Divya Maniar
FICTION BY DIVYA MANIAR
Mousepad
Her breasts are round, perfectly round—the shape of a pomelo, cut in half, flesh side facing down, two meaty pieces laying next to each other. She has red hair, and big, sparking eyes. She is wearing a white and silver bikini, which just barely covers her nipples. The rest is pale flesh, firm and unblemished. She is beautiful. But there is one issue, which is the unfortunate reality that she is a mousepad. Her face and shoulders are the flat part for the mouse, and her breasts stick out, forming two perfect little hills, a wrist-rest. I don’t know who she is, and there is no logo on it to tell me what television show she materialized out of.
My boyfriend’s buddy Bill got him the pad as a gift, allegedly as a safeguard against carpal-tunnel syndrome. My boyfriend does a lot of computer programming, so it made sense, I guess, to give him a mousepad.
—Bill! You shouldn’t have!
—Nonsense. It’s a housewarming gift.
Bill gave me a small waffle-iron. I nod my thanks, eyes still affixed to the woman which he did not even have the decency to wrap. I had the unnerving desire to lurch forward and feel her foam-breasts for myself.
My boyfriend says it is not so embarrassing to own an anime girl mousepad. He says the real pervert-otakus are the ones with anime girl body pillows, that they stick it in at night. This does little to comfort me.
The mousepad girl makes me self-conscious, especially when I am in her presence. My boyfriend and I both use the study room because that is where our internet speeds are the best. When I am there, she never says anything, obviously, because her mouth is two dimensional. But it is a subtly curved line which looks almost like a cheeky smile, the kind of smile that speaks on a silent woman’s behalf. I was born to be prettier than you.
I know I should not be scared of an inanimate object. Note, though, that her boobs were three-dimensional.
I am embarrassed to share that I have shed some tears over the obvious superiority that these breasts had over my own, which sloped off of my chest gently, two small triangles topped with ant-bites.
Even when I am not in the study, she strikes fear into my, admittedly, feeble heart. I get very anxious when my boyfriend disappears into the study alone to play PC games and forces me to sit alone in the dark with my MacBook and my thoughts, watching Love Island to feel even worse about my predicament. I am a sucker for self-pity. I observe more beautiful women, with even better breasts.
When I am not in the study, but he is, I imagine his hand on his mouse, his wrist resting on her sculptured flesh, and I imagine he must be thinking about how unlucky he is. Of course, no woman has anime boobs, because those are drawn, seemingly, as a deliberately spiteful gesture toward the imperfections of the female body. In real life, we are prone to droopiness and ugly misshapenness, and all of the flaws that our flesh is reluctantly heir to. Maybe I have met one or two women with breasts that are perky and big; but even they do not have perfect symmetry, irresistible bounce. Even they have unsightly moles, skin fungus, pimples and goose-pimples.
I am getting ahead of myself.
All I am really trying to say is this: it is very humbling to know that my boyfriend shares more net hours of intimacy with a set of miniature foam breasts, than mine.
I cannot make up my mind as to whether I ought to confront him, or to ask him to cut the mousepad in half with our kitchen scissors and buy a new wrist-friendly mousepad with no anime breasts painted on it. I think I ought to hold my tongue, though, because the only thing that could possibly be more pathetic than my being jealous of a mousepad, would be my being vocally jealous of a mousepad.
Instead, I am trying my best to subdue my anxiety, and to entice my boyfriend away from her. I am at the mall on my lunch hour trying on hot pink, lacy lingerie. We must all play to our strengths. The anime girl cannot wear anything but her white and silver bikini. I can.
But when I put on my new underwear and sit in bed, my boyfriend does not notice me. He comes home from work at seven. I have been home since six, touching up my makeup and spraying myself with the rosewater toner I had bought from Urban Outfitters. He says hello and eats the kimchi-fried rice I left in the fridge. It is okay, I tell myself. He is just hungry. Instead of coming into our bedroom, he goes straight for the study.
I raise my voice, only slightly.
—Hello!
—Sorry babe. Tired from work. Gotta hop on, destress.
Destress. Remember when we ‘de-stressed’ by having sex with each other? What is he doing anyways? Click click click click. He has one of those keyboards which made really satisfying noises. Click click click click. I fall asleep in my pretty pink getup, makeup still on, not noticing when he crawls into bed at 1:30AM.
He has gone bowling with his friends.