Stay Naked - Katie Burke

He would have stayed naked all day, if I’d let him.

“Let’s go out to breakfast,” he said from my living room couch, without looking up from the TV set. I’d come in to move things along, get him out of my apartment, and re-enter reality. There was no room for him here, now that daylight had hit. Normalcy had to be restored.

“OK,” I said, surprised and more than a little thrilled. He never wanted to go to breakfast the next day. The rules of our usual routine, if written, would dictate that I’d drive him home, he’d fall out of my life for a few months, and one of us would call the other, just before the moment when not calling would mean never speaking again.

I don’t mean literally not speaking again. Our passion was inescapable. I should know; I’d tried many times over the years to flee it. “Be strong,” my girlfriends would say, and I would obey, refraining from calling him and dodging his calls to me.

But a few drinks in, one accidental party night a few months later, I’d send a smoke signal. I would need him so entirely in that moment, all reason and sound advice from my friends ceased to matter. All I would need was one more conversation with the one I loved, and if that happened after we indulged our passion – well, then, we could stay naked while we each said what we needed to say.

I did not object to our sexual connection; I only wished the emotional one made more sense, so I could justify the central role that lust played with us. As it was, I had to wonder sometimes: Is it just about the sex?

A question to ponder by day and throw out by night, tossing it off the bed like my shirt after he’d peeled it off me. In moments where the answer didn’t matter, I found my peace with whoever we were to each other. It didn’t matter then if he was using me or if I knew the real him. It mattered that he was there, and that I was there – and he could stay naked on my couch the whole next day, or he could get dressed so we could go to breakfast; either would be fine with me.