We Didn't Think It Would Happen

We’ve been together for nearly six years.

Last night, before love-making, I helped Clint put on protection.

He’s six months into being fifty and for the first time in his life, he has poison ivy.

He’s an Idaho boy. They don’t have the humidity for it. Here it’s lush. Out there, it’s virtually unknown. Like a myth. Like dragons.

We thought this whole time that he was immune. We assumed he was impervious. The voracity with which I get the itchy, oozing, pustules makes his pleasant lack of it all the more wonderous. Truly, with as much exposure as he’s gotten, accidentally and on purpose, we thought he was a Golden Child. Chosen. Touched by a Divine Finger. (Ok, that sounds inappropriate…)

His first experience with my insane opposite of immunity came the morning after our day that started with biking to the gym after a colossal storm. It ended with quite an exciting romp in the sheets. We were both horrified by the huge, swollen welts that appeared the next morning between my thighs. At breakfast, we thought back on our day and remembered that we had climbed over fallen trees along the bike path. His legs are long enough and his bike is light enough that he mostly jumped over the large trunks. I, on the other hand, had to straddle them to hoist my bike over.

We then thought back on our night and kept vigil over his face for the following two days watching for matching swollen welts on his cheeks. They never came.

For the following two weeks, I wrapped my thighs and legs and arms in bandanas to avoid bursting the bubbles of sticky pus, and to keep me from scratching. I even wrapped my hands like an infant. This was all too familiar for me.

As a kid, I spent every summer wrapped like a leper so I could go out in public and so I could sleep. I learned how to smack the itch instead of scratching it. Though, the moments when I gave in and scratched without care of spreading it or bursting them or digging in so far that I bled were pretty close to orgasmic.

Clint, on the other hand, because of my suffering, became a fanatic. In the sweltering heat and oppressive humidity of that Virginia summer, he put on jeans, a long sleeve shirt, boots, duct tape around the bottom so his jeans, duct tape to connect his sleeves to his gloves, sun glasses, and a head covering. He spent hours in our back and side yards hunting and pulling all the poison ivy he could find. If I got too close, he yelled at me to Get Back! Don’t touch anything!

Sweat poured down my Idaho boy’s face. He was not made for this climate. Anyone would sweat, sure, but he truly looks like he’s melting. Like the Nazi in Indiana Jones : Ark of the Covenant. Rivers of sweat and so much snot. So much snot.

He refused to wipe his face and adamantly refused my offer to wipe it for him. It was really hard to look at him. Not only did it make my face itch in solidarity, but holy christ it was gross.

Still, I was simultaneously guilt-ridden that he was suffering so much for me and also wildly proud and turned on by his heroic martyrdom.

After he was done stuffing vines into a trash bag, he put the bag in the trash can out front. Then he cleaned off the handle of the trash can.

He told me to prop open the back door and turn on the downstairs shower so he could walk in without touching me or the door. He stripped (once in the house) and walked right under the water without touching the shower handle. We already had Technu in the bathroom because of my lesions, so he poured himself handfuls and scrubbed from the top of his head to his toes.

He was so mad when I took his clothes up to the washer.

That defeats the whole purpose of everything! he yelled at me from the bathroom.

Look, I’ve already got it. I can’t let you do all of this without helping, I said.

Still, I recognized that I nullified his entire gesture of suffering.

Now, every time we’re around any kind of greenery, or when I walk into the farthest parts of our backyard in the summer, he’s like, Watch it! Did you make sure it’s not poison ivy???!!!

Yes, dear.

He’s way more vigilant than I am.

Which is probably why I’ve gotten poison ivy each year we’ve been here and he’s been pus free.

Until now.

The other day, we took a walk in the morning rain at my insistence. When it’s raining, you can’t tell it’s humid, is my logic.

Back at our house, he pulled what looked like Virginia Creeper off our Boxwood out front.

Damn the Virginia Creeper. That is why I always got poison ivy back in Ohio. It looks way more threatening with all its leaves and pervasiveness. It’s everywhere in Ohio. You’d think THAT was the culprit and not the little scrap of a plant with three leaves hiding behind something called a Creeper.

The next evening after a full day of wearing his long sleeved button up banker’s shirt (that incidentally looks like he should be the manager of a McDonald’s because of its yellow stripes) he rolled up his sleeves and saw it.

Is this poison ivy? he asked.

Yes. And so is this. I pointed at two shiny bumps on his bicep. Go wash with the Technu. We had bought another two bottles of it two weeks ago after a run around the James River that ended in a poison ivy scare. He wouldn’t let me touch anything, including the car door handles, the bottle of Technu itself, and my own skin. His white cotton gloves from the Nutcracker performance were under the passenger seat in his car. He made me wear them while we drove around Richmond looking for a Walgreens - the only place that carries the stuff. I felt like Mickey Mouse.

The first night of his P.I. (as my mother used to call it), we didn’t spoon as usual. Our feet, however, still found each other and snuggled from afar.

Last night, though, he was all randy because I was in a good mood after Art Club at the studio. One person came. To Art Club, I mean. A new gal who was in Petersburg for work. It was just the thing she needed, she said, while she expressed herself on her page with pastels and other media. I made several rather great signs for the front windows, felt good about someone actually showing up and doing the intended thing, and enjoyed the easy, chill conversation.

Lingerie doesn’t turn him on. My smile does. I gotta be careful where I wield that thing.

So, after dinner, we checked our garden for any new fruits or vegetables, which is not a euphemism. Then he turned and kissed me and gave me come hither eyes. That’s when we went upstairs to do all the euphemisms.

I lit incense and candles. He fussed with the music that had somehow flipped to a choir proclaiming god’s miracles. It was supposed to be tribal throat singers. One gets me in the mood, one does not.

Then he fussed with the bandana.

Do you want me to help with that? I asked.

He thrust his arm toward me.

(Where did you think I was putting on the protection?)

Once the knot was tied, we put the pillows in their pillow cases.

No, really. He took the sheets out of the dryer, so we had to make the bed.

After THAT though…

*

I want to apologize after the fact for any uncomfortable language or descriptors in my post. I’m not one for trigger warnings so I’m sorry. I, too, cringed when I wrote out the words “love making”. Ugh, that makes me act like a six year old eating broccoli. It’s up there with panties and moist.

6/20/26 Correction: Radiers of the Lost Ark, not Ark of the Covenant. The whole time I looked at it and read it I was like, that doesn’t sound right. It finally came to me several hours later.

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