The curtain that didn't close
I almost didn't post this. I wrote it on my phone last night in bed, deleted it, then wrote it again this morning bc I literally could not think about anything else. So here it is. If you're the kind of person who judges, maybe skip this one. If you're not... hi. I think we'd get along.
Saturday I went to Roosevelt Field by myself. No real plan, I just needed to get out of the house and my mom kept asking if I'd "started looking" for internships, so. Mall it is.
I ended up in that store on the second floor, the one with the dim lighting and the music that's way too loud. They had a bodysuit on the mannequin, black, super thin, with a little cutout on the back, and I just wanted to see how it looked on me. That's it. That was the whole plan.
The fitting rooms there are the bad kind. No real doors, just those heavy velvet curtains on a rod, and there's a bench right outside where boyfriends and dads sit and scroll on their phones while they wait. When I walked in there was one guy sitting there. Maybe 25? Gray hoodie, nice hands (I don't know why that's what I noticed first, but it was). He glanced up at me for like half a second and went back to his phone.
I got the room at the end. Pulled the curtain. And it didn't close. There was a gap, maybe two inches, between the edge of the curtain and the wall, and no matter how I tugged it, it swung back open.
I remember thinking, whatever, nobody's looking. And I started changing.
Top off first. Then my bra, bc you can't wear one with that bodysuit. And I was standing there in just my jeans, and I looked up at the mirror, and the mirror was angled so I could see the gap behind me. And through the gap I could see the bench.
And he wasn't looking at his phone anymore.
He wasn't staring. It wasn't creepy. He just... had looked up. His phone was still in his hand but his eyes were on the mirror, on me, and when I caught them in the reflection he didn't look away fast enough.
My whole body went hot. Instantly. My face, my neck, my chest, everything.
The normal thing would've been to grab my shirt and cover up. Or say something. Or yank the curtain shut and hold it. I know that. I knew it then too.
I didn't do any of those things.
I just stood there. And I let him look.
What are you doing, I was thinking. Hannah. What are you doing.
But my hands were already on the button of my jeans.
I want to be really honest here bc that's the whole point of this blog: I've thought about this exact thing a hundred times. Being seen. Someone watching me when I'm not supposed to be watched. It's like my number one thing I think about when I can't sleep. And now it was actually happening, in a mall, on a Saturday afternoon, with some Taylor Swift song playing over the speakers, and I was so turned on I could barely breathe.
I pushed my jeans down slowly. Way slower than I needed to. I stepped out of them and I was in just my underwear, and I bent down to pick them up (I did NOT need to bend down like that, let's be real) and when I stood up I looked in the mirror again.
He was still looking.
He'd put his phone face down on his knee.
I picked up the bodysuit and turned it around in my hands like I was trying to figure out which way was the front. Total lie. I knew which way was the front. I was buying time, standing there topless with my heart going crazy, because I didn't want it to stop.
Then a woman's voice from the other side of the store: "Babe? Is this too much?"
His girlfriend. Obviously. Of course he had a girlfriend.
He looked toward her and said something like "No, it's cute," and my stomach dropped and flipped at the same time. Because now it felt even more wrong. Even more like a secret. She was right there and she had no idea her boyfriend had just watched some random girl take her clothes off.
And I liked that. I hate that I liked that, but I did.
I pulled the bodysuit on. It was tight and the fabric was so thin you could see literally everything, and I stood in front of the mirror and turned to the side like I was checking the fit, and I watched his eyes come back to the gap. Just for a second. Then back to his girlfriend, who was walking over holding some dress.
"Is there a room open?" she asked him.
"Uh, I think the end one's taken," he said. And his voice sounded different. Lower. Or maybe I imagined that.
I stood really still. She went into the room next to mine. I could hear her hangers clinking on the hook through the wall, and the whole time I was standing there in this see-through bodysuit with my hands pressed flat on my stomach, trying to calm down.
I did not calm down.
I took it off slowly. I took longer getting my bra back on than anyone in history has ever taken to put on a bra. Then I got dressed and pulled the curtain open and walked out, and he was sitting right there, three feet away.
He looked up at me.
I looked at him.
Neither of us said anything. What would you even say? "Hey, thanks for watching"? I kind of half smiled, I think. I'm not even sure. My face was doing whatever it wanted at that point.
And he gave me this tiny nod. Barely anything. But it was enough.
I bought the bodysuit. Obviously.
I drove home with the windows down even though it was kind of cold, bc I needed the air. I kept replaying it. The gap in the curtain. His phone face down on his knee. The way he said "the end one's taken" like he knew exactly who was in there.
At a red light on Old Country Rd I caught myself squeezing my thighs together and I actually laughed out loud, alone in my car, like a psycho.
When I got home my mom was in the kitchen and asked "find anything good?" and I said "just a top" and went straight upstairs and locked my door.
I'm not going to describe everything that happened after that. Let's just say I was late for dinner, and I definately wasn't thinking about internships.
So here's the thing I keep coming back to. I'm 21. I'm not some sheltered girl. But I've never told anyone, not my friends, not my ex, that this is what gets me. Being looked at. Not even touched. Just looked at, when I'm supposed to be hidden. The curtain is the whole point. If I was just naked on some beach it wouldn't be the same. It's the fact that it's supposed to be private.
Is that weird? Probably. I've googled it before, at like 2am, and apparently it's super common, which honestly made me feel better and also kind of disappointed bc I wanted to be special lol.
What scares me a little is how fast I decided. There wasn't even a moment where I thought about it. My body just decided for me. And now I keep thinking, what's next? Am I going to start picking fitting rooms based on which curtains don't close? (Don't answer that.)
Last night I wore the bodysuit around my room with nothing over it, and I left my blinds open about two inches. Nobody can see into my room, there's just trees back there. But I left them open anyway.
That's where I'm at right now.
I don't know who that guy was. I'll probably never see him again. But if by some insane chance you're reading this... you know who you are. You're not as smooth as you think. I saw you look.
I just didn't want you to stop.
xo, H