Sometimes I would like to peel myself, like an orange.
No — like a banana.
Oranges are too juicy, too sticky, and my reaction to stickiness is absolutely not. Bananas don’t have a sticky quality. They can be mushy and over-sweet, and their stringy bits inspire mild irrational rage, but there’s no danger of sticky juice running down my fingers, down my hand, onto my wrist, and horror of all the horrors (no exaggeration) onto my watch or my sleeve.
Because there are few things more unbearable to me in this world than a wet sleeve. A sticky wet sleeve is the absolute worst. Oh, I know what you might be thinking: there are horrors perpetrated against other humans and animals every day in this world, and you’re quite right. There are. And my wet sleeve isn’t even a blip on that radar. But in the moment, in the exact moment that drip starts moving and gathers momentum and spite and heads towards my sleeve, it becomes my whole world and I want to scream and scream and climb out of my own skin.
Of course, I would never tell anyone about this because they would back away swiftly. Or refer me to psych. Or label me a Crazy Bitch. I knew nobody else suffered from Wet Sleeve Syndrome because I could see them, blithely and casually washing their faces without rolling up their sleeves, totally oblivious to the panic going on in my head as I watched them. What’s wrong with them? Can’t they SEE the water splashing on their clothes? Can’t they FEEL the drips making their way down their hands and wrists and arms and connecting with their sleeve in a tiny but disabling electric shock? Can’t they TELL they’re going to have wet wool in contact with their skin
—OH DEAR GOD I CAN’T—
Sidebar: Even thinking about touching wet wool brings me out in the spiky angry panicky sweats. You can’t see me right now because I’m in the past, but here’s what’s happening. My typing, heartrate, and breathing have sped up. My eyes are darting around. I’m so tense my back is cramping up, my buttocks are sealed together, and I’m wrangling my toes up good. Now I’m swinging my legs in an attempt to release my butt cheeks. Oh, hey, I’m grinding my teeth as well!
So let’s move away from wet sleeves and back to bananas. I have a rubbery banana that I like to slap about a bit. Its skin flaps have a most pleasing texture, and the “meat” of the banana is squishable and pullable. You can’t peel it properly. It’s a fidget toy, I guess.
I sometimes think of myself as a sentient banana because I wear a lot of yellow, and when my husband pointed out that I had dressed like a banana one day I immediately went online and impulse-bought myself a banana hat. When I put it on, it covers my whole head and only my face is visible, poking out of the front of the hat like some kind of deranged children’s entertainer. Its texture isn’t ideal — it’s cheap polyester and I live in fear of static zaps — but it does the job for my hilarious Instagram videos.
Dressing like a banana doesn’t allow me to peel myself, though. And sometimes, as I mentioned, I would like to. For instance, when water has run down my arm and into my sleeve. Or when I’m at the hairdresser (which is a special hell all of its own) and I can feel the towel that I have clamped so tightly around my neck that I will have red marks for hours, getting damp, and allowing water to seep down onto my clothing. This is unacceptable. I must peel myself immediately because even when the sensation has stopped, it hasn’t really stopped. It lingers. I can still feel the wet on my neck, running into my clothes, even though it was hours ago and it’s no longer wet. It feels like the only way to make the sensation stop is to remove the problem: my skin.