The Mirror
Vanessa never meant to seduce the mirror.
Vanessa never meant to seduce the mirror.
It came from her Great Aunt Joan. A woman she hardly knew, but was the only family she had in Manhattan. The rich widow sister of her grandmother who her family always complained never came to Thanksgiving.
It was a massive thing, the mirror. Far too large for Vanessa’s junior one-bedroom up in Spanish Harlem.
There was something about the mirror, though. The expensive sheen of it. How the reflection seemed so much crisper than the cheap plastic framed mirror in her childhood bedroom. The decadence of having something so large and expensive in her little apartment. The wooden frame, covered in gold foil, reminding her of her visit to Versailles as a teenager. All that garish gilded opulence.
At first, it had been unnerving. The company of her reflection. Seeing it when she woke up and before she went to bed. She took to putting a robe on after her shower so as not to be confronted by her body first thing in the morning. She didn’t like the swell of her belly, how her breasts were uneven and imperfect.
In time, though, she got used to the mirror. She even found solace in it. Slowly, it helped her get more comfortable with herself.
The mirror became a constant in Vanessa’s life. Through changing jobs and bad dates, she always came home to her reflection. In time she even started to show off for it. Pausing before bed. Batting her eyelashes at herself. Letting her robe hang off her shoulders and finally fall with a burlesque flourish.
The married couple were much easier to seduce. He was handsome and his wife was gorgeous. Will was forty and Emily was thirty-five, a decade older than Vanessa. They worked in the financial district and had a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side.
It was cliché. Literally a “We saw you across the bar” type of thing, but that evening, that’s exactly what Vanessa needed. Two smart, well-dressed, elegant people that were entranced by her. Their eyes were like her mirror and she felt beautiful in their reflection.
Vanessa found herself looking in her mirror before dates. Testing different smiles. Seeing at what angle her blouse dipped open. Deciding if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
Her time with Will and Emily was full of dimly lit bars with elaborate cocktails. Delicious meals where Vanessa never even saw the bill. Then the extravagance of their king-sized bed.
It was so different from the fumblings of college boys or even college girls. Two confident adults. Being shared by them, being teased, being the focus of all that desire. All those hands. All those mouths. All that want.
Then leaving it all behind. For them to discuss and process and clean up. No plates or sheets to wash, no feelings to process. Back to her quiet apartment and the comfort of her mirror.
But those sorts of things only lasted so long. The drama came after only two months. Each of them pulling her aside to tell her about the problems they thought bringing her in would fix. Then silence.
The camera was the next seduction, and the most intentional.
Another gift from her Great Aunt. A late Christmas present in a heavy box. A block of matte black metal that was far too complicated. A round solid lens that felt as dense as a gun, or at least what she imagined a gun would feel like.
It sat in that box for a few months until Vanessa got the flu and spent a week reading the manual and getting inspired. She set the camera up on a little tripod next to her desk. She faced the lens towards her mirror.
There was a remote that fit in her hand like a little bird and when she clicked it she saw a complicated tableau.
The wide-angle lens capturing everything. Her mirror along with the reflection of her bed, her desk, the camera itself. A sliver of her bathroom, a sliver of her window. A sliver of her life.
It took her a while to get the settings right. The ISO, the aperture, the speed, the white balance. Words she hazily remembered from her brief introduction to photography at school.
Once it was set, though, she never touched those settings again. It became a static eye. Aperture priority. Comfort priority.
For a while the photos were just for her, like a photo diary. Capturing those moments only the mirror had been privy to. She’d never had much luck remembering to write in the various paper journals she bought through the years, but the click of the little remote seemed to call to her.
The pictures went right from the camera to her laptop. She did very little to edit them. Lined up, they could even be a little stop-motion movie of her life.
At brunch with Margot, her college roommate and the only one of her friends who actually got a job in theater, Vanessa offhandedly mentioned the project. It was the first time she called it that, as she struggled to find a word that described what she was doing.
“Oh! Let me see!” Margot said. The comfort Vanessa had found ebbed as she looked at Margot, with her perfect skin and dancer’s body. Vanessa had grown thicker after college. Something she struggled with but had begun to revel in. The mirror and the couple had both worshiped those curves.
She took out her phone before the anxiety could stop her. She had a little gallery of her favorite shots.
Margot’s smile faded as she scrolled through them.
Vanessa looking out the window in a nearly transparent vintage chemise. The moonlight outlining her silhouette. Vanessa on the bed, on all fours, naked. Moving just enough that her face and breasts were only blurs of soft tan. Vanessa sitting on the bed, brushing her hair, face turned down. Vanessa closer to the mirror, so both her back and the reflection of her face were captured. In black bra and panties taking off one of her false eyelashes, lipstick smudged, eyes red from crying.
“Oh, Van,” Margot said and Vanessa braced. “These are amazing. These are really wonderful. They’re so intimate and beautiful. Oh, Van, you need to do something with this!”
Vanessa laughed it off, rolling her eyes, but she was touched. Margot had an eye. She trusted Margot’s taste.
Vanessa had gone to school for performance. Dance, acting, singing. In college she focused on drama. It was one of the many reasons she moved to Manhattan. Initially she had auditions, bit parts, hopes, but after a few months the bills forced her to get a full-time job. Since then, she hadn’t had an audience. She hadn’t had a stage. She longed for it and Margot’s little comment reignited a fire in her. To be seen.
The next weeks were filled with hunting for an outlet. Twitter? A webpage? OnlyFans? She settled on Tumblr and decided not to post anything too scandalous.
Sometimes the shots were sweet. Holding her fluffy little cat, Penelope, and sitting on the floor in a slouchy sweater, leaning against her bed. Other times they were aesthetic, a blur of movement, her face out of focus, or her body covered in flowers. Then, there were the erotic. Her cheeks flushed, her breasts barely covered, her mouth hungry, her hand a soft blur between her legs.
She slowly built a following. Luckily there were far more explicit photos on the site than hers, so her audience was usually not aggressively creepy. Though when the creeps did appear, she blocked them, she ignored them, she sometimes posted their lewd comments for people to make fun of.
Her favorite commenters were from other models, other artists. They were usually women, but also gay men and the occasional couple, who had similar blogs. The community of the somewhat hidden artist. Their joyous praise and playful flirtation kept her going. Hyping each other up and egging each other on. Giving each other prompts and inspiration.
A year passed like that and then two. Her desire to take pictures and post pictures waxed and waned, but she took comfort knowing it was there. Her new mirror. She even took comfort in the little reminders, people poking her, asking when she would come back.
It was only when she got her job in the marketing firm that she really started reconsidering the project. She didn’t stop it, nor did she take down any photos, but the drive had lessened as she was creatively challenged at work for the first time.
She missed it. There was a pang of sadness sometimes, when she came home and saw her camera there. There even came a point when she considered moving it, but instead, she draped a silk scarf over it for a time, just to keep it out of mind.
In two years, Margot had found some fame. Still young enough to play the ingénue, she had wowed in an avant garde Romeo and Juliet, then shocked as Nina in The Seagull.
“Those last photos you posted were divine!” Margot gushed, and Vanessa was surprised she still followed the project. She felt a flush thinking of her old friend looking at her in such a sexual space.
“It reminded me, I might have something you’d be interested in.” Margot, who usually kept conversations pretty light, had a certain excitement in her eyes that Vanessa hadn’t seen since their college days, drunk and out at a club.
“I’ve been completely obsessed with this new project. A secret project,” Margot leaned in and whispered. Vanessa felt the heat of her friend’s body and breathed in the expensive perfume Margot had started to wear.
“What is it?” Vanessa whispered, wondering if it was some movie Margot wasn’t supposed to talk about.
“It’s this... art project. I guess you could call it experimental theater. Maybe even performance art,” Margot said, taking a sip of her martini and sighing, trying to find the right word.
“It’s a cabaret, but a secret one. Sort of like a contemporary take on a vaudeville show. In this old theater downtown. We’re not even supposed to write down where it is, it’s word of mouth only,” Margot said, grabbing Vanessa’s hand. “Oh, Van, I haven’t been so excited about something since school.”
A secret cabaret? Vanessa’s mind swam with images of smoky speak easies, the Moulin Rouge, Bob Fosse, burlesque. Margot squeezed her hand and broke the spell for a moment. “And I think you would be perfect for it!”
Vanessa’s heart raced. She felt something seismic shift, or maybe something astrological. Some alignment. Knowing almost nothing about it, she felt a siren call to Margot’s project.
“I want in.”