So, when you’re a girl and you’re dating a girl and you live with the girl there’s a certain level of familiarity that you take for granted. Panties, fingernail polish, boobs, tampons, bras, hairless chests, shaved legs. You don’t notice these things so much because you have them. They are familiar.
When you find yourself living with a boy and previously you’d spent the entirety of your adult life living with a girl, you have these unsettling moments of realization.
There are boxer shorts, hairy chests, stubbly faces, unintentional division of work by gender (he mows the lawn, I occasionally do the dishes), testicles, tube socks, deodorants with names like “endurance” and “sport” as opposed to “spring” and “rain”.
I was sitting there the other day minding my own business when he walked by in his boxers and I was so struck by the moment. I don’t know that I can describe it fully, but I am still, almost 2 years later, fascinated as all hell by the utter Man-ness of him. He has testicles! I mean lord knows I’ve seen them before but I’m just so charmed that I actually live with them! And I live with boxer shorts and deodorant that can “Endure” and stubble.
You’d think i’d get over it by now, that this would be old news. Maybe I need to take another zoloft!