Gentleman Caller

Sevillian Chronicles part III

Parental advisory: Due to truthful documentation of accidental nudity, this episode is recommended for mature readers only.

One day I was sitting in my living room, speaking to my father in Chicago on Skype. A contact request bleeped in, from an unknown Spanish person wanting to be my new Skype friend. Under normal circumstances I always deny and block such requests; but I noticed that this fellow was a gamer from Huelva (a neighboring city). Had a short surge of bravery and accepted the contact request.

We spoke for a while, this new Skype contact and I, over a period of a couple of weeks. He seemed a nice and intelligent enough person, and was very into nature-especially mountain climbing. So for lack of knowing his given name, I dubbed him “The Mountain Climber” (very original I know, but bear with me dear reader. As you will soon see The Mountain Climber-TMC for short- was a very appropriate nickname indeed) One day TMC told me that he would like to visit my company’s game shop in Sevilla, and asked me whether I’d take him there. I agreed to do so, and we made an appointment for TMC to meet me outside my apartment at 10:00 the following Saturday morning.

Friday night, before the Saturday planned for our meeting, I had a message that TMC could not make it to Sevilla the next day. La di da da, whatever, and I went on with my Friday night business, went to sleep, and…

Well first I must describe what I was wearing to sleep in that Friday night. Not because am attempting to write some sort of risqué story here, but because this nightwear was crucial to the development of this story later on. That night I went to sleep in a man’s XL t-shirt, that I inherited from who knows where. This t-shirt was tie dyed in pink, and the previous owner had cut the original neck out, so that there was a very wide opening in the top; making the shirt require me to keep my shoulders up at all times, in order to keep it on. Twas a very comfy shirt for sleeping in.

Saturday morning came around, and I woke up at about 9:50. I was feeling glad about having a peaceful Saturday morning at home, and planned to use it to putter around in my lovely apartment. And, as everyone knows, nothing goes better with puttering at home than a fresh pot of coffee. So I went into the kitchen to start a pot. I had one of those metal gadgets, where water is heated to a boiling in the bottom part of the coffee-maker, and this boiling water flows up through the coffee grounds, making a very nice filter-free pot of coffee. Just as I had prepared my coffee maker, and set it on the stove, remembering to turn on the stove eye this time, the house phone rang-signalling to me that someone was at the front door of my building, down on the street.

I answered the phone, and a voice said “this is José”. Now friends, José was the name of my Spanish employer, who was also a very good brotherly friend of mine, AND who lived in my neighbourhood. I remember thinking, as I buzzed him in “My he’s up and out kinda early for a Saturday. I wonder what he wants.” And because José is such a close friend and all, it did not even occur to me that perhaps I should change into some other clothes.

So I left the kitchen, in the general direction of my front door. The doorbell rang and I opened it to find a gigantic 7 foot (way over 2 M something, my Euro readers) man standing there; that I had never seen before in my life. I was so shocked and surprised that the José outside my door was a different José from the one I had been expecting to find, that I spent a few seconds gaping speechlessly at him. In my shock, I also forgot altogether how perilously my nightshirt was sitting on my shoulders. Yes, yes, indeed-you can guess what happened. My nightshirt with the gigantically cut out neck dropped off me completely, right there in my doorway, in front of this mountain of a man. This calamity caused TMC (I had figured out by then that it was he) to turn about 3 shades of magenta, and me to wish I could just disappear. There was a very strange moment between the two of us, but considering he had already seen me stark naked, and there was nothing I could do about it- I picked up my nightshirt, with as much dignity as I could muster and said “hello, what are you doing here?”.

Right after I asked TMC that question; there was a very loud noise coming from the kitchen. I left TMC no time to answer me, and took off to see what happened, with TMC in hot pursuit, and with me holding onto my nightshirt for dear life. It turns out that I had forgotten about the fact that had started a pot of coffee, and the coffeemaker had boiled over all over the stove, with hot coffee dripping onto the floor and sprayed onto the ceiling. It was practically coating the back third of my kitchen.

TMC was very very kind, and a lot less flabbergasted than me; and he grabbed a mop. So I took a sponge, and the two of us mopped up the coffee, for about the next half hour-not saying too much to one another, mind you. The work helped to take our minds off initial trauma though, and by the time we were finished cleaning, both of us were pretty much in fits of hysteria (was still remembering to hold up my pajamas this whole time), and we fell about laughing in my kitchen until we both were teary eyed and weak in the knees.

At that point there was nothing else