The Intimate Details No One Needs
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It’s a grown-up birthday party - the kind where women wear earrings that cost a month’s salary, and men smoke cigars and talk about whose fund is hitting the dirt.
I strike up a conversation with an impossibly chic American wearing next season’s Prada. She chats away, her husband at her side. The conversation turns to children, and the sylph tells me she’s had three, which seems barely possible. I ask a few polite questions and suddenly I’m being regaled with the full gore of the last pregnancy.
“I had the worst haemorrhoids, just huge,” she gushes, “didn’t I, honey?”
Her husband grimaces. His eyes flicker to the men across the room, desperate for escape.
“And I called Andy into the bathroom and he had to get right in there and help me put this stuff on them. Do you remember that?” She chortles and squeezes his arm, but he flees to the salvation of the bar.
I explore the depths of my gin and tonic, wait until the anecdotes pass, then make my escape. For the rest of the night, whenever I see her, she’s just not the exquisite creature I first set eyes upon. I can’t stop thinking about her and hubby sorting out those piles.
In the taxi home, I tell a friend of this marital bliss, and she sniggers at my squeamishness. But then she’s the woman who lured a new man into her lair after a year’s effort, and set about tweezing his ingrown hairs in the warmth of the post-coital glow.
“He loved it,” she insists. “It’s called intimacy - something you’re not very good at.”
Well, if that’s intimacy, I want none of it. At that stage of the game shouldn’t he still be under the illusion that you are a serenely fragrant, perfect goddess at all times?
I’m beginning to worry that I’m behaving like a prissy 1950’s housewife, when a colleague reveals that her husband of six years has never, ever seen her without at least a touch of make-up. Hurrah! Give the woman a medal for dedication to grooming.
Maybe it all comes down to whether you’re a ‘loo door open and chatting’ or a ‘loo door closed’ person. Or even a ‘loo door closed with the tap running’ person. And what about your man? Do you really want to be examining his ingrown hairs on your first night together? Do you really want to know the details of what goes on in the bathroom? The nostril plucking, the back waxing, the unrepentant belching - or worse?
There's plenty of time for intimate revelations, not least when the spectre of pregnancy and childbirth looms large. They say that after that, nothing is truly secret ever again.
God save me...and get me my compact for a quick touch up.
“I had the worst haemorrhoids, just huge,” she gushes, “didn’t I, honey?”
Her husband grimaces. His eyes flicker to the men across the room, desperate for escape.
“And I called Andy into the bathroom and he had to get right in there and help me put this stuff on them. Do you remember that?” She chortles and squeezes his arm, but he flees to the salvation of the bar.
I explore the depths of my gin and tonic, wait until the anecdotes pass, then make my escape. For the rest of the night, whenever I see her, she’s just not the exquisite creature I first set eyes upon. I can’t stop thinking about her and hubby sorting out those piles.
In the taxi home, I tell a friend of this marital bliss, and she sniggers at my squeamishness. But then she’s the woman who lured a new man into her lair after a year’s effort, and set about tweezing his ingrown hairs in the warmth of the post-coital glow.
“He loved it,” she insists. “It’s called intimacy - something you’re not very good at.”
Well, if that’s intimacy, I want none of it. At that stage of the game shouldn’t he still be under the illusion that you are a serenely fragrant, perfect goddess at all times?
I’m beginning to worry that I’m behaving like a prissy 1950’s housewife, when a colleague reveals that her husband of six years has never, ever seen her without at least a touch of make-up. Hurrah! Give the woman a medal for dedication to grooming.
Maybe it all comes down to whether you’re a ‘loo door open and chatting’ or a ‘loo door closed’ person. Or even a ‘loo door closed with the tap running’ person. And what about your man? Do you really want to be examining his ingrown hairs on your first night together? Do you really want to know the details of what goes on in the bathroom? The nostril plucking, the back waxing, the unrepentant belching - or worse?
There's plenty of time for intimate revelations, not least when the spectre of pregnancy and childbirth looms large. They say that after that, nothing is truly secret ever again.
God save me...and get me my compact for a quick touch up.
Here Is The Writer : Alice in Numberland
By day Alice crunches numbers at a banking colossus in Canary Wharf, and by night she devotes her time to studying the strange behaviours of the male species. In between she expands her collection of Agent Provocateur and runs marathons. Tell her what you think about dating in the City.
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