Sunday, July 22, 2007
The pleasures of clean sheets. A while ago I was quite struck by Ms Fits's advocation of a whisky-fuelled heavy petting session with a redhead on clean sheets (although I also felt a little uncomfortable, seeing as I had actually witnessed her working the early stages of her magic upon the redhead in question). Forget the politics; Fits really excels at the poetics of hedonism, the invocation of pleasurable scenarios of all sorts.
But back to the sheets. Lying in clean sheets is one of the nicest things ever, although not as rewarding in this cold weather because I am all rugged up in pyjamas and can't feel the sheets against my skin. The annoying thing, though, is that the more you enjoy clean sheets, the less clean and enjoyable they become. For some reason I like white sheets best; there's something deeply satisfying about pulling back the snowdrift of my white doona to reveal equally snowy pillows and sheets.
This morning I was folding sheets while listening to the neo-Curtis Mayfield soul of Justin Timberlake's "Damn Girl", a song that had popped into my head while I was in the shower. Even though my SMS fuckup of Friday night has been troubling me all weekend, I felt content as I smoothed the sheets into neat rectangular parcels. I was reminded of my parents folding sheets when I was a child. They'd take an end each and walk towards each other until their hands met in the middle. Then they'd take another end, pivot and do the same gesture again. It always seemed like a grave and courtly dance to me, of the sort showcased on the miniseries of Pride & Prejudice. There seems to be such a muted eroticism to those dances; they are all about eye contact and fleeting touches of hands. It seems a perfect semantic fit that I should associate this with sheets, erotically charged as they also are.
But back to the sheets. Lying in clean sheets is one of the nicest things ever, although not as rewarding in this cold weather because I am all rugged up in pyjamas and can't feel the sheets against my skin. The annoying thing, though, is that the more you enjoy clean sheets, the less clean and enjoyable they become. For some reason I like white sheets best; there's something deeply satisfying about pulling back the snowdrift of my white doona to reveal equally snowy pillows and sheets.
This morning I was folding sheets while listening to the neo-Curtis Mayfield soul of Justin Timberlake's "Damn Girl", a song that had popped into my head while I was in the shower. Even though my SMS fuckup of Friday night has been troubling me all weekend, I felt content as I smoothed the sheets into neat rectangular parcels. I was reminded of my parents folding sheets when I was a child. They'd take an end each and walk towards each other until their hands met in the middle. Then they'd take another end, pivot and do the same gesture again. It always seemed like a grave and courtly dance to me, of the sort showcased on the miniseries of Pride & Prejudice. There seems to be such a muted eroticism to those dances; they are all about eye contact and fleeting touches of hands. It seems a perfect semantic fit that I should associate this with sheets, erotically charged as they also are.
