Of Towels, Gunslingers, and Bed Warmers

She steps out of the bedroom, wrapped only in a blue towel. It covers what is necessary. Barely. She wears it perfectly, as if it were a ball gown. Or a little black dress. She is svelte, smooth, dark-haired, the color of a Florida tan. Perhaps not the loveliest twenty-something you ever saw, but the guys in the barn would have said of her, “I wouldn’t kick her out of bed." I am in the next room, sitting at the computer, writing. Our eyes meet. If this disturbs her, given her state of dress, she doesn’t show it. She flashes an easy smile, coos “Good morning" (it still is, just), and proceeds serenely into the shower. Later, she emerges and makes the return trip. It is his turn with the hot water, and after a few minutes he takes it. The athlete, in gym shorts. Robust and good-looking. Dammit. They are a pair. He is the landlady’s son. I am a part of the furniture.

The woman newly entered into a consummated relationship is unmistakable. At least she is to me. There is a sunbeam coming off her face, a bloom to her skin, a pounce in her step. She is at the pinnacle of a perfect world, laying down the law, and she makes it so with every move. A small change in costume, and she is a Roman Emperor celebrating a conquest, the central figure in a triumphal procession and with no pesky servant nearby to remind her of her mortality.

His face is not radiant. It is radar. He is a lone ranger guarding California gold, and there’s a gunslinger tucked around every corner, hidden under every shadow. He tries to be civil, to be easy, with you, but he doesn’t pull it off. For he is nervous, and you are under suspicion. There are no rings yet, the deal has not been sealed. And he knows too well that there are few things on this Earth more alluring than a woman in love. Than his woman in love.

It is not always easy sharing a residence with a couple in the first bloom of bed sharing. Especially when your own best hope for company is a geriatric cat in need of Depends. A few months ago, I had an e-correspondence with a college-age woman who asked advice about dating a man she really didn’t care for. I asked why she was wasting her time. Eventually it came out that the other women in her dorm were paired up, and she was feeling left out. So much so that she was ready to grasp at any straw. Even the dodgy second-rate characters that her dorm mates had rejected and were now pointing at her. I remembered that feeling from my college days. Only too well. And how well the choices I made under that pressure worked. Not. I told her to wait. To look for a soulmate, not just accept a bedwarmer. I do not know what has become of her.

All I do know is, that feeling’s no easier to deal with at age 50 than it was at age 20.

   - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.