Sharing Soap

by Allison Whittenberg

“Don’t you have a dispenser?”

“A what?”

He pointed to the bar which looked to be about four uses in. “The soap.”

She pointed to the bar which had a lilac scent and still had the mold print monogram MW visible, her initials “There’s the soap.”

He shook his head. “I can’t use that; it has your germs on it.”

Her cheeks, still flush from the act, all that circulation and commingling – she became furious. They had just been going at it and now he, clothed only in boxers, worried about bacteria.

“Germs?” she, in just a bra and panties, asked.

The curls she pinned for that night had gone flat during the tumbling. Weeks had gone into this evening – preparation to the hilt.   All the maneuvering to steal those moments together at the office: in the elevator, by the water cooler, outside the break room – all those stolen moments added up to this sum. Their paths didn’t have to converge – this was by design. They finally committed to each other, commingling, and it was wild, new, fresh. 

Nude and sweaty.

They had taken this break, though the evening, still young.

But soap? Sharing soap? He worried about contamination? He trusted her diaphragm. He believed in her bedding, praising it, freely commenting on its texture, tender and smooth, vibrant red. He drank from her spigot, but now, the soap troubled him?

Her home soap that she had lathered previously.

He saw as she winced at his hygiene request, as a dream melted, like being in a room for the first time, and you stared about the room and realized maybe this wasn't the room you thought you were in, and maybe even this room was a room you never should have entered.

He stomped on the fire.

But why should the suggestion skew things, maybe he was just being quirky. Maybe it was just a joke. How well did she know him? She couldn't recall him ever telling her anything of humor. He didn't come off as a funny guy, of course, there are flavors of humor. There's witty.  There’re puns, there's satire. That's what attracted her to him in the first place. His square jaw during last month's meetings. He kept his eyes front, rarely blinking in reaction to the dips in the market. There's a rock, she thought. There's someone I could turn to.

She thought if she didn't take definite steps with him, she'd be alone forever.

But now, it was all about the soap he couldn't touch, that she used, and made dirty. Her eyes tore into him and all the relief, all the light, everything was simply filthy. 

What was the nature of intimacy?

This was a crisis, like something she would speak to a therapist about if she had the habit of attending sessions. Was she taking too much to heart?  Overthinking this? After all, it was just soap.

She put on a robe. Fuzzy. Cozy. Oversized, swallowing her in its softness like a

cocoon.

He was redressed in slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. It was as if he’d just stopped by.

Dusk deepened, and they watched a movie. A black and white one, her choice because he didn't care, he said—one of her favorites. 

In it, the actors smoked, making great gestures with their cigarettes for emphasis. These cigarettes traveled from lip to lip, romantically without a care. She found herself enjoying the time, relaxing, and sucked in with the romance. 

He noticed and tried to hitch on to this shift, he tried to win her back, placing his hand on her shoulder.

She felt the floor sink, and she eschewed his touch.

She made it to her feet and moved to turn off the VCR.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

“I don't think this will work out,” she said. “I’d like you to leave.”

His granite chin went slack.

She stood over him, looking down with disdainful air.

She thought to herself, you know when it’s over, and the soap gets so small with use, it breaks into small pieces and it’s too difficult to use and must be thrown away. Well, this wasn’t that sort of matter. This meeting counted as their first “date”. 

But something weighed on her as she thought of his overnight bag.  It's an inventory of clothes, some bills, a candy bar, spare underwear, and an energy drink.  A toothbrush, but not the paste.

She felt justified in jerking away as this would be another difference of opinion.

BIO: Allison Whittenberg is an award winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, Obsidian, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry