The Honeymoon
They walk back to their hotel, holding hands. She thinks how wonderful it is to find love later in life, to have a partner, a companion. Someone to share things with. They both love 17th century art. No surprise that the honeymoon is in Amsterdam.
In the hotel
she changes into her negligée. She has
been unsure whether to buy one. She doesn’t
want something frilly and overly sexy but still it has to be a notch up from
the baggy T-shirts she normally prefers.
They have
had sex once, on the afternoon he proposed.
Giddy with drink and excitement they fell in his bed and made glorious
and unexpected love. She was surprised
by it, the sheer force of lust, not felt for ten years or more.
She props
herself up in the bed. He comes out of
the bathroom and starts to take off his clothes, slowly, methodically, with his
back to her; folding his socks and the trousers of his good suit. When he drops his pants to put on the bottoms
of his burgundy-and-white striped pyjama, she sees it. He has old men’s buttocks. Hanging a little loose, pinched and wrinkled.
He slides
beside her in the bed; gives her a gentle kiss on the forehead.
Busy day,
tomorrow, he says, and turns around.
Soon he snores gently.
And she lies
sleepless, beside a man she hardly knows.
Her new husband, a man with old men’s buttocks.
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Thank you! Be your nose a pointer for your brain! (OED)