Zaftig sighed. “I can’t expect to be bailed out by Father. Father cut my allowance. He has other priorities –. `Your brothers Ian and Josh are now in medical and law school respectively,'” Zaftig rendered the rejection in sing-song, “‘Rough it in the dorms,'” shock entered her voice, “Father dismissed my request,” returning to sing — song, “‘Graduation, only a few months away.'”
“These days,” I sighed, “medicine has produced marvels. They can transplant a heart from one body to another. Perhaps they could combine two bodies into one: your button nose instead of my roman nose, your cute round fface for my rectangular face, your DDs on my sleek long — legged frame. Too bad, but even your double DDs bouncing atop my narrow waist and long legs wouldn’t be in line for a job with the strip clubs,” I shook my head, “The clubs are slow with the state house and senate in recess.”
Zaftig bit her lip. “I was approached by my classmate Al Mandy. You know him. He introduced us. He can get us parts in ugh — Blue Movie. I don’t know how you’d feel about that.”
“Blue movie–hmm is that a new type of film?” I tried to make a joke out of it. “Or is Al trying to test out my theory that our bodies could be combined somehow — into that of an awesome stripper?” Was Zaftig teasing me with this suggestion?
“You wouldn’t have to disrobe. In our role, we would play nuns greeting girls entering a convent school,” Zaftig explained, “Pay is better than a short order cook but not as much as an exotic dancer. It would pay some of these bills.” After a pause, Zaftig added, “I told Al I wouldn’t take it unless you did too.”
“Dolly, you need me for protection, like a gaggle of ladies herding together to take a trip to the toilet,” I chided her.
“No, because you drive and I don’t,” Zaftig replied. She leaned into me and felt under my T — Shirt. “Hey, I knew it! You’re wearing two shirts under that oversized man’s T — shirt. How come you’re not overheating? I’m sweltering. I need to get these clothes off before I melt!”
“Don’t let me stop you, Dolly!” I giggled as I teased her. “But first, I need to ask. Why you the wannabe nun should want to appear in a skin flint?”
“Every single day, I see corpus damaged from caput to the hallux and everyplace in between,” Zaftig fell into that distant stare, “What’s wrong with viewing beautiful bodies?”
As a maintenance man photographed the half — naked young women in the corridor of the school, my attention was drawn to their chatter in the corridor. Many were drama students looking for experience on camera in addition to spending money. Their principal complaint was that they had to utilize their own clothes. “I came commando; last film I lost several pairs of panties,” standing around gloriously naked, big breasts, full bush, Jenny explained. I envied her projection of supreme self — confidence in the uncovered natural state.
If my chest wasn’t deformed, would I be as prissy? I wondered.
Others were housewives or students, like Zaftig and me, trying to make ends meet. “If my guy complains he noticed someone who looks like me in a film,” one housewife told another, “he’d be afraid I’d take his balls off for watching porn. `Watching porn? Do you want to get warts?’ I’d ask him.”
Al lifted Zaftig to plant a passionate kiss on her lips. “You don’t know how long Father has waited for me to be swept off my feet by you,” Zaftig pulling back from his embrace declared. “Father thinks so highly of your dad’s skill as a Physician. Iranian, Father tells me?”
“Hardly romantic cooing,” Al continued to clutch her.
“At my weight, lifting me could give you a bilateral Inguinal hernia,” Zaftig remarked with a smile, “At university hospital, a female urologist performing herniorrhaphies, hernia repair, cutting through the abdominal wall to make repairs often finds evidence of cancer, necessitating an orchiectomy,” Zaftig bore that teasing smile.
Al looked to me for an explanation. I shrugged my shoulders. “It isn’t what Zaftig says, but surely the way she says it. Maybe she should speak in subtitles.” Opps did I give away my secret name for my roommate?
“Capital idea, Ms Ehrlich — excuse me, Sister Evelyn!” Al declared, “Blimey, I wish I’d have thought of that! Dr Zoptic! We’ll costume Becky eh — Dr Rebecca Barton — in a white lab coat to administer the physical inspection of the newly arrived students.”
Zaftig snorted, “All I mean to say that our finest University Hospital female urologist cutting through the abdominal wall to make repairs often finds it convenient to surgically excise potential cancers by removing the testicles. Removal of those extraneous organs insures longer life and less aggression.”
“His nuts removed,” I added, “how should Al conceive of a script with appeal to a prurient interest? A man without nuts is like a car without a motor. It won’t work.”
