catelin

My friend Irene got a boob job. I suppose as soon as the bandages come off and the oozing stops, she'll look very much like the images that encouraged the operation in the first place. We've always had divergent concepts of beauty. She never leaves the house unless she's fully made up. I barely manage to wash my face and comb my hair most days. She took me once to a department store cosmetics counter for one of those free makeovers. Irene and the counter lady (some European chick with a funky name) ooohed and aaahed over me, telling me this was an easy routine that would only take five minutes each morning. I couldn't figure out how they came up with that since I sat in the fucking chair for over an hour while Eurochick glopped her commissioned wares all over my face. I got home that day feeling like the man in the iron mask and immediately ran for the sink. Irene was, of course, disappointed but resigned to my dismal failure as a makeup goddess.

This was the day we talked about her tits. She told me that she was getting breast implants. I tried to contain my revulsion at the idea. I guess the eyes rolling into the back of my head and the retching sounds gave me away. What's the big deal? That was her question to me. So I began to tell her how sad I thought it was that there's an entire generation of men who've come of age jerking off to plastic tits on over-exercised, under-fed bodies. How women have succumbed to this and see their bodies as inferior products, something to be "fixed."

I told her that I was disturbed by the growing numbers of women who shaved, powdered, douched, enlarged, nipped, tucked, lipo-sucked. Well, you get the idea. I explained that I thought the perfect man is one who adores the imperfect woman. One who is happy to lose himself in soft, fleshy mounds of breast and who inhales unperfumed snatch with gusto. I told her how I thought it was much sexier to have swollen lips from sucking cock than from collagen injections, how blush on the cheeks from a good morning screw was about all the makeup any girl should care to put on.

Mostly I tried to tell her how absolutely beautiful she was. Her breasts were gorgeous. I'd seen them many times over the years we'd been friends. Delicately curved, each dotted with a small rosebud nipple. I told her what a pity it would be to butcher them, to deform them. She just took a long sip of her iced tea and told me very matter-of-factly that her mind was made up. I knew her well enough to believe her. We didn't discuss it again.

She's at home now, wrapped up with some sort of elastic bandage thing that makes her look a bit like Elsa Lanchester. I'd brought over a copy of "The Birth-mark" for her, still trying to make my point, even after the fact. I was just about to pull it out of my bag and slap it down on the bed when I noticed how unhappy she looked. I asked if she was all right and she started to cry. She told me it was much more complicated than she thought it would be. I stuck my book down into the bottom of the bag as far as it would go, ashamed that I can be such a bitch sometimes. I just sat there holding her hand. I told her yes. It was all much more complicated than we thought.