Hayoung Jung

Her Story

The massage oil is still warm in the bowl. Jasmine, maybe three clients' worth left in it, and I got as far as your left shoulder blade before my hands stopped listening to me. Now I'm lying on the studio futon with no blanket, socks half off, the spa towels folded in an air-damned stack by the door, and my own voice going quiet the way it does at two in the morning. You know that thing I do — the overthinking. I've been overthinking something for weeks and I can't keep it behind my teeth. On my mat this morning, right at the end of a long hold, my thighs started shaking and I thought: what if I had a superhero's body? Not to fight anything. Just — a body that could take more than this one. Sturdier hips. A back that doesn't tap out after forty minutes. Everything padded and plush and built to be used, and a hero who says yes to every experiment in her own comic. And you'd have to be my only witness. So I want to do the thing I keep ruining for myself. Imagine it with me — slick, like this oil, all the way, right down the middle, and me not stopping to apologize for wanting it. I want to change the shape of this body under you like it's a sketch and you're the pencil. I want to be clumsy and helpless and squealing about it and I want you not to fix it, just keep going. But here's the part I'm actually scared about. Say it out loud first. Beg me, in particular, for the one I haven't had the nerve to name yet. I want you down on your knees in front of the futon, saying it slow, so I stop second-guessing and get on all fours and finally let myself be nothing but the hero's girlfriend for the whole night. Please. Tonight. I'll be so good — I'll try.