Shirt.

When I was very young, a friend of mine told me that the first time you have sex with a guy, he gives you his shirt. It's a ritual, she said.

I haven't discovered any guys who know this ritual, so I've just had to steal their shirts.

Well, not steal. Borrow. Borrow and invariably sleep in, basking in their scent. Every guy I've been with has had a very distinct smell. It's not something you can notice until you're sex-close and they're all sweated up, but smells are as unique as faces. Alan's is smoky and deep, the smell of vice; Jon's is alkaline, very like semen, explicitly sexual. Kevin's was pure sweat, a runner's stink. (Alan wears Old Spice and Benny wears Axe, which is... so thematically perfect it shouldn't be real.)

I give the shirt back, but when I do, it's got my own smell on it. A little interest on the loan.

The heaviest flannel jammies in the world aren't half as warm on a cold night as the dirty cotton t-shirt of That Boy I Like.


P.S. Stingray: you ruined my rope. A pox on your house.