The filth of his past lingered with him, clung to his epidermis like permanent ink smudged across his fingers, never washing away, no matter how diligently he scrubbed.
Being the spooky one- the one who's sister had disappeared, the one who's parents had forgotten him, the one who was alone and strange and too smart for his own good- being that one made him feel dirty.
Contaminated.
Tainted.
And as he grew, the feeling grew, too. Though he kept up appearances- went to Oxford, dated pretty women, excelled at his studies- the sensation was still there. That instinct that he carried some terrible disease, that he could infect anyone with whom he became too close. That he could poison them with his pain, his loss, his filth.
And so he cocooned himself in it, wrapped the grime around himself to keep others away.
He lived in an apartment laden with second-hand, bachelor pad rubble, not allowing himself the comfort of a bed, instead preferring the punishment of half-sleeping each night on a leather sloth of a sofa. His lonely refrigerator held stale, greasy take-out, expired milk, and the occasional handful of what most likely used to be fruit.
His personal life was nothing more than grunts and groans and silicone coaxed from a worn VHS tape, or if he was feeling adventurous, sighs and faked orgasms seeped across the phoneline, from some woman who pretended to care for $3.99 a minute.
He worked in the grungy bowels of a building, filling the walls with papers so clustered and overlapping, they resembled the scales of a fish, shiny, glossy, but viscous and slimy to the touch. He studied things that lived in sewers, in forests, in mud.
He felt filthy. Stained and spotted. And the way he lived his life guaranteed that he wouldn't, couldn't, defile anyone else.
But then she came.
She walked into his office, fresh and young and so, so clean, he could almost feel some of the soot fall away from his fingers as she shook his hand that first day. His skin tingled in the places she'd touched, tingled from her staggering purity.
And he tried, he really tried, to push her away, to shock her with his flaws, shock her with his filth. On that first night, he told her, he told her everything. He was desperate. She had come to him so sweet and so innocent, and had slid away the silk of her robe to him, and he'd been blown away with the beauty of her skin. Luminous, pale rose-petal skin. He'd almost been scared to touch it, to mar her with his disease, but his fingers had been drawn to her, helpless against the fine china of her body.
And it had scared him. The pull she seemed to have over him right from those first moments together. It was intense, other-worldly. He feared she would be disgusted, sickened upon knowing who he really was. He feared he would taint her, dirty her, if he allowed her to come too close.
But none of that happened. She wasn't repulsed by him, wasn't repelled by him, she didn't back away. Instead, she stayed. Stayed and listened on that first night, and stayed beyond and beyond and beyond, still listening seven years later.
He couldn't push her away, and he couldn't stay away himself. He became addicted to her, addicted to her scent, her voice, her touch. Each time her fingers alighted on his skin, he could feel the soap of her touch scrubbing him clean.
And throughout those seven years, instead of becoming dirty herself, she cleansed him. Somehow she wiped away the filth without any of it clinging to her own skin, she smoothed away the slime, washed away the thirty-some odd years of dirt he felt he carried within himself.
Somehow he almost felt clean again.
And he loved her for it. He loved her so much that he ached, ached for her acceptance, ached for her love, and ached to touch her again like he had on that first night, to whisper his fingertips over her pinkened skin by golden candlelight.
But he was so, so afraid. Afraid she would deny him, afraid that though she had purified him, she still couldn't love him. Afraid she wouldn't risk the possibility that there may still be dirt, hidden in the smallest of cracks, deep within the shell of his body.
Afraid that it all may be a glorious illusion, and without meaning to, he would pull her back down into the filth alongside him.
But what he didn't realize was that she was not afraid. She didn't think he was dirty; she never had. On the contrary, she felt as though he had cleansed her, and not the other way around. He had unwrapped her and showed her new possibilities, swept at her tightly-held control, and trusted her as no one else ever had.
And she yearned for him as well. She yearned for him to wash away her pain, to unravel her, to complete her. And she yearned for his touch just as much as he yearned for hers.
And they waited and they waited and they waited, each willing the other to dig through the trenches that surrounded them, to take that first step, to allow the flood of cleansing waters to break free and wash through them, drawing them together until they couldn't possibly fathom the thought of ever being apart again.
Finally, in the end, it was neither of them who took the initiative. Amazingly enough, it was the dirt, the filth, the grunge that began the process.
A chase deep through the forest had gone terribly wrong, or, depending upon how you look at it, terribly right. Painted in mud from head to toe, they stood panting in a clearing and admitted their defeat as they looked upon one another. And as they looked, they began to laugh, at the mud and the filth and the absurdity of it all.
He reached across to pull a stick from her hair, and she reached to swipe a clot of mud from his eyebrow. And that was when the rain began to fall, a light drizzle that soon culminated into plump, heavy drops, making the dirt run and smear across their faces. Both of them remembered that night in Oregon so many years ago, when their journey had just begun, when she had bared herself to him after standing in the rain just like this.
She reached out again, using the wet from the rain to gently wipe the dirt at his forehead, while he swept his hand down her cheek, smudging the earthen streaks that dirtied her face. Their eyes locked, even through the raindrops, searching and seeking and finding.
More fervently, they caressed each other's skin, scrubbing at the mud while learning the texture of each other's faces. Cheeks, necks, lips all received special treatment under the guise of thorough cleansing. Until their hands became octopi, everywhere at once, rubbing, wiping, erasing the dirt from faces and bodies while the water streamed over them in rivulets. What began as an attempt to clean away the mud dissolved into a frenzy of heat and passion and intensity. Mouths joined the fray, as lips and tongues cleaned even more thoroughly than hands could ever hope to.
Clothing was discarded in order to fully cleanse their skin, and they stood in the rain naked, embracing and kissing and devouring, until nothing was left on their bodies but each other's hands. And he laid her down upon his coat, and he made love to her, out in the rain, under the sky, and it was remarkable. Every touch of her hand, every slide of her lips, every moan from her throat, every roll of her body, all of these combined to purge the remaining contamination from his body, to scrub him clean.
And what was most surprising of all was that even once they draped their sopping wet, muddy clothes back on their bodies in order to find their way back to the car, he still felt clean. And she still held his hand, and she still reached up to purse her lips against his own every few minutes until they reached their destination.
And when they returned to his apartment later that night, they joined once again, and when he told her what she'd done for him, she whispered sweetly against his lips, "You never need to feel dirty again."