m review — creative non–fiction — obsessive–compulsive
Obsessive–Compulsive
by Shura Young
The first time I saw the dark patch on the outside of his wrist I thought it was dirt. We were on my bed in a slow removal of clothes, making love for the first time. I was startled. I peered closer and saw that the patch was black hair. I'd never seen a patch of hair like that on anyone's wrist. It was like the hairy forepaw of a beast. I wondered if I'd get used to it.
Rob had told me about his not liking to be wet or to bathe, so, naturally, my mind had imagined that the hair was dirt.
He presented his dislike of water to me as a joke. He gave me a sly smile, "You remember Pegleg in the BC comic strip who freaked out whenever he got near water, even when someone just said the word 'water'? Another character would sadistically prod Pegleg by repeating, 'WATER! Water — water, water, WATER!' To which Pegleg contorted his body in agony, like he was being tortured. The little balloon above his head read, 'AAAhhhhhrrrggg,' or something like that. And the other character smiled devilishly at the reader and said, 'Hey, this is fun!'" Rob sympathized with Pegleg.
He kept his quirky aversion light. "If only I could be dry-cleaned," he'd say, coaxing me into more laughter. "That would resolve the problem." Then, seriously, though still with an amused tone, he said of his previous girlfriend, "Sylvia was really good at bribing me. She'd offer to get me movie posters if I'd take a shower. That did work!"
This sounded like a silly game. Hearing about the relationship dynamics - between this man whom I'd been seeing for several months and the woman he'd just split up with - wasn't significant except to ponder how I would play it.
"So," his eyes glistened with mischief, "You'll have to find something to bribe me with."
"I'm not into bribing," I said. "It's just not something I would do in a relationship."
Rob didn't respond.
Dirt. When I was a child, the best part of coming home from summer camp was submerging my body in a tub of hot water and watching the layers of dirt rise up to the water surface. I would be transformed into a lighter, freer being when I rose up out of the bath.
This one or two week dirt accumulation in childhood was the most I knew about body dirt. Even then, my experience of body dirt wasn't enough to form anything like a dark patch on the side of a wrist. But then, that patch hadn't been dirt after all, so why even dwell on it? Cleaning was my mother's compulsion. It had been the focus in her family: "Guests are coming. Rooms and bodies better be spotless!" Every day there was a shower or bath and some room that had to be cleaned. As a teenager, cleaning was my main job. I taught my younger brother that cleaning his room was the way to appease angry or depressed parents. In summer, just when I'd think it was vacation time, my mother would announce "cleaning week," during which I stayed home and cleaned the whole house.
My first major act of rebellion when I moved into my own apartment at age 19 was to watch the dust build up — an eighth of an inch, a quarter inch, half inch — oh my! Quentin Crisp wrote that after a certain point of not cleaning, one's abode doesn't get dirtier. Or is it that you just can't see the added dirt.
Maybe all of this is why what happened, happened.
Because of my artistic inclination and productivity, not to leave out my lust, I created a game for Rob — a bathing game.
I had been doing a series of oil paintings — color saturated interior edges juxtaposed with views of the smoggy Los Angeles neighborhood outside my apartment windows. But now I had a male body ready and willing to pose nude. And a body that wanted to play at being convinced to get clean. And, let's face it, Rob was a lover who loved the attention.
With camera snapping pictures, I had him stretch out naked on the living room daybed posed as Manet's infamous courtesan in the painting "Olympia," as Goya's "Maja Desnuda," and the seductive naked back view in Ingres' "La Grande Odalisque." My twist was to do takeoffs of female nudes as painted by male artists, with me, a female artist, painting male nudes in similar scenes.
One historical group of artists from the 1800s — called "Symbolists" or "Decadents" — used imagery from myths and dreams. One such painting by Millais depicted Ophelia lying in a shallow pond with water covering all but her face and hands, which were raised, palms upward. Her expression was trance-like, eyes staring into space.
Camera in hand I straddled my bathtub, bare feet gripping the sides of the tub as I stood above Rob who lay naked in the bath water. From this height, I could focus down on him posed like Millais' model in the pond. I had spread out his near-shoulder-length black hair so it swirled in the water like Ophelia's.
"Actually," I said, camera hiding my face," I think the model for Ophelia had to lie for hours, even days, in cold water while Millais painted, and that it led to her early death. Think how lucky you are that the camera exists!"
"I am sure," Rob laughed, looking up from the water playfully, "that the local Photomat store, where you get these developed, is keeping a secret stash of duplicate photos of my nude body!"
I got down from my perch and kneeled on a bathmat by the tub. "Shall I wash
I secretly believed these bathtub scenes were evidence of the willingness on Rob's part to satisfy my artistic goals, as well as a sensual play in the preliminary months of our relationship. Since we still weren't living together, it never would have occurred to me that these were the only times Rob bathed or washed his hair.
