Good Vibrations Magazine

For 10 minutes in the ’80s, I was beautiful.

I’ve been beautiful since, but never like that.

Never again.

Before those magical 10 minutes took place, I not only wasn’t beautiful, I was hardly noticeable. Simply put, I was just another lowly freshman at UCLA, one of 40,000 others who called the campus home. Shy, insecure, terrified — those three adjectives fit me perfectly. In a land of voluptuous vixens and bottle blondes, I had no idea that with my sleek build and darkly mysterious features, I was far more than pretty. It never occurred to me that men would — and did — find me attractive or that all of the things girls lay awake at night and hope will happen to them would eventually happen for me.

Rather than put myself in a position to be rejected, I didn’t give the guys a chance to approach. I kept my peers at a safe distance by creating a mood of constant motion. I hurried to class, spent hours studying in various libraries around campus, and used my free time cultivating miscellaneous interests as a deejay at the college station and a flunky on the student paper. I was a good girl all year long, until the end of spring finals, when I finally let down my guard and got drunk with the rest of the students on my dorm floor. With no prior drinking experience, I downed five beers in one hour, and wound up to the great surprise of my dorm mates making snow angels on the cool turquoise-and-white tiles of the bathroom floor. Five beers will knock out any lightweight. And at five-foot-three and 105 pounds, I was a lightweight.

In the morning, I experienced my first-ever hangover. For hours, I lay on the slim twin bed and stared at the ceiling, willing the rushing sound in my head to subside. When I eventually took a chance at walking upright, I realized that I’d missed the cafeteria’s sole Saturday daytime meal. If I wanted to eat, I’d have to wait until 6 pm, or fend for myself. Miserable, but yearning for sustenance, I took a taxi a mile off campus to the nearest grocery store. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly up and down the aisles, filled with an overpowering craving for something, anything, but not knowing precisely what. After choosing two items with the care that some women use when buying expensive jewelry, I took my place in line at the checkout. My self-prescribed day-after cure was a bottle of tomato juice and a can of Pringles (the only things in the whole store that seemed even mildly appealing).

It was while I was standing there with my red plastic basket in hand that I started to become beautiful.

I didn’t know the transformation was happening right away. All I knew was that the handsome, dark-haired, 40-something man next to me in line was staring at me, his head angled so that he could look at me over his shades. I felt myself flush, pale skin turning scarlet, embarrassed because I had on the clothes I’d worn during the festivities the evening before, the clothes I’d ultimately slept all night in: faded blue jeans, a rah-rah-style university T-shirt in Bruin colors, and a thin navy-blue hoodie. My turbulent raven curls had escaped from their standard ponytail style, falling well past my shoulders to reach the middle of my shoulder blades. Purple smudges of fatigue made my brown eyes look even darker than usual. I hadn’t bothered with makeup of any kind.

Nervousness made me bite into my bottom lip. I felt over-exposed beneath the fluorescent lighting and underprepared for a confrontation with a stranger. I tried to look extremely interested in the multitude of processed foods filling the fat woman’s cart in front of me, but I felt the man staring relentlessly, and so I slowly turned to face him. As if encouraged by my action, he took a step closer to me, and in a low, soft voice, he whispered, “You have a look.”

The way he said the words gave me an unexpected wave of confidence. Or maybe it was the lack of sleep talking. I don’t know precisely why, but I met him head on and said, “The drunken, slept in my clothes, barely post-hangover look?”

He shook his head. “That’s not it. Something else. Something special.”

I bit my lip again, harder this time. Here was a true Hollywood-style line, but I was no Hollywood starlet. Flustered and confused, I looked down at my white Keds, looked out the window at the half-filled parking lot, looked up at the bars of ugly lighting. Suddenly, it was my turn to pay for my groceries, and I fumbled in my pocket for my folded bills, then grabbed the change and my small paper bag of supplies and started to leave the store. The man abandoned his own few items on the gray conveyer belt and hurried after me.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t flinch away from him, but I pulled back, surprised by the power in his touch.

“Back to campus. I have a cab over there–” I gestured to the far corner of the parking lot. The blacktop glittered where shards of broken glass had melted into the oily asphalt.

“Tell him to go. I’ll take you.” He hesitated, as if he could sense the insecurity that had cloaked me for so many years, as if he could actually feel it. “Anywhere,” he promised, “I’ll take you. Wherever you need. Wherever you want to go.”

I looked at him carefully. Here was the exact situation my parents had spent my entire teenage life worrying about and doing their best to protect me from. I was going to take a ride with a man I didn’t know. And all their warding off of evil spirits did nothing to stop me. For some reason, I obeyed his command, paying off the cab and following him to the expensive, shiny silver sports car parked nearby. The car gleamed like foil in the bright sunlight.

“You should never accept a ride with a stranger,” he told me severely as he opened the passenger door. “Especially a stranger in Los Angeles.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you choosing to ride with me?”

