Ryan insisted he needed his apartment cleaned that very night, no later than ten p.m. It was now eight-thirty. I hesitated. For starters, I hadn't washed my hair in two days and had begun to resemble a lost member of the Manson family. Not to mention the five o'clock shadow that had begun to form around my pudenda. I imagined that greeting a client with a stubbly vag was a nude-housecleaning faux pas. How I would get cleaned up and get uptown in under two hours was beyond me, but I agreed to it. "I just have two main concerns," Ryan said before giving me his address. "The first is that while you claim you're 'adorable,' I worry that you'll show up and look like Jabba the Hut." I assured him that I was not a legless, tapered slug covered in slime, but rather more like Princess Leia, and could even wear my long, raven hair in dual buns if he so desired. This cinched the deal. Within every man who was breathing during the early '80s, there lies dormant a terrible fear of Jabba the Hut and an overwhelming fixation with Princess Leia. (Specifically when she is bound in chains by the gruesome Jabba; it's the greatest BDSM scene in cinematic history.) "I do have small breasts, so if you want a nude housecleaner with huge breasts, that's not me. Plus, I have a crazy scar on my stomach." I figured it was best to get these two things out of the way immediately. "That's okay, but my other concern," he added. "Is that because you are going to be naked, you won't do a good job cleaning my apartment." "You have nothing to worry about," I assured him. Secretly, I thought, Oh shit, he really wants me to clean. Cleaning, unlike getting naked, is an actual skill I wasn't sure I'd mastered. I jotted down Ryan's address, leapt off the phone and quickly Googled "how to clean wooden floors." What if I ruined his fancy Upper East Side apartment?  I gussied up in record time and ran to the train. My bladder began to swell with urgency; I had traveled outside my "pee radius." My mind raced with concerns. Would his apartment be well heated? Would he be a sociopath? Would he get a boner? Would he not get a boner? Would he want me to polish his family jewels? Would I get turned on? The prospect of doing something so naughty already had me a bit titillated. As the subway rumbled beneath me, my vaginal walls began to contract, partly from the need to pee and partly from excitement. On the street, as I turned a corner onto Madison Avenue and strolled past a group of mink-clad women, my tattered faux-fur coat and pink-streaked hair made me feel conspicuous. I hope the doorman realizes I'm not a prostitute, I thought. But what if I were a prostitute? It's nothing to be ashamed of. At least prostitutes get to lie down on the job. Here, I'd be naked and scrubbing toilets. Prostitutes would laugh at me. As sex work goes, naked housecleaning is as low as it gets on the food chain. Except for the guy who used to pay to lick come off peep-show stalls in the Times Square of yesteryear. That guy is just below me on the sex-work ladder. OBSERVATIONS/RESULTS: Quantify the effects of the experiment. When Ryan answered the door, I was delighted to see that he was a preppy redhead. Even though I tend to date men who are more like the Fonz, I am most attracted to Richie Cunningham types — wholesome redheads. (I know that Ralph Malph was also a redhead, but I preferred Richie's dry sense of humor to Ralph's reliance on sight gags.) Sadly, the Richie Cunninghams of the world want nothing to do with me. "Is it warm enough for you?" Ryan asked shyly, as I ran to his bathroom to relieve myself. "There are a lot of elderly people in this building, so I don't even need to turn my heat on." "Do you think they'd want their apartments cleaned?" I asked. "Probably not," he replied. As I ambled out of his bathroom, I began to remove my clothing in a manner that was matter-of-fact and probably unerotic, perhaps because I was now wearing giant yellow dishwashing gloves. Sort of a shame, since my hands are my best feature. I'd planned to bring a pair of silver stilettos along but had forgotten them in the mad rush uptown. Soon I was buck nekkid. It didn't feel much different than being clothed. At no point did I feel shame or shyness. Maybe I'm becoming a naturist, but it just felt . . . right. As for Ryan's apartment, it didn't look dirty. In fact, it seemed cleaner than my own.
"Do you like wine?" he asked. I know I shouldn't have accepted a glass of wine from a stranger with whom I was now naked in a strange apartment far from my home, but the answer slipped out before logic could catch up with my mouth. "Yes, I like wine very much," I answered, suddenly feeling like a gullible protagonist in an ABC After-School Special. "Great, I have some white wine in the fridge. Only problem is there are no clean glasses to drink it out of." In the history of the world, I don't think two glasses have ever been cleaned as quickly as they were at that moment. Within seconds, we were sipping wine from two sparkling, streak-free goblets. "Cheers!" Ryan pronounced as we clinked glasses. "Back to work," I said, pouring dishwashing liquid onto the plates in his sink. "Whoa!" he exclaimed. "That dishwashing liquid is very thick. It leaves film on the plates if you use too much." Was Ryan here to bask in the glow of my nakedness or to backseat-drive my every move? Would he soon slip on a white glove and follow me around, like Leona Helmsley checking for dust marks at the Park Lane Hotel? The distasteful Joy brand dishwashing liquid featured a sunglass-sporting lemon on the label. "I don't like the looks of that guy," I said, noting the lemon's malicious grin. Apparently an evil-mascot trend is afoot in the world of cleaning products. "I got it at the ninety-nine-cent store," Ryan admitted. "You should never buy your cleaning supplies at the ninety-nine-cent store. I've made that mistake. Things always end up sticky or smelly." I diluted the Joy with water and continued scrubbing. The silence grew. "Why did you hire a naked cleaning lady as opposed to a regular cleaning lady?" I finally inquired. "I guess it's just cool to have a naked lady around." "Naked ladies are cool," I agreed. Truer words were never spoke.
4 Comments
KenM commented on 05/27
JWW commented on 05/29 gm commented on 06/12 DAA commented on 06/17
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