"I don't like soap or hands directly on my skin in water," he piped up shyly.
This sounded odd. "So what should I use?"
"A washcloth with soap," he said. I pulled a clean washcloth from the hall cupboard.
"Just wet the cloth and soap it up," he said, sitting up in the water, shaking out his wet hands with a grimace and stretching out his legs until his flat feet touched the tub's end.
I started rubbing the soapy cloth over his back, then up over his shoulders and down his chest.
He turned to smile at me. "I love you," he cooed.
At that moment, I focused on a large, slightly darker pigmentation that reached from his breastbone to his navel. I wondered over this "beauty mark" I hadn't noticed in our months of lovemaking.
Just as I was going to ask, What's that? I saw that the beauty mark was flaking off at the edges. I hesitated with uncertainty, then asked, "What's this?" When there was no answer, I began to rub a bit harder. The dark skin was coming off.
"Hey!" he cried out abruptly. "Stop that! It hurts!"
I pulled back immediately. "But it's...dirt!" I said in disbelief.
He took the washcloth out of my hand in irritation. "It's better if I do it myself!" And he began to scrub the area. I watched in amazement as his chest and stomach all turned into the same even color.
"Why does it get dirty there?" I asked in complete innocence.
"I don't know," he said and handed the washcloth back to me.
I thought his private parts should be washed with soap and a hand instead of the harsh washcloth, but he didn't want my hand to touch him in the water. A billow of tan suds rose up as I plunged the cloth, now stiff with dirt and soap, under the water. I made a note to rinse out the cloth before I plunged it into the water the next time. I moved the cloth around the delicate sexual parts very lightly.
"You're so gentle!" He smiled at me like my lover again.
"It's my favorite part!" I laughed and was just about to move into the crack at the rear when he sounded an alarm:
"Okay, that's enough there!"
"What about...?" I asked.
"No!" he said fiercely.
"Okay." I backed off — deciding it was okay if he only wanted to wash that intimate area himself. But I was beginning to feel uneasy.
"My feet probably need washing," he said after a pause. I shook away the unease with a bright, "Okay!" A normal body part without taboos.
After working on the logistics of getting to his feet, he finally sunk down a bit into the water and, with difficulty, raised one foot out of the water to balance it on the end of the tub. The flaky, unevenly tanned surface of his feet that I'd assumed to be the result of dryness turned out to be a solid, mottled crust that had, like his chest patch, begun to loosen with the long, photo-session tub soak.
I looked at the foot blankly. "Don't you wash your feet very often?" I asked, not able to fully take in the meaning of what I was looking at.
"My feet are so sensitive. I hate the feel of washing them."
"Well, if you did it more often, they wouldn't get like this."
I felt queasy as I began to scrub. It reminded me of how a dental hygienist scales down plaque. Suddenly he pulled his foot back down into the water.
"Okay. That's enough. I hate the feel of that. They probably just need to soak longer."
"Your other foot?" I asked.
"Okay, but only for a minute."
When that was done he sat back up in water that looked like a five-foot-nine-inch fish had been de-scaled in it. Looking down, Rob laughed playfully, "Look how much of me we're leaving in the water!" Summer camp was a pale comparison.
"Next time we can wash my hair," he added cheerfully as he stood up. I shuddered as I saw dead skin from the water surface sticking to him. I suggested I rinse him off. He agreed, and I used a cup to pour warm water over him, front and back, as the swirls of sludge oozed down the drain.
I handed him the one, two, then three towels he requested to dry himself. As he dried his feet, layers of dead skin fell off onto the mat. The tub was crusted thick with various shades of scum. I shook the mat into the tub, then cleaned it out immediately while Rob went in to the bedroom.
I joined Rob on my bed where he lay naked and looking like he'd been through an exhausting ordeal. I reached out my hand to touch him. "Your skin's so soft," I said with surprise and realized, for the first time, that his skin had previously been rough from the crusts of dirt and sweat.
In our next bathing/photo session he allowed me to wash his hair. I soaped it up and was confused when there were no suds. I soaped it up twice more before there were gobs of white foam that I artistically sculpted into peaks and mounds.
"I have to take your picture like this!" I said, imagining a bizarre series of male nude bath paintings. Rob beamed at me, amused.
The water again was murky, so I had him move over to the shower stall to rinse. He grimaced. It was Pegleg's water torture.
Now, his hair was a silky, dark brown — not black. I still felt rebellious against the obsessive cleanliness of my childhood, but the fragrant fluffiness of Rob's clean hair changed me.
"I have to tell you, Rob that I don't want to touch your body or put my face near your hair unless you are clean like you are now."
