Makeup: A sensual play with gender

We are twins… counterpoints of each other’s sacred masculine and feminine. Sometimes you are small, and I see your feminine peak out from behind shy eye lashes. You watch me transfixed as I apply makeup at my vanity and I see a flicker in your eye and say, “come here…sit down.” Your planet shifts into a slip in the fabric. You come sit on my ottoman and with delight I start painting the lines of your eyes. Our secret pleasure. I pull my silk robe from its hook and drape it around you. Long neon flowers and wings fall against midnight black from your shoulders. You cross your legs, and I feel a protectiveness over this holy moment… Over your vulnerability that is laid out like the innermost pedals of a flower before me.

I take joy in letting you in on this secret usually reserved for the feminine… this secret of the otherworldly peace of applying makeup with diffuse dusk light pouring in through the window. Of seeing your beauty reflected back to you in the three-piece mirror. Of the light itself playing a harp’s chord. Of feeling delicate and divine. Of feeling a feline power, or whatever flavor it is for you now… maiden, queen, fairy, diva…

And as you tentatively at first let me paint you, you are so unassuming and new. So fresh, nubile, virgin, and unexpectant. Vulnerable. Hopeful. And you look at me with a new look in your eye… Will I accept you? Will I answer your covert joy with love? With desire back? And I witness you come out in each consecutive moment. Lifting your lips to my lip gloss. Letting yourself be seen.

I show you your reflection so you can behold yourself. You don’t resist it. Instead, you take it in with long drinking eyes. And your doing so touches something very deep in me. Because you let it contact something very deep in you. It opens the moment more and more. You are reverent. It is not lost on you, the sacredness of this moment. Then only, once you have drunk it in like nectar, do we get very playful. You tease me, tossing your robe sash around dramatically and flamboyantly, gossiping… testing out new hand gestures and ways of speaking. Even being coquettish and coy. And so even as I am showing you the most delicate of sins with the mascara, something has opened in you, and you move from a new place. A new center of gravity. From a place of gratitude. From being seen for something you didn’t even know was there. So that the moment between us is scintillating with a million newborn cilia.

The moment calls for some necessary invocation of our feminine foremothers. So I stroll over to the stereo and finger through Ms. Lennox, Edith Pilaf, Aretha. I press play and a warm powerful sanction spills into the room, “The moment I wake up… “

Unmistakable pleasure suffuses your face and further uplifts the moment. You can’t take your eyes off your reflection… as it should be. Pursing your lips and tilting your head you wonder aloud, “What do you think?”

“Exquisiiite!” I answer enthusiastically in a French accent.
Some paces pass…
“Did you see that man Henry from the party by the way?” You venture, raising your eyebrows at me.
“… And?” I humor you… “What did you think of him?”
“…His hands!! Honey, his hands!!” You gesture, as arm hair and genitals make endearing peeks out from silk robe. “I wonder if he’d think I’m pretty….”

I let you discover the eroticism that is inevitable between femmes… putting on makeup together and sharing clothes… stripping into panties before one another and being seen. Subtle exhibitionism… ever so subtle. Nonviolent voyeurism. Permissions. It’s like an invitation that hangs in the air. Like leaving our sensuality ajar. Almost suggestive. Not aggressively coveting. And not doing anything to make the other close up. We all know the preciousness of what is exposed in the locker room… and there’s an unspoken covenant to protect it. Eroticism mixed with safety. An unspoken cellular pact to protect one another’s bodily integrity. But side-glances of awe. Of thinly veiled desire as you tell her, “No, you don’t look fat,” as you gawk at the beautiful cellulite of her rotund buttocks, or “No, you don’t have a camel toe ” And we are one smile… one drag of a shared cigarette, or one gesture of kindness away from falling in love altogether.

So I pass you a cigarette in its Cruella De Vil holder so you can be one of the girls as I confide through showing:

It is something we bestow upon one another… the gift of that safety, like a blessing. Like a prayer. Like a spirit. Like a sanctuary, soft and gentle. That grace that comingles with naked children running around, maternity, and eros. The impossibly beautiful smells that mix with human odor, and the mysterious ways we apply it to the back of our knees, our hair lines, and our inner thighs so the men won’t know what hit em when they are overcome with bread and honey… by lilac and breastmilk and pheromones and the sea.

I am so eager to gift you that profound inner safety. To show you the beauty we women know is possible in this world… that we make together, amongst one other. Peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Singing together while washing. That peace you must know too, somewhere inside you. That you perhaps even remember, bouncing on your mother’s knee. And I know you long for it. You all long for it. We know so because men come to us in puddles seeking sanctuary from subliminal violence. From the distressed messes of their own making. I want you to see you can make it too. You have it in you too. I want to grant you that liberation.

So I share these treasures with you passively, the way all women learned them. In tender moments such as these and in passing, from aunties and honorary fairy godmothers and elders of the feminine.

“You know what you need?” I say, and wander over to my drawer to fetch my fishnets. I let you discover them in the same way I discovered my mothers in her dresser… in awe and wonder and genuine bewilderment… finding out through dress-up and playing. Through being possessed by an alter-ego. And by doing so in secret during naptime, and shuffling around in oversized heels and pearls and applying way too much lotion that it gooped up in-between my fingers and got in mama’s silks. I discovered such feminine in silence… In the moments God graces us with like this where time stops, and nothing intrudes on the sacred. In that divine suspension from reality. In the moments of necessary solitude and boredom, where in the quiet, my spirit came up out of its body and snooped around… searching to consummate something. It snooped around with a nosey curiosity to discover itself.

And so, I let you discover the fishnets without my intervention. Leaning back on my armoire and pulling from said cigarette, I witness you:

You explore them earnestly, then poke your foot in. A slight amount of insecurity always heightens attraction, because of the sincerity. It makes you intensely present. You move your legs around in the fabric and I know you feel the glorious sensation of silkiness from within. You are jubilant… radiant beneath your skin. And as you rub your legs against one another, you ecstatically make static and revel in the newfound texture… in the now smoothness of your hairy legs. And I wonder whether you will even entrust me with shaving them.

And now your playfulness comes out. You want to bump my booty with yours. You want to feel mine in my own fishnets from your now femme hand. You want to lay next to each other on the bed and risk touching one another, as if we are best friends at a sleepover. You want to squeal and play tag. You want to do my hair… pinning a butterfly barrette in it. You want to see the inside of my jewelry box. “What is this?” you ask endearingly, as you hold up a purple lip pencil. You peruse the eye shadow and move on your seat fluidly, stretching yourself sinuously… taking your time and making a long drawl as you select the color you want, and wonder where on your face I will apply it.

And as I do so, this new energy emerges out of me too. An agency. A confidence. An authority. And it is me that drags my finger along your jaw line and tells you, “How pretty.” And I mean it. It is me that tips your face upward to kiss you.

And as I do so, you are something unlike anything I have ever seen before. Not the you I’m over-familiar with, that my brain has condensed into a known. Now you are something brand new. And I am flooded with the overwhelming power and responsibility it is to be in the masculine: to hold something so vulnerable in my hands. And with my feminine knowing of being penetrated, I intentionally slow down to absorb you. But somehow, I am still penetrated. This time, by the revelation before me. By this technicolor force of nature… a brilliant peacock, a pin up doll perched on my ottoman in all her glory. A magnum opus. So many things course through me at once: awe, a torrent of love, desire for something that scares the shit out of me, insecurity, and the daunting unknown. Now I am the one that is new. And just as I start to get afraid, you grab my butt playfully and wiggle its cheeks forcefully and say, “it’s still me,” smiling electrically and beaming those eyes full of love. Now it is you granting me safety.