While Shy Boy had been looking for an excuse for me to sleep over for some time now, I was afraid of putting him out. He had to go work the next day and I was sure company wasn’t something he might be interested in. I started to feel really guilty that I hadn’t went home sooner, that I hadn’t paid better attention to the weather report, and (worst yet) that my mother would be wondering what Shy Boy and I were up to for the rest of the night. For all those reasons, I began to feel idiotic. Shy Boy, on the other hand, instantly took charge and wanted to be useful. He ordered a pizza. Then he insisted on cleaning his bed sheets. He said I’d take his bed and he’d sleep out on the sofa. He swooped up his sheets and ran down to the basement to throw his bedding in the washing machine. He told me to stay warm in his apartment while he walked down the street to pick up the pizza. But I wanted to check the weather conditions, so I insisted on going too. In no time at all, his neighborhood had become covered in a slick sheet of sleet and ice making it difficult to walk down the sidewalk let alone drive down the street. I would have been caught up in a sudden dangerous driving condition if I hadn’t stayed with him.
Still, I felt guilty. I felt like I should’ve known better, somehow paid better attention. He told me to stop beating myself up over something I couldn’t control and at the very least maybe in the future my mother would let me spend the night more often. (Ha, always so appealing to him to have a sleepover. Only seeing as he’s a nice very innocent sort of guy, it’d probably be an all night fest of gossip and doing each other’s hair.) I do have to admit, I was impressed with Shy Boy. In one hour he had gone from a couch potato glob into a take charge sort of dude, something I had never seen him do so effortlessly before. Meanwhile, he wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea for him to go to work the next day. He started planning out loud things we could eat in his freezer and things to do if the weather continued to decline. His whole attitude changed. At any other point in the day, he would’ve tried to give me a long kiss or some sort of romantic hugs, but this time, he would only give supportive pecks and a protective hug. Plus he was bending over backwards to treat me like a queen. When he heard I preferred evening baths over morning showers, he quickly went into his bathroom to clean his tub. (Incidentally, I didn’t take a bath that night. I hate to shower in strange places. One time during a six week stink where I had to dorm in a condo with a group of guys, I got pretty rank in my attempts to avoid a foreign shower. Even when I go to a hotel I inadvertently avoid showering, I’m just strange like that.)
Outside, the sleet and ice was slowly turning to rain and what was on the ground was melting a bit. Inside, it was time for bed. Shy Boy had a spare toothbrush and, over planning everything, he told me he could give me a fresh bar of soap, deodorant, shaving cream or whatever I might need if I felt more comfortable showering after he left for work in the morning. I brushed my teeth and when I returned to the living room, he was already in his pajamas. I’ve seen a lot of friends and family members in their pj’s. But there’s something odd about seeing a Schmooie wanna-be in his pajamas, not sexy or embarrassing, but some sort of vulnerability. I didn’t have that problem seeing as I wore the clothes that I came in. At first he offered one of his old shirts, then he changed his mind. (He pretended he didn’t want me to get cold, but I think the true reason was he didn’t have a clean shirt to loan me.) He did have cute calves though. He kissed me goodnight with minty fresh toothpaste breath and grabbed a spare sheet from the closet to use on the bed he had made up for himself on the living room sofa. It wasn’t really a sheet. It was more like a quilt, a blankie for a grown guy. His grandmother had knitted it for him. It smelled like it hadn’t been washed in years.
The morning came with a lot of noise in his urban neighborhood as students milled about and a garbage truck squealed around the neighborhood. Shy Boy walked past the bedroom on the way to the bathroom. He didn’t want to wake me up, but I was already awake, so he stopped in the doorway to say hello. He had a tremendous mop of bed head hair that made him look sort of like a little chipmunk. He doesn’t snore, but I did hear him make some strange gurgling noises in the middle of the night. He claimed I snored just slightly in the middle of the night. Liar! I can’t sleep in socks. In the middle of the night, I took them off and left them under the night stand. He suddenly picked them up all panicky that they were his and he had been a slob. Boy the dude must need glasses. My feet are way smaller than his.
He went to check on the conditions outside. Things looked slushy and a bit messy, but much more tolerable than they had been the night before. The temperatures overnight had risen to just above freezing. The roads had cleared enough for him to get to work, but I was still cautious about having to make the 40 minute trip back home. He told me to spend the morning there if I needed to and told me to go back to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep. It felt rude and I wanted to be useful somehow. He doesn’t eat breakfast, so instead of cooking, I had to think of some other way to be useful and show my appreciation. I brushed my teeth, combed my hair and stayed out of the way while he got ready for work. He switched on the tv and told me to relax. When a guy gets ready in the morning after having a girl spend the night at his place, it’s nothing like it is on tv. There’s not much sexiness or romance involved. It’s more run of the mill and everyday. He does give a good kiss goodbye though.
After he left, I felt the urge to be nice, show my appreciation for his kindness, by washing the very dirty blankie he had slept on. It stunk to high heaven. It probably hadn’t been washed in centuries, or since the time he was a kid, whichever came first. I washed it by hand since it appeared to be somewhat delicate and put it on very low in the communal apartment dryer down in the basement. While I waited for the dryer to finish, I walked over to the corner bakery and got me a chocolate croissant to enjoy, tis my weakness. I got an extra one for Shy Boy and left it on the kitchen table for him along with a sweet little note. Then I made his bed and picked up his sleeping clothes that he had rushed to change out of that morning. It wasn’t till I got home that I realized I had subconsciously did the work of his mother--laundry was the very thing that had spurned on his extreme bout of lazy assed oafery the month before while visiting his family. He had become overly indulgent when he was with his family because his mom had taken care of the washing and cooking. But it was different having me do his washing for him versus his mother. He called later that night acting rather over the moon, lovey dovey, and very happy that I had left the place “so girly” as he put it. He said he didn’t want me to be like his friend’s girlfriend who cleans his house for him, that it wasn’t necessary but he appreciated it. I was relieved it was possible to break couch potato Shy Boy away from the tv when it was vitally necessary. Mr. Romance did a good job trying to be Mr. Useful. Still, I’m keeping a close eye on him.