Releasing Zaftig, Al announced, “Ladies, lets resume position. We’re going to finish getting undressed for the march to the shower.”
Zaftig and I led the procession of naked young women to the shower. While maintenance men shot the scene, Zaftig and I looked on from the entrance. “What do the Holy Virgins do in a communal shower?” I asked. “Do they look down, face the wall, or pretend they’re in their own universe?”
“When I was in school,” Zaftig reminisced with that distant look, “they’d talk about budding breasts, butts and boys. Returning from vacation or a weekend home, the girls’d display dental impressions — eh hickeys — on their mammary glands like a medal of honor.”
“Doesn’t sound very virginal to me,” I shook my head.
“They’d talk about BJs,” Zaftig laughed, “It took me a while to figure out what that meant. They’d condescend to lecture me.”
“They inspired you to study anatomy,” I suggested.
“`We got caught putting out,'” Zaftig recalled, “the girls would say as they held their mammaries to display the impressions their boyfriend left, `that’s how we landed in here. What about you? Don’t tell us you really want to become a nun!'”
Zaftig recollected with a smile, “For all the chattering about teasing boys with outercourse the girls in the convent’s communal showers had more interest in comparative female anatomy, the gluteal prominence — when they ragged me as the rollie — poly girl as tall as she is wide. Lots of people do.” Zaftig looked down and sighed, “So did you–when we met.”
“Yes, I had,” I confessed. Touching my nose, I added, “We were both eh–taken with each other.”
When Zaftig opened first the door to admit me, my eyes almost came out of their sockets just like a character in an old cartoon. If I hadn’t been so stunned, I might have run away. Pleasingly plump wasn’t the word. Rotund, perhaps, No Zaftig. “Al was certainly right about you,” Before I realized what was coming out of my mouth, I blurted out, “Here’s my face, my ass comes later.”
Zaftig took my Freudian slip with a laugh. “My Ex — boyfriend didn’t mind the preeminence of my gluteal prominence, until the day he broke it off. Seems everything happened at once. Father cut the stipend, my boyfriend broke it off with me and my roommate didn’t like the rent increase the landlord wanted. She took off. What comes next?”
“Me,” I declared, “I’m a law student. You Docs are in a pissing match with lawyers, refusing to treat lawyers. Would I be a problem for you imperious Deities cowering behind the curtain of silence?”
“I’m ready for anything,” Zaftig affirmed.
“Then,” I assured her, “I’m the solution to your problems. I’m boiling in the same kettle, Dolly. I’ve lost my flat — off campus rooms — my previous roommate from college years got herself married,” I explained, “and wanted the place to herself. I had been in that apartment since undergraduate days. I was there so long I thought of it as home. Problem was my name wasn’t on the lease. I outsmarted myself.”
“Oh?” Zaftig prompted me.
“Even though I promised to tiptoe around her doing her guy on the floor in front of me any differently than I had when she did him or any other guy — or gal — huh,” I paused to laugh, “before the marriage. Heck, I’d’ve done them both just to keep the flat.”
Zaftig’s eyes widened in shock at my spiel, “Al told you that I went to a convent school — St Athena’s right here in town.”
“Dolly, we have much in common!” I dared to continue, “My saintly father threatened the family doctor with sending me to St Athena’s of the Holy Virgins Convent School to force the bastard to write gym excuses.” I looked up to the heavens with a crazy smile. “There were many virgins at St Athena’s?”
When Zaftig’s laugh turned into a stare fixated at my hawkish nose, she looked down trying not to be impolite. In a weak voice she apologized. “I’m not to react. Proboscises show great structural variations in human physiology.”
“Pro — bos — cis!” I exclaimed tripping over the words deliberately. Laughing I threw Zaftig a hug. When Zaftig looked at my arm quizzically, I reassured her, “I’ve heard you’re a third-year med student. Oh, my pro — bos — cis, you say!” I covered my nose with my free hand, “If you should manage to graduate, Dolly, you can maybe fix my needle nose for me–and a lot of more interesting other stuff too.”
“Oh!” Zaftig replied in a serious tone, “I don’t intend to take up one of the traditional roles reserved for women in medicine: teaching, gynecology, obstetrics, or Craniofacial reconstructive surgery.”
“Dolly,” I declared, “It isn’t what you say, but sure you say it. Maybe I can get an English translation.”
“Huh?” Zaftig was taken aback. That was the first time she shot me that look, like she was disconnected uninvolved in the scene, like there was no personal relationship.