Dirty Little Read-through: The Sexy Eyelashes of "Under Captain Jack" by Kristina Lloyd

I don't want to stop talking about Dirty Little Numbers yet. So here is my plan: a dirty little read-through, one very short story at a time. If you want to join me, you are certainly welcome. I begin with the first story in the collection, Kristina Lloyd's "Under Captain Jack."

"He reached for my eyes with both hands and, carefully, gently, peeled away the lashes. The tackiness tugged on my lids, and the intimacy of his action left me softly shocked." - Kristina Lloyd

What I love about this is that it is an incredibly intimate action being described—and one that wouldn't occur to me if I were making a list of intimate actions. In general, we don't touch each other's faces in society unless something very intimate is going on—a lover stroking the soft hair at the temple, a mother wiping her child's mouth, etc.

I have often bewailed the way that many sex scenes are written as if a woman consists of nothing more than lips, nipples, and clit. This could, of course, be done well, but it is frequently done with formulaic detachment, leading me to scan entire pages of writing that I think were supposed to make me melt and squirm.

My favorite thing about Nicole Holofcener's excellent movie Enough Said was its off-kilter sexiness. At one point, the main female character talks about how there's something sexy to her about the warts-hanging-out middle-agedness of her relationship. There's a fantastic scene of the two main characters in bed together studying each other's teeth, which gave me the same shock of intimacy that appears in Lloyd's story.

These days, I am so hungry for the sexiness of the inner elbow, the back of the knee, the point of the chin. Thank you to Kristina Lloyd for these eyelashes. I needed them.