I used to date this guy with some pretty MAJOR body issues. Like, I’ve slept with him a few times and haven’t ever seen him naked. Not. Even. Once.
He was the skater type. Even on the hottest days he wore jeans, a hoodie skater shoes and a baseball cap. SOMETIMES I’d see him in a t-shirt but it was rare. It’s possible, at the time, I was a little self absorbed because it took me about 3 months to notice his clothing choices. Three months may seem like a long time, but we met in the spring and Minnesota springs are far from hot.
When his lack of being a nudist initially sparked my attention, it took me by surprise and then, I assume, I acted like any normal female…I thought it was me. Guys don’t have body issues maybe he doesn’t want to see me naked and that’s why the lights are always off. I began to cover up more around him. I wore more hoodies than normal and jeans even though the weather was changing to summer.
As the summer passed, I changed. I started trying to turn the light on each attempt without success. It was fall when I decided that it was his issues and couldn’t be about me. In hindsight confidence should have been easy for me in my 20’s, my body was average not Supermodel material but no defects in sight. I was active and fit, no kids, my body was probably in it’s peak shape. But there I was not confident because guys don’t have body issues, right? It had to be me.
It was the middle of winter before I asked him about it. He moved away and it had been a couple months since I had seen him. My girlfriends and I had talked, Sex In The City style about him. They convinced me to ask him.
I went to his place for the weekend. We hung out, hit the bars and did pretty much everything you can do in the sticks of northern Minnesota. We were laying in his bed, fully clothed when I brought it up. I asked him, bluntly, why he never got naked with me. The silence killed my insides, I dreaded his words. No response. I asked him if it was me. THANKFULLY he answered me pretty quickly. It wasn’t me.
While I was waiting for an explanation I thought about this girl I was friends with in school. We’ll call her Kim. Kim was the quiet type. She was really smart but hardly spoke. I think her family and her moved into our school district when we were in the sixth grade. It wasn’t like the movies when immediately Kim was popular and took on the current popular girl for her boyfriend and prom queen, it wasn’t anything like that. Kim kept to herself seemingly trying to be unnoticed for the most part. I befriended her.
We became fast friends. I noticed during our friendship that Kim always wore long shirts and pants. She said she was cold, I didn’t believe her. One night when we went to her house she told me that she had been in a house fire. She barely made it. It was so bad that they had to do skin grafts on her. She showed me her arms and thankfully I was able to hold in my shocked noises. Her arms were bumpy, lumpy, different colored skin and all scarred up.
The thing about Kim is she wasn’t (or didn’t admit) embarrassed about her skin. I think she was more thankful to have made it through the horrific experience than to worry about what her arms looked like. In high school she went on to be the First Princess in our Town days and I thankfully got to share that float with her. She has always been an inspiration to me. We graduated before I got the chance to figure that out and tell her.
This guy wasn’t in a house fire, it turns out he has Psoriasis. The ironic thing is Psoriasis is suffocated by the sun, so his actually wearing extra clothes and covering up was probably making it worse. I couldn’t ever convince him of that and I never got the chance to see any of it.
In the end my confidence was more important to me than some guy. Girls have enough body issues to work through. Having a guy with body issues too….no thank you.