No Mountain, One American

oi oi

Before we get into the story, let’s look at some renaissance paintings together.

Really take them in.

Lovely.

Wow.

Wasn’t that nice? Now, on with the story.

Returning readers may remember an American character (who consumed vodka ocularly) from a few chapters ago. If not: we met climbing a mountain, then once more after that. I stayed overnight at his house both times. He lives far away so it never came to anything. You’re now sufficiently caught up.

On a recent Friday morning, after a period of little contact (a few exchanges here and there when something relevant came up), the American texted me to let me know that he was in the city where I live, and staying in a hotel here that night, if I would like to join him for dinner after work. We quickly arranged a place to meet and I took it upon myself to assume that dinner would end with me spending the night at his hotel.

However, I have been having a problem recently. This is truly TMI, but at this point fuck it—we’ve been all round the houses together.

My problem is that my washing machine is, like, chewing all my pants (underpants for our American majority). Every wash cycle frays the elastic, rips the seams or otherwise lightly compromises the integrity of any pair of pants I put in there (the rest of my clothes are fine, except one cardigan—RIP (literally)). I did start replacing them, but then thought I can’t be keeping constantly buying new pants, they are not a single-use product. So, for the good of our planet (let’s go with that), I have been fairly regularly wearing lightly compromised pants, and just hoping I don’t end up in a horrible accident and need to go to the hospital in less than top notch pants.

Clarifying here that I mean like the elastic has come out of the bit the elastic is meant to be in. Or there’s a small hole somewhere. They’re still serviceable pants. They’re not, however, shag pants. Okay. Sorry. I felt like over-explaining was better than under-explaining here.

I received the American’s text when I was already at work, after which I would be meeting him directly. When I left the house that morning, I was wearing a pair of pants with a small hole in the front seam. As the day went on, the small hole widened, resulting in a situation fast approaching what I can only describe as accidental crotchless knickers.

Easy fix: I would nip to the shops that afternoon. Rather than going to Primark or similar, as I usually would to restock my underwear drawer find new victims for my washing machine, I decided—as this was a unique combination of emergency situation and special occasion, in for a penny in for a pound, fuck it and also yolo—I’d buy myself a matching underwear set. This decision was largely driven by the fact that the only previous times the American has seen me, I was wearing— to call it merely a sports bra would be doing a disservice to the structural engineers who created it. Suffice to say, it was not attractive.

So off I trotted to John Lewis. Much like their Christmas adverts these days, John Lewis is very hit and miss for me. I found nothing in my size and once again found myself taking up my position as the only person in the nation still mourning the loss of Debenhams and their generous provision for the Itty Bitty Ribby Committee. Last resort: Bravissimo. While I am a repeat customer at this establishment, I am not exactly a Bravissimo frequent flier, and while I very much appreciate their existence, very glad to have them, please never close, etc., their bras are not exactly, in my opinion, sexy. But I found the best option, made a purchase and got out.

Don’t know about anyone else, but I find shopping for underwear to be an absolute nightmare experience. Extremely stressful and unpleasant and I hate every second of it. :)

I had a lovely time with the American. We get on really well, and it wasn’t at all awkward having not spoken much for a while. He has a job that is both sufficiently similar to and sufficiently different from mine for us to have a lot of overlapping interests and a lot to talk about. He’s very laid back, has good chat and is just, like, a nice guy (not a ‘nice guy’, a nice guy).

I did stay the night at his hotel, which, btw, was really fucking fancy. So fancy that, the following morning, I really struggled to work out how to operate the shower. You turned it on and off and changed the pressure and heat by adjusting the shower head. But the shower head was overhead and stationary. I think I mean it was a rainfall shower, but I am not sufficiently au fait with shower terminology to say that with any confidence.

Anyway, the shower head couldn’t be moved and was high up enough to be well overhead for a very tall person. I am five foot tall. I also really can’t see anything at all with my naked eyeballs. So, after my shower, I grabbed a towel and tried just generally messing about with the shower head, trying to turn it off.

At one point I accidentally made the water boiling hot and did a little yelp. In response to which the American ran into the bathroom, where he found me, looking, quite frankly, like a work of art. I don’t mind saying that, when the American walked into that hotel bathroom, I resembled a renaissance painting. By which of course I mean, if we cast our minds back to the images we looked at together, I was loosely wrapped in a towel, arm extended, with one tit hanging out.

To conclude: Lovely time. Lovely guy. Still lives in the middle of nowhere. Might never see each other again. Might spend new year’s eve together.

Byeeeeee xoxoxo

P.S. At no point prior to now have I ever envisioned myself writing the phrase ‘accidental crotchless knickers’ for public consumption.