👧🏻 SHE Saved Her Name as "Sheet Girl"
First Draft Created: 2024-03-25 19:20
Last Updated: 1 month, 3 weeks ago
A.k.a "Sheets"
I am searching for a sheet.
My last sheet has torn somehow. Maybe I shouldn't have used such a high speed on my washing machine, and crammed that machine full of so many other items of clothing, including rough items like jeans, with sharp zippers that could catch.
I had thought I was being so smart and efficient, cramming a large washload in, given the allergy setting on my machine takes a larger load size, and of course, we Capetownians are in the habit now of saving water, ever since our severe water restrictions a few years back.
Nope. I think about it. It was all that fabric softener. I should not have used it in laundry that contained sheets. Stupid.
So now here I am, finally with money to spend, thanks to a gracious friend's gift, late bills finally paid, and it is time to fork over enough money to buy myself a new sheet.
Mr Price Home. This must be the store where I shall find what I'm looking for. I have been to several home stores already, which did not have what I was seeking, and now I am here.
But all of these sheets feel so rough!
Why?
I don't remember sheets ever feeling so rough. Were sheets always made this way? Was the sheet I had owned so old, from a bygone era when sheets were softer?
People come and go from the spot where I am feeling sheets, like some pervert creeping on poor innocent shelves.
"Sorry" I feel like muttering, but I won't, because there are people around. People to carefully avoid drawing the attention of. People to carefully avoid bumping into. People to carefully avoid making eye contact with.
The life of an autistic vampire out in the daylight to go shopping, I guess. I can't believe I went through the gruelling process of switching my sleep cycle to diurnal for this.
THUMP! A box of sheet falls to the floor to my left. I glance over there, up from the stacked book-sized boxes where I am sheet-feeling, to their fallen sheet comrade. Above it, a girl is standing on tiptoes stretching and waving her hand upwards, trying to reach a high shelf.
She looks over her right arm at me, and the sheet, sheepishly. She wobbles slightly as she lowers herself down onto her heels. She is certainly cute.
She is managing several sheets in her left arm, trying to not drop anymore in preparation of retrieving the fallen, so I ignore the awkwardness in favour of gallantry and take a quick two sidesteps along our shared shelf wall towards her, stretch out my arm, scoop down and pick up the small boxed sheet to offer to her with my left arm, as she leans towards it herself and appreciatively takes it from me with her right, the rescued sheet in its box forming the centrepoint of the bridgeway that is each of our outstretched arms.
"Thanks, but I was actually trying to reach this one..." She is briefly up on tiptoes, stretches and points. Then, back down, she replaces the other sheets gingerly on an elbow-height shelf. Then she is up on her toes yet again and once more facing the high shelves. Just as I am sizing up whether I am taller and could reach it for her, she strains forward on her toes, propels herself forward and manages to bump-topple the next sheet with the one box still in her right hand, and somehow catch it in her left as it comes tumbling down, end over end.
A beam of triumph on her face, she looks for a moment at the sheet, then her shoulders droop dramatically as she sighs and looks at me. "It's a flat sheet. I'm looking for a fitted one!"
"Me too!" I say. "Why don't they have queen-size?"
We start nattering and chattering about the sheets all around us. Occasionally, one of us has to move aside as other shoppers come by to also pick up sheets off the shelves.
First, she moves aside, and then I move. It is like an elaborate slow fox-trot around each other. Neither of us wants to leave, or so I hope, and so we prolong the conversation in any way that we can. I would love to invite her to have coffee with me, as we somehow keep discovering new sheets to look at that neither of us has noticed yet, despite us standing there the whole time.
She seems really comfortable talking to me, which is a good sign. I have no idea whether she reads me as male or as female, and to what degree that is making a difference to how comfortable our conversation is.
"Oh! Look at this one!" I point out a white, soft, silky sheet which has ornate creases, almost like... lace?
"Oh that is pretty!"
"It kind of reminds me of my mom" I muse, like an absolute idiot, but it was true, and I am stupidly honest. I recall a duvet this white and lacy back in the day on one of the beds at my first childhood home. "Pull it together, Salem," I think, "You are talking to a beautiful girl about sheets. Why?"
"Oh." She looks so embarrassed for a moment. "I was actually thinking I really like it."
"Oh no, no it's pretty!" I struggle to backpedal. "I liked it because it's familiar. It's a great style, I always think it's vintage!"
"Well, now I just feel old" she pouts. Playfully? I hope.
