#114 Modern Love- T.C. Boyle
A man and a woman go on a first date, Thai food, movie, late
drinks. It all seems to go well until she tells him how freaked out she was.
“I can’t tell how much of a strain it was for me the other
night…I got drunk from fear…blind panic. I couldn’t help thinking I’d wind up
with hepatitis or dysentery or dengue fever or something.”
The woman was a germaphobe of the highest order (and a
little agoraphobic as well). But, he liked her so he gave it a shot. For a
month they went out to clean places, museums, vegetarian restaurants, etc. And
all this without nary a kiss, physical contact was the germs playground.
“There was the look of the mad saint in her eye, the
obsessive, the mortifier of the flesh, but I didn’t care. She was lovely,
wilting, clear-eyed, and pure, as cool and matchless as if she’d stepped out of
a pre-Raphaelite painting, and I was in love.”
Finally, after she professing her love and deems him worthy,
he gets an invite to het sterile abode for a macro-biotic dinner and a viewing
from the plastic love seat of het favorite movie, Boy in the Bubble. “What a
perfect life, Don’t you envy him?”
How far will she take her obsession? Pretty far it turns
out, and even as far as he’s willing to follow for love, it still might not be
enough, after all he works for a show company…and you know how dirty feet are!
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