As you know there are many mysteries in my world, but none was more pressing to unravel last night than this – who, and what, was in bed with us?
As you know I love our bed. It’s six feet wide and six feet six inches long. Guido jumps out at five a.m. in the morning and collapses back in at ten p.m. at night. At some point we collide in the middle of it. Every day I zhoosh up the sheets and every week I wash them on a very hot non-bio wash and then tumble. If I think sex might be on the cards on a Tuesday afternoon I’ll even iron them. My mother, Cruella, once told me if you want to fully satisfy a man in bed you should use a good hairspray and practice hospital corners. That’s the sort of inane advice my mother still gives to me to this day. Which says a lot about my bed making skills and the state of my mother’s hair.
“Have you been eating Ritz crackers in bed without me?” I asked Guido accusatorily last night. “It feels like there’s salt between my toes.”
There was a short but defiant pause.
“The last thing I ate in this bed was a salami on Monday night and that’s the God’s honest truth,” said Guido blankly. I don’t know about you but anyone who says, and that’s the God’s honest truth, usually turns out to be a liar.
I shuffled my feet because now the mattress looked lumpy. I flapped the blanket. It still felt uncomfortable. I tutted.
”If you want to know what’s happening down there why don’t you go take a look for yourself,” said Guido.
This is exactly the sort of suggestion Guido makes on a regular basis but invariably turns out to be both time consuming and completely exhausting for me. Though it’s not without certain reward.
I lay there perfectly still thinking about possibilities and how much time was left before lights out. Then I remembered I kept a torch under our bed. This is for emergencies, like an unexpected power outage. Or sometimes in the middle of the night when Guido’s soundly asleep, I’ll shine it up one of his crevices just for the hell of it. This is for my own personal and twisted pleasure, which just goes to show what a combination of insomnia and boredom does to my brain.
I switched the flashlight on and crawled down between the sheets. It was a whole different world under there. I imagined it must be what diving 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was like. Full of dark shadows and unidentifiable hairy objects which occasionally twitch and are prone to pop up in your face.
It was a good 10 minutes before I came back up gasping for air. Here’s what I have to tell you about what I found.
It’s exactly three days since that bed was fully laundered but I retrieved; a pair of contorted underpants, the TV Guide rolled up tightly, one sock, a plastic fork, and a fully intact Oreo cookie.
“So,” asked Guido nonchalantly thumbing through the page of last night’s entertainment options, “did you find what you were looking for, or will you be going down again?”
Honestly, there’s only so much excitement a guy can take.