"Nono! Not at all! Why would you think that? And you certainly aren't older than me anyway!" I see the opportunity to ask. "How old are you, anyway?" "I'm 25".
"That's not old! How old do you think I am?"
"About the same?"
"I'm 36!" I say.
"Well, you look a lot younger!" She insists. "You're really lucky!"
More shoppers are coming and going.
Does she really want to just keep talking to me? I wonder. She doesn't seem to be trying to excuse herself, or feeling awkwardness at the prolonged semi-fumbling nature of our conversation, or the other shoppers coming and going.
More moving to allow shoppers through, one of us stepping to one side or another, the other orienting to face them again. More of our dance. More of one or the other of us suddenly discovering more sheets on a different shelf, that we hadn't noticed or considered before.
"Perhaps these!"
Eventually, she finds the right colour she was looking for, a lovely green.
"That reminds me of my sister" I tease her.
"Really? Why?" She jumps on this new topic, keen to keep talking even though she has found what she was seeking.
I tell the story of my sister's wedding, which involved that shade of green everywhere. And the exhausting ordeal it was for 30 people to work continuously to set up a wedding picnic for 120 people. Including stuffing 100 cushions into newly sewn GREEN cushion cases to match the theme.
She listens to my whole, strange wedding story, that of a stranger at a store, and is amazed, and strongly sympathises with my recounted stress and fear that something would go wrong that day and ruin the wedding of my sister, combined with my anxiety over the wedding of my other sister, whose own wedding had been just 4 months prior to this one.
I leave out the part about the dysphoria at having to wear gendered clothing as part of the bridal party and how traumatized I had been as a result. This might be the first time (outside of a queer or trans meetup or friend group) that I am meeting a stranger and don't feel that it matters what gender she perceives me as, or whether I "pass" in any particular way.
She echoes my own relief at now being able to attend weddings without having to be part of the actual organisation team, wedding party and/or emotional support to an immensely stressed-out bride and difficult family - roles which I have in total been involved in on five different occasions at least.
More chatting. Is she still keen to prolong the conversation, as we talk about literally anything and everything and fumble, albeit strangely comfortably, for conversation topics?
I can't help noticing not only her beautiful eyes, but her hair. I compliment her sparkling thin hairband, and my remark makes her too sparkle with joy and practically dance on her toes yet again with delight. "Don't look at her lips" I have to remind myself, as I take in her dazzling smile, feeling the warmth rise in my chest at having been the cause of it.
The conversation continues, and I try not to be too distracted by how attractive she is. I bet she has a partner, I think.
Eventually, she does look at her cell phone to check the time, and does she look reluctant?
"So, I'm going to have to go," she says.
She looks at me.
Inwardly, I sigh. Asking people for their numbers is something I try not to do, nowadays. Maybe it's Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.
No, in reality, it's coming to terms with the whole people-often-perceive-me-as-male-and-I'm-too-afraid-of-being-perceived-creepy of it all. It's the unsettling fact that cis women, when they start to read me as male, cease being forthcoming about their levels of comfort or discomfort with things I did or said the same way they do, confidently when reading me as female.
My autistic terror is being a cause of other people's discomfort through misreading a social cue, and my resulting vow has been to just... not ask. Even if asking for someone's number is something men and male-perceived people are expected to do, I just can't ask women out or ask for their numbers anymore.
"So..." her words cut through my resignation. "Can I give you my number?" she asks.
Oh.
Also, it's a little thing, but I appreciate that she actually offers her number instead of asking mine. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but to me it indicates respect for the other person's level of comfort in allowing them to opt out of texting and sharing their number. Which means a lot, coming from a woman towards someone who is often read as male and presents "masculine". Maybe there is hope for me to relate to cisgender people after all. Assuming she is cis, of course.
Admittedly, I could have done the same and offered my number, but I guess RSD plus the fear of making someone feel obligated to save my number...
She saves her name on my phone.
"I added 'Sheet Girl' to my name, so you remember it's me" she says helpfully.
"Hey, I didn't call you Sheet Girl!" I tease.
"I know. That was me. So you know, I'm Sheet Girl."
We laugh as we wave goodbye. She heads to pay at the counter.
We keep up the conversation via text, as I keep her abreast of my own ongoing quest, and when I finally, at another store, find the Ultimate Sheet, I triumphantly send her a photograph of it.
Egyptian cotton!
Finally, something soft enough for my sensitive skin!
Expensive, yes. But worth it, and this time, this time, I shall take care of it!
That was about two weeks ago.
It also turned out that she was single, after all.
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