All my life I have been taught not to touch my body, or to allow it to be touched. I have not, and I have been very careful when bathing, especially not to touch my furry little Mound of Venus or my breasts, even though they always tingle and feel they want to be massaged once they're free of those awful bras. Only Ted has ever touched them, and I slapped him so hard that night my hand was red and tingly for hours. Just his touch made my bra feel even tighter, and I could tell the tip of my breast had gotten longer; it hurt, from being squeezed into the bra. But that night of all nights I did not touch myself or even dream of removing my bra before going to bed.
I record this tonight because I was whistled at today, just walking down the street. It made me feel all sorts of things; sort of warm and tingly, and angry, and rather nice, too. After all, someone thought I was pretty enough to whistle at!
I came home and couldn't seem to stop thinking about it, and I succumbed to the sin of vanity.
I came up here to my room and locked the door and kept looking at myself in the dresser mirror every time I passed. And I passed it a lot. I realized I was walking around on purpose, just so I could keep looking at myself. Admiring myself!
If mother knew that!
Or Rev Coffler!
But if they'd ever known what I did after that…!
Well, I bathed. And came out of the bathroom wearing my robe. I couldn't help looking at myself again, some more, sort of checking. Is that a pretty girl, I thought? Is that the sort of girl men whistle at?
Oh gosh, I thought, is this the sort of body that incites men's lusts? Was I created a harlot, a Jezebel, in the body of a… a temptress, despite the family I belong to and the upbringing and beliefs I have?
I stood there in front of the mirror staring at myself. Just staring and staring. Large blue eyes, quite blue, and I don't know if I like that or not. They're sort of like a baby's eyes, they're always so much bluer than when the child gets older.
A perfectly ordinary nose, neither a button nor a handsome British one like Deborah Kerr's, but not a hook or anything, either, thank Heaven. (Ah, vanity, vanity!) A nice mouth, I guess; who knows about mouths? A little wide, maybe, to be honest, and a little full of the lower lip. And all this blonde hair.
"You look just like Justine," Mr. Grayson told me one day after Lit class in my Junior year, just before I had the asthma trouble and cost Mother and Daddy so much money and had to miss two years of school. (It's embarrassing, about to enter High School this fall as an EIGHTEEN-year-old SENIOR, for Heaven's sake! Besides, I'd rather just have stayed out, and gotten a job. Mother and Daddy need the help I could give them by bringing in some money. But Daddy and his pride! He wouldn't hear of it. HE didn't finish High School, he said, and look at him. Dinky house old car and now he's laid off and we're really hurting. I sigh.)
Anyhow, Mr. Grayson told me I looked just like Justine. "Justine?" I echoed, frowning. "Justine who?"
He laughed, making me feel sort of small. "There," he said, "that's just it. That little frown, the big wide blue eyes, so innocent, and that pursed mouth, so sensuous. That's your Justine look!"
"But who's Justine?"
He shook his head. "I shouldn't have mentioned it. She's the, ah, protagonist in a very wicked book. Its title is Justine. Actually I don't know if she was ever described or not. I don't remember. But all the way through I saw her as a soft pale blond with big blue eyes and a mouth like yours, wide, but with a full lower lip. Very sensuous. The perfect…"
"Sir?"
He shook his head again. "I'm sorry," he said.
"The perfect what, Mr. Grayson?" Maybe I was flirting a little. Shameful me! But I was also fascinated, of course. I have had this terrible curiosity ever since I was a child. Everyone tells me it's going to get me into trouble some day. Humpf. Well, it hasn't!
"The perfect… victim," he said, in a low voice, and he looked at me so intensely I was paralyzed, like a mouse or a rabbit staring at a cobra.
Well, the bell rang, and that was that. And after that I was very careful not to be anywhere alone with Mr. Grayson!
Eventually, of course, very carefully and sneakily, I found out who had written a "very wicked book" called Justine.
I was shocked. I am still shocked.
Justine was a book written by… The Marquis de Sade! Everyone knows what a monster HE was! And I look like… oh, that's terrible!
I wander here in my diary, don't I? I must try to stop that, curb it. A wandering mind is an idle one, and one should have a fixed purpose in all things. I've heard that often enough, from more mouths than one. Even…
Um-hm! I'm wandering again!
I was about to write down what I did after my bath. Well… I stood there and kept staring at myself, and maybe it was an accident or maybe it was deliberate. I had been on my way to bed, after all, and I hadn't even bothered to tie my robe. It fell open.
There I was, staring at myself in the mirror, and… naked!
I… I studied myself. Shamelessly… and shamefully, how clever I am sometimes!… for quite a while.
The pale fringes around my eyes are like… are like… oh come on, Victoria, this is your diary!
The pale fringes around my eyes are like the almost invisible little fringe that hems, but doesn't even cover, the little pink slit right at the bottom of my belly. The hair there is tenderly, curling like silk all around and even on that little pink stripe down the center of the swollen place, the lips. (Silly to call them that; they're not a they, they're an it, and it's turned the wrong way to be a mouth, anyhow!
Rounded, snowy thighs that touch each other all the way down to the knees, and knees with delicate little dimples, and then legs below that that I still think are too calfy. Small feet, that's a blessing; surely my fanny is too much, all round and white and sticky-outy. Just too prominent and round to be decent!
Not much stomach to speak of, on that pale girl in the mirror, just a slight narrow swelling between the cradle formed by the hips, with a shallow, longish navel denting it just in the center.
But both that tummy and its navel are shadowed. Shadowed, by what it is that makes my brassieres so painfully tight and that makes Mother make me wear tight bras anyhow, and loose blouses. Well, tonight I really studied them. It, I mean, my bosom. In two halves. Even and equal and identical, as far as I was able to tell.
They stood there before me, round and very white and solid looking, pushing out from my chest as if they were about to spring free of me, to fly or float about in the air. So buoyant looking. Surging up and out, forward, with each breath I took. They bounced with every little movement I made, jiggling and rippling, sort of like Jell-O when you drop it onto your plate if Jell-O were white.
And with pink, pink tips set in paler pink circles like… well, like silver dollars, I guess, but whoever sees silver dollars any more? (Well, more people than see the preposterously developed halves of my ridiculous bosom, anyhow!) (What a thought!)
They don't droop at all, the breasts I am stuck with for life. They just stand there, jiggling and shaking. Looking like they'd make me float and float, if I were to jump.
I jumped.
They bounced way up, and when they come down it hurt. They dragged at me, and I realized they are HEAVY, and so now I know one good reason to keep on wearing those nasty tight brassieres!
I have a bra on now, under my nightgown as I write this. And I am going to stop. They hurt. They're very tight-feeling, as they are every month – right before The Curse begins. I can feel a little pain right at the tips. They've gotten long again.