An Artistically Pliable Girl-Genius / from Maybe Baby

Natalia Blauth on Unsplash

When she first started college, and was rooming with someone who wasn't her mother, and thereby free to make her own decisions about artmaking, Nikki starred in her first play practically naked. Because of this choice, she learned that she didn't mind being ogled by strangers, that in fact she rather liked it.

The play was Equus, a real psychological doozy, and this guy Jason from Duluth played the main character, Alan, a delusional teenager with dogmatic parents and a horse fetish. Jason wasn't very good in the role, which was challenging and required its own bold nudity, but Nikki knew from the get-go that part of the problem, at least, was her lacy bra and underwear. Never mind her tremendous acting skills, which at the time really were tremendous. Never mind that the director complimented her and never poor Jason, intimidating him into a husk of himself, unable to remember his lines. It was her underthings that destroyed Jason's concentration. When you're a girl like Nikki, you just know.

Jason, she slowly learned, was just as fucked up about Christianity as his character, and eventually, after months of intimate rehearsals, he asked Nikki to marry him, presumably so he could sleep with her. Nikki wasn't in love, or even like, with Jason, who was sort of cute but very sweaty and basically humorless, but she was ready to shed her virginity, which no longer fit her identity. Her virginity was expiring rapidly, especially now that she was an older actress and would need sexual experience to draw from. So, she told Jason she'd have sex with him-- hold the engagement. Regretfully, he refused.

Then she had a better idea. What if they did it in character? His parents, or God or whoever, couldn't disown him if it was "Alan" having the premarital sex they all forbade.

It took a little flattery and one actual date at TGI Fridays to warm him up, but once she did, he was eager. And extra sweaty. Too eager and obviously too sweaty. Poor Jason blew his load before he got all the way in there-- like, he was almost sort of all the way in there. Though the experience left Nikki's cherry unpopped, she'd come close enough to full penetration to exude the swagger of a non-virgin. So then Nikki understood it: that acting could not only fill her soul, but bridge the gap between herself and the things she desired.