Don’t Look!

I shouted over my shoulder as I scampered into the spare room in search of a towel. He chuckled.

“What?” I grumbled.

“You’re naked, and I can’t look?”

I rolled my eyes; the nudity was nothing new. I’d only just spent several minutes naked in front of him.  He’d had a good look at me as he set my skin alight, and he’d get another chance for a good look as he dribbled wax over my back. I could say the fire had distracted me, but that would be misleading. I’m not ashamed of my body: flab, hairs and all (fewer hairs, now that the fire had visited). Or, more precisely, I couldn’t be bothered with concern about dress or undress; nudity was a means to an end, a logistical prerequisite for all sorts of fun in the same way that clothing was a prerequisite for venturing out to the pub.  

The spare room was another matter entirely.

I had cleaned before his visit. Not as I’d cleaned the first time, with the scouring of sinks and washing of walls, but I’d at least confirmed that my carpet hadn’t run off in a huff and made sure there were at least a couple clean wine glasses.

But life had intervened, and shortcuts had been taken- largely via the spare room, which had become a jumble of things to do at a later date, things that didn’t fit, things that needed further attention, and things that I couldn’t be bothered with thinking about just yet. There were a lot of things.

These things did not fit with how I wanted him to see me, with the me I wanted to be for him. I wanted to be a proper adult. I wanted to have my shit together (and I did- my shit was all tossed together into the spare room). He knew me well enough to know about the pieces of me that weren’t as polished as I would like them- mentally and physically- but those had been slow, deliberate revelations of individual bits of crazy.  Not the giant pile of crap I was now rummaging through with much clanking and thunking.

But despite the cacophony of my search, I do at least know my shit well. I emerged moments later with the spare towel I was looking for and returned to see his disarmingly bemused expression. With a raised eyebrow, he punctured my delusions of secrecy and shame.

“Fine, you can look.”

He did. And we laughed. And we got on with the wax scene.