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“Still…” I said.
“Don’t worry about it, you’re light as a bee.” He started laughing. “Get it? You’re dressed like a bee and light as a bee.”
“Ha ha,” I said sarcastically and made a grimace.
When we got into the cabin it quickly became awkward. We both knew what was about to happen and he put me down on the bed and went to run a bath.
I bit my lip and counted to a hundred, trying to calm myself down. I don’t remember my mother giving me a bath, but I suppose she must have.
When Gabriel came back he looked crimson red in his face and he obviously found this as difficult as me.
“This is really weird,” he said.
“You think?”
He was tripping from foot to foot assessing me before he clapped his hands and exclaimed. “Right, I’m just going to do it.”
“You sound like a Nike commercial,” I replied dryly but otherwise kept still while he got me out of the bee costume and the diaper. I tried to think of a thousand things to distract me from the situation but I still registered him picking me up when I was naked and carrying me the seven steps to the bathroom, where he gently put me down in the bathtub.
At least the water was nice and warm.
Gabriel was a bit out of breath and I wondered if his heart was racing like mine. He spun around in the bathroom and finally grabbed a bottle of shampoo and kneeled down next to me.
“I have to wash your hair.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ve never washed another person’s hair and I have no clue how to wash your long hair.”
“You don’t need to wash it; Therese already did that,” I told him, referring to the hours of treatment my poor hair had gone through to get the black color out of it.
“Okay, then at least let me make it wet.”
Placing a hand under my neck, he signaled for me to lower myself down in the tub and then he used his big hands to scoop up water and make my hair wet. Once that was done, he found a washcloth and started gently washing my body.
Seeing how nervous he was made me feel almost sorry for him. He didn’t say a word but kept his eyes on the cloth and gently washed my hands, shoulders, arms, neck, and face. He even washed behind my ears and then he moved down to wash my feet and legs.
“I know you don’t like being naked, but imagine you’re a baby. Then you wouldn’t be the least bit shy. You wouldn’t even be aware that certain parts of your body were private,” he said.
“But I’m not a baby.”
“I know, but try to pretend that you are… or pretend that you’re German.”
“German – why would that help?”
“Someone told me Germans are pretty much nudists as a people; men and women go naked to the spa and don’t think anything of it.”
“I think that’s a gross generalization,” I told him. “I’m sure there are shy Germans.”
“Okay… but then try to think of how absurd it really is to be shy about certain parts of your body and not others. I mean, we’re only shy because someone told us those areas are private, but what if instead of telling us breasts and genitals are private they had told us our noses were the most private part of our body.”
I frowned, but he just smiled and carried on. “Then right now you would be covering your nose and feeling super shy about showing it to me, but at the same time not caring a rat’s ass about me seeing the rest of your body.”
I didn’t laugh, because nothing about being this exposed was funny, but I did have a mental image of people walking around wearing fashionable pieces of textile to cover their noses, and at least that thought kept me a bit distracted, as he kept washing me.
“Do you like it, sweetie?” Gabriel asked softly.
He was washing my shins gently and moved up to my knees. I instantly pressed my thighs together to make sure he didn’t go higher.
