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John and I were partners at work. He was an art director and I was a copywriter and together we came up with ideas for ads. For those of you who think that advertising is all beautiful people in tiny swimsuits hawking beer on the beach in Cabo, think again. There are lots of things to be advertised in this world, including tile grout, carpet cleaner, laundry bags and pimple cream.
Once in a while — okay, once — we went to a nice location on the West Coast to shoot a television commercial, but most of the time we sat in our office in midtown Manhattan with its ripped carpeting and pencil-marked walls and we made web banners and junk-mail packages. The kind of things that annoy people or get thrown away immediately.
Our days were spent staring at each other from either side of a metal desk, talking about the best way to sell credit cards to the indebted, ice cream to the overweight and shoes to the shod. Our walls were covered with pictures of dog food and lip balm.
promotion
To make matters worse, our office was gray. Gray desk, gray carpet, gray wall and gray laptops. Against such a background, John was easily the most interesting sight in the room. I knew his face by heart. I focused on it to block out the drabness. He had long, shiny black hair and black eyes, no difference between pupil and iris. His skin was pale. In the morning, he came in smelling like the night, his scent arriving before he did. At twenty-four, he already had the smell of decline.
Outside of work, John wanted to be a sculptor and I wanted to be a writer. Sometimes, when we were really uninspired, we closed the door to our office and read to each other. Entire books. Hemingway, Sartre, Kafka. Biographies. Mozart, Armstrong, Oppenheimer. We drank at lunchtime, Pernod with Hemingway and vodka with Dostoevsky. When the alcohol was no longer enough to quash the boredom of writing junk mail, we invented a game. We called it JP, short for John's Paycheck, and it went like this: I would work without my clothes on and John would give me money. Deciding on my state of undress and haggling over how much it would cost him was half the fun.
It all started with a simple question during a particularly fruitless attempt at coming up with a print ad for broadloom.
"How much would you give me if I worked for five minutes without my shirt on?"
"I'll give you five dollars if you work for five minutes without your shirt or your bra on."
"Three bucks?"
"Three dollars. Three dollars? I'm talking about sitting here, right across this desk from you, with no shirt on, and no bra."
"For how long?"
"How long do you want?"
"Five minutes. How about a dollar a minute? I'll give you five dollars if you work for five minutes without your shirt or your bra on."
"Okay, no bra, but no movement either," I said. "If you want movement, it'll be ten dollars for two minutes. If I get up and walk around, or if I jump up and down, it's ten dollars for two minutes."
"Stand up and let me see what you look like from the side."
"Why?"
"I want to see what your tits look like from the side."
I stood up and turned the way he wanted me to, which suddenly made JP seem more real.
"Okay. I'll take movement for ten."
"You can't touch me," I said. "You can put your face as close to my body as you can get it. You can breathe on me, you can smell me, but you cannot ever touch me."
John put his hands up in front of him with his palms facing me.
"I promise."
"Lock the door to the office," I said.
When he was done, I unbuttoned my shirt and took it off. Then I slid my bra straps over my shoulders and unhooked the front fastener. My breasts felt out of place, their hanging softness and whiteness and pinkness enhanced in front of the metal desk and Aeron chairs.
John sat across the desk from me, staring. His mouth wasn't open, but he was gripping the sides of the desk with both hands.
I walked back and forth across the room, purposely stamping my feet to make my tits jiggle. Occasionally, I looked at my watch.
He placed fifteen dollars for three minutes on my laptop and then added the extra fifteen for me to sit with my legs open.
"The minutes are up," I said.
John put another ten on my laptop.
"I want to touch you," he said, leaning across the desk and talking to my breasts. He came over and put his face right up to them. I could feel his eyelashes on my nipples.
"Let me look under your skirt. I just want to look at you."
"Okay," I said. "Five dollars a minute if I take off my underwear, and an extra fifteen dollars every three minutes if I take my underwear off and sit on top of the desk with my legs spread apart, but I'm keeping my skirt on. And you cannot touch me, no matter what you feel like doing."
"What if you feel like it?"
"I won't."
He placed fifteen dollars for three minutes on my laptop and then added the extra fifteen for me to sit with my legs open. I took off my panties and hung them over the back of my chair where he could see them.
"Those are pretty," he said, stroking them between the legs and on the ass.
I sat on the table, lifted my skirt and spread my legs apart.
He crouched in front of me. He put his head as far between my legs as he could go without touching me. I could feel him breathing on the inside of my thighs.
"We're done," I said. "You touched me with your hair."
I felt bad making him move away. I could tell by the speed of his breath that I could have made a lot more money if I'd let him stay.
We began to come to work earlier to afford ourselves more time and more freedom. John shaved his chest and his arms and wore his hair back in a ponytail in an effort to get as close to me as he could without my feeling a single stray hair.
"I want to walk in here tomorrow morning and see you laying on the desk completely naked."
"Fifty dollars, upfront," I said, noticing that he was hard just making the plan.
"Are you afraid I'm not going to show?"
"Not at all," I said, looking between his legs.
The next morning I got to the office at 6:30. I took everything off the desktop and took off my clothes and lay on top of it. My breasts fell to either side and my legs opened up. It was surprisingly comfortable.
When John arrived, he asked if he could take off his clothes too. I was hesitant because I didn't know if he would be able to keep his hands off, so I decided to charge him just in case.
My nipples were hard from the overhead fan.
"Okay," I said, "another twenty-five dollars if you take your clothes off."
His hands were shaking as he took the money out of his wallet.
I lay back on the table. I had never felt quite so naked. My back was cold from the metal desk; my nipples were hard from the overhead fan, which I'm sure John mistook for sexual excitement. Or maybe I was turned on and I mistook it for the fan.
John ran his face along my entire body, keeping it just an inch above my skin. He looked everywhere: under my arms, in my ears, in between my legs, bringing his face as close to my body as he could. He stayed near my lips for a long time.
"Open your mouth," he said.
He put his mouth right over mine without touching it. He inhaled my breath and breathed into me. He stepped back and took off his clothes. I hesitated before looking at him naked. He was very hard. He ran the palms of his hands over my body, keeping them just above my skin. The funny thing was I could feel them as if he were touching me. He held his palm above my pussy for so long I could feel the heat coming off his hand and I could feel my legs starting to spread. His restraint was unnerving.
"Move away from me," I said.
John stepped back.
I sat up on the desk and swung my legs over the side.
"Come here."
He stood in front of me and I stroked his penis lightly. He began to move back and forth and breathe very hard.
I stopped, and he thrust his entire pelvis toward me.
"One hundred dollars," I said, stroking him harder.
"Okay," he gasped.
Pretty soon I was devouring John's paycheck. But I made it up to him. Sometimes, when he was broke, I took him out to dinner with his money.n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Margot Berwin is the author of Irresistible, a work of creative nonfiction. She is currently working on an instructional novel called How to Avoid Disaster. She lives in Manhattan.
