She took another drag on her cigarette. The soft pack was on the table, crumpled from a night out in her back pocket. She smiled as the smoke coursed through her lungs. She exhaled and grabbed her beer. She seemed to contemplate it for a second, swirling the liquid around the bottle a few times.
“You know…” she trailed off with a laugh.” You know I really like the smell of my sweaty socks.”
“What?” I asked with a chuckle.
“I like the smell. Especially if I’ve worn them all day. I’ll be sitting on the couch after I take my shoes and the smell works its way up to my nostrils.” She motioned with her hands, wafting the imagined smell up like she was smelling a boiling pot of soup. “I just love it.”
“No way”
“Really.” She laughed in the cutest way. “Really.” Her tone of voice was rich from her huge smile. “It’s just one of those things. Everyone has them, it’s part of the beautiful experience of being human.”
“The smell of your sweaty-ass socks is part of the beauty of the human experience?”
“You don’t think so?”
“I’m more a music/picasso kind of guy, but I guess to each their own.”
“I’m sure you have those weird sorts of likes, everyone does. We just usually keep them to ourselves.” She took a swig of beer. “We’ve been dating a while now, you eat my pussy almost daily, I’ve swallowed your cum, I just think it’s time we really got to know each other.”
We both laughed. The room was warm with our love. I moved over to the couch and she reclined into my lap. I looked down at her goofy grin, my love for her only held in my heart by liquid tension.
“So getting to know each other is going to the deepest parts of our souls, our deepest secrets, fears, wants, and, as the case might be, our love for our own brand of sweaty feet.”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s true depth for me. So spill the beans, what’s your secret.”
“I think you know them, I’m pretty boring.”
“For someone whose medium is bullshit, you’re not doing a very good job of it at the moment.”
“Ok,” I paused and ran my hand through her hair. “I hate toilet paper.”
My comment hung in the air with the cigarette smoke.
“What”?
“I fucking hate that shit, its gross and you use your hands when you wipe, it’s nasty. Also, kinda related, I only figured out how to wipe my ass sitting down in college.”
“Now that’s the good shit, how did that come about?”
“My friends were discussing it. I had this professor, right? He always talked about how everyone has little habits that we never show anyone or talk to anyone about. Like what part of our body we wash first, or how we brush our teeth, or how we wipe our ass.”
“This is what I’m talking about too, this is the deep shit.” She sat up, sitting cross-legged, looking into the wells of my eyes intently, still with her huge grin.
“Well I was discussing this with some friends in the dorm, and I mentioned the fact that some people wipe their ass standing up, some sitting down. One friend looks at us and asks ‘Who the fuck wipes their ass standing up?’ and my other buddy asks ‘How do you wipe your ass sitting down.’”
“No way.”
“Way. Well the room seemed to be more of the sitting down school of ass wiping, but I was with my buddy. Unlike him I knew that wiping sitting was a thing, I just hadn’t worked out the mechanics per se.”
“All this while you attended your prestigious-ass French school for nerds.”
“Yes.”
“So smart enough to get in there, but that wiping your ass, that just wasn’t your subject?” She laughed and grabbed my hand.
“Well I know what you got in butt related subjects.”
“What?”
“A ‘D’.”
“Oh very funny.” Her sarcasm was undercut by her wry smile and hearty laugh. “But back to this wiping, you wipe sitting down now right?”
“Well when I do wipe, yes.”
“When you do wipe? The fuck? I’m pretty sure I’ve offered to toss that salad, and now I know why you said no.” She eyed me sideways while she took a pull from her beer.
“No, no I keep it clean. It’s just that I don’t like toilet paper.”
“You mentioned that.”
“So I usually shit before I take a shower, like most people? I don’t know it’s never come up.”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s normal.”
“Well what I guess isn’t normal, or maybe it is, not sure is that I use the shower head as a sort of bidet.”
“You also brush your teeth with water from the shower head.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that sounds super gross, but I angle it such that no shit could get on the shower head.”
“So you think. Wow, that’s a bit of an over share?”
“What the fuck. I thought that’s what we were doing here Miss I-love-my-stanky-ass-feet. “
“I’m just giving you shit, it is super weird, but I guess I asked for it. I appreciate your candor, but,”
“But what.”
“Well I plan to spend my life with you. I really do, you’re amazing, inability to wipe your ass sitting down notwithstanding.”
“I can now. One day after talking to my buddies I smoked a big joint, went to the shitter and figured it out.”
“How’d the joint help?”
“It gets the brain juices flowing, and makes me super awkward and clumsy.”
“Or more awkward and clumsy than you usually are.”
“Yes, and I figured if I can do it high, I can pretty much do it always, and turns out I can.”
“You just choose not to.”
“Not if I can avoid it.”
“Well as I was saying, I love you, I want to spend my life with you, which will involve us living together but I think in light of what you told me, I need to make a demand clear right here, right now.”
My heart quickened, I leaned forward concerned. She leaned in too, grabbing my face with one hand and holding my eyes in a strong gaze.
“Let’s have separate showers.” She erupted with laughter as I bowed my head.
“I thought you were going to be serious.” I said, head hung in mild embarrassment.
“Oh. Oh I am. Make no damn mistake. Oh wait you take showers here all the time, have you used my shower head to clean your shitty ass?”
I looked at her. “No comment.”
Her hands pushed me backwards and she sprung towards me, pushing me down on the couch.
“You dirty bastard. I love you, but fuck you. But I love you. But fuck you. And you’re sanitizing that fucking shower head as soon as we wake up tomorrow!” She was laughing and began to tickle me. “This is your punishment!” She cried over my peals of tickle induced laughter.
Our love filled the room to the brim, and flowed out on waves of laughter and playful obscenities over the predawn city.