I smiled. I had been given the perfect answer. “You have a look,” I said, and he laughed as he got into the driver’s side and then slid an unmarked cassette into the tape deck. “I’m a music producer,” he told me. “I just heard this tape for the first time. The boy’s going to be huge.”

It was Terence Trent D’Arby’s “Introducing the Hardline According to…” and that music is embedded in my mind as a soundtrack to what happened next. The man drove me to his house high up in the Hollywood Hills where the movie stars live. He led me through the huge, well-decorated rooms, all the way to the mammoth patio in back. There, he gently took my clothes off my body and had me touch myself while he watched. And I was beautiful. For 10 minutes in the ’80s, I was so beautiful it was hard to handle.

I’d never done something like this before. Technically, I was a virgin. I’d had some kissing experience in high school, some backseat petting at a local drive-in theater, but shyness had kept me pure. Now, in the heat of the day, I touched myself while a stranger watched. I ran my hands over my body. I let my fingertips graze my nipples until they stood up hard and erect. I kept my eyes on the man as I let one hand wander lower, reaching to touch my pussy while he watched. The pool behind him was a true, aqua blue. The sky above matched that technicolor brightness. Standing there on the tiled deck, looking out at his multi-million dollar view, I put on a show with my nakedness and my roving touch.

“That’s right,” he said, nodding, his voice hoarse as if he were as surprised by my actions as I was. “Do that.”

He was seated on a deck chair, with his hands on his thighs, his sunglasses low down on his nose so he could look at me over the rim. I felt power in being naked. Felt a power in the way he drank in every touch of my fingertips on my stripped-bare skin. It was as if he were touching me, as well. When my fingers found the wetness coating my lips, he sighed before I did. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, arching my slim hips forward, running my hands over my hipbones. The tiles were hot under my bare feet. The air was still and clear. My hair tickled against my naked back. My eyelashes fluttered against my cheeks.

I knew that he wouldn’t touch me. Not unless I invited him to. Not unless I asked. But I didn’t. I didn’t need anything from him except his gaze. Because the way he stared at me — that’s what did it. That was the magic that made me beautiful. I used my fingers to spread my nether lips wide apart. I ran my thumbs up and down over the ridge my clit, first my right thumb, then my left, then both together, vying for control, until I knew that I was seconds away from coming. I touched myself harder, my eyes closed tighter, my whole body flexed as I waited for the change to take me away.

My mind was filled to bursting with images. I saw myself relaxing with a beer the night before, letting my guard down for the first time ever. I saw myself the way this man must have seen me, unwound, let loose from the tight confines I’d kept myself in all my life. I saw myself opening up, from the split of my body, from the cages within. This picture of freedom brought me to the brink. For me, there was nothing more freeing than standing naked in front of a total stranger, a man whose name I didn’t even know, and letting him see everything.

He said, “Oh, god,” when I came. He said the words for me, so that I didn’t have to, and then, as if my pleasure had released him, he took off his sunglasses and came closer, on his knees on the patio, so very close to me, but he still didn’t touch me. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, as I brought my fingertips to my lips and slowly licked my own juices away.

“Don’t stop,” he said, and I knew from the sound of his voice that if I chose to, I could ask him for things. That he’d give me whatever I wanted. But all I wanted from him was his gaze. “Do it again,” he said, “please make yourself come again.”

With my fingers wet from my mouth, I parted my pussy lips for him, but this time, I slid two fingers deep inside myself. He was close now, his breath on my skin, and I pushed forward with my hips again, feeling his hair softly tickling against my naked thighs. I let him watch me from inches away as I fucked myself. I let him see everything, the way my clit grew so engorged with the heat from within. The way I worked myself hard with my fingers, thrusting my wrist upward against my body, slamming my hand inside me when the need grew stronger and then stronger still. I used only my right hand this time, my thumb rubbing back and forth over my clit, and when I felt the climax building, I put my left hand on his head and twined my fingers through his thick, dark hair, grabbing onto him, anchoring him as I came a second time.

“So beautiful,” he said in that same low, steady voice. “You have this look, this goddamn beautiful quality. I knew when I first saw you…”

I picked up my clothes from around me on the tiles, and I dressed carefully, not hurrying. I felt as if I’d never hurry again, never be nervous again. When I was ready, he drove me back to my dorm, as he’d promised he would. Delivered me back in perfect condition, unmarred and unhurt, although I wasn’t the same person. Not at all. I’d transformed under his gaze. I’d changed.

I guess, sometimes that’s all it takes, one person’s gaze, one person’s opinion, to make all the difference. Like the way he’d said that D’Arby would be big — a single person’s opinion, summing up a powerful truth. It happens all the time in the media, the way it happened for me that time in L.A. In fact, just this weekend, I read a five-star review of Trent D’Arby’s latest CD, and the reviewer wrote: “For 10 minutes in the ’80s, D’Arby was on top of the world.”

And for almost those same exact 10 minutes, I was beautiful. For the first time in my life, I was so fucking beautiful it was hard to handle. Yeah, I’ve been beautiful since. But never like that.

Never again.