"Well, then," he smiled, "you will have to find a way to bribe me."
Over time I tried, but I didn't believe in bribing. One day during love making a dirty discovery disgusted me. "If we are going to have fun in bed, I want clean orifices. This is not romantic. Even you have said that dirty orifices aren't romantic."
Rob was embarrassed. "My mother was fanatical about cleanliness," he said in distress. "She tortured me with her cleaning. And she made me sleep in the wetness when I wet the bed." He began to cry. "I wish I could get over my terror of water, but I can't."
"But I am not your mother. My cleanliness desire is different from hers. I'm not fanatical. And besides, your mother didn't suck, lick and play with you like I do. To say you won't bathe because of your mother's cleanliness fetish — I can't deal with that."
He looked at me with sorrow and grief. "The truth is I only bathed because it was what you wanted. It's not something I want to do. I don't like water, and I don't want anything to do with it unless I'm forced to do it. I don't know what to do about that."
Tears came down his cheeks. I held him and he cried. This was so sad. I loved him, but what could I do about his fears?
You might wonder why I stayed with him and eventually lived with him. The only answer I can give is that I slowly acclimated to the dirt. I got affection (something my father didn't give me) and lovemaking. I wanted that from a man I thought I shared love with, so I ignored the dirt.
In our second year, my painting of Rob as Manet's model in "Olympia" was exhibited for Women's History Month in Los Angeles City Hall. Everyone, even the Mayor saw his body.
I didn't actually see his dirt in our first two homes, because Rob kept the rooms darkened by his need not to have outside light come in. In our third home, the rooms I used had window-light and I saw the dirt for the first time. I was shocked.
My daily life became avoidance: of the sheets touched by his crusted feet, of his silverware and plates smudged with dirt from his hands, his murky, dysentery-ridden drinking glass. I used separate dishes and silverware. His socks were so caked with what he blithely called "toe jam," that I wouldn't wash them with my own clothes.
I began an increasing obsession with dirt — where it showed up. The washcloths he used to wipe the shaving cream from his face and the dirt from his arms when he went to the doctor were stiff and yellow-brown tinged no matter how often they were laundered. His hand towels, used to wipe his unwashed hands after reading daily newspapers, were permanently blackened with printer's ink. His toothbrush was moldy black at the base of the bristles. His pillowcases were stained brown from the grease of his hair, as were the tops of the sheets and shirt collars that rubbed against his neck.
One winter, he had the flu with a high fever. The night the fever broke he walked in his sleep in a fever trance and messed in his pants. I had to clean them and him, like a baby. The incident terrified and revolted me. I began to have nightmares of dogs tracking their poop around and people defecating everywhere.
Rob insisted I use my own separate top sheet and covers on my side of the king-size bed, but we used his covers during sex. I cringed, lying under his sheet. I would no longer touch his body except to have my orgasm, then flee.
One day, Rob said, "If I only bathe and wash my hair once a year, or less, it's because you have found no way to bribe me."
Eventually he wanted me to sleep in my own bedroom. This was the beginning of the end. I stopped having sex with him. I stopped washing and cutting his hair. I would no longer enter his bedroom because the smell now repulsed me. I even stopped sitting on the living room couch — his favorite place — because of the smell.
I became afraid of dirt and germs. I washed my hands after touching anything. I had panic attacks and was afraid to go out. I had to wash everything I owned that touched things inside and outside our home. I washed my clothes that touched bus seats and washed the bottoms of my shoes when I came home. I became terrified of my body's functions. I distrusted everything I ate. My weight dropped to 113 pounds. My creativity had disappeared.
Rob said, "I thought I was the one who had the worst problems. But you're crazier than I could ever be."
I sought therapy. I fled from therapists who wanted me to take medication for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I wanted to scream, "THAT ISN'T MY PROBLEM! CAN'T ANYBODY SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME?"
One therapist finally did see. "There are problems," he said, "that we are not going to be able to work on until you're out of your relationship."
Get out of the relationship? Where had I lost the awareness that I could leave? A large part of my brain had gone to sleep. Waking up to what I'd been living with was horrifying, still horrifies me.
As I inwardly made plans to leave, Rob gave me his new, sarcastic look and said, "Since you have withdrawn sex from our life, you have taken away my incentive to bathe, and you have only yourself to blame for my not cleaning myself up."
I did — at last — leave, but I haven't finished washing off the dirt.
Shura Young of Portland, Oregon.
"Obsessive–Compulsive" is an M Review 2006 Creative Non–Fiction Finalist.
"I have done artwork and writing all my life, beginning a journal at age 13. I earned my income as an artist, artists' model, commercial artist, and art teacher. At age 56, I left a
