lipstuck

Professor Panstick wore such thick foundation that it might have been stage make-up. Her skin was always matt - perfectly matt - like she was lying on the slab at a morturary. All the make-up suggested an almighty skin complaint lay caked underneath.

I asked her. I was lying on her couch, and she was behind me, and she was playing with my hair. And it was dusk, and the leaves of the oak tree outside the library scratched against her window, and a church bell was chiming out the hour. And in that moment it felt like we were equals, and I could speak to her in an ordinary voice, without the rehearsed starchiness that came from my having a longstanding unrequited crush on her. So I asked her.

"Why do you cover up your skin?"

Gentle, tender, innocent, post-coital. I wanted to show her that I noticed things about her, that to me she was a constellation of details, all of which I had noticed before now, all of which I had thought about when I was alone. And I wanted to...soothe her. Make her feel less old, I think. Make her feel beautiful. Make her understood.