ‘at least the fire is out,’
It would be, this way that I spend the rest of my trip in Philadelphia, inside a woman’s jail cell, getting accosted for exposing my breasts to children. One of my cell mates would grow a deep fondness for me, she’d want me for her own, and she would get aggressive, cursing in anger, calling me “the little freak that likes to gives peeks” and wouldn’t I just be so sweet as to allow her, “just one little peek.” It would be then that I resort to trying to diffuse the situation, saying something like, “I dunno, the moment’s passed, it just doesn’t feel right.” And maybe she would accept that, but most likely she would not. But all that would matter would be that my family would go to my cousins wedding, without me
It would be during the reception that everyone would ask where I was, and the members of my family would look around uncomfortably, either down at their feet, or away from the face of the person who had asked, and my father might say in a very dry voice, “She uhh, she had some work that came up last minute.” Because wouldn’t my father be ashamed, that his daughter, the youngest of his children had exposed herself to a child, and didn’t he raise her right? Hadn’t he given her plenty of examples of how to give love and receive love in a healthy, truthful manner?
And there I would sit, locked up in Philadelphia, next to my jail cell girlfriend as the rest of the party continued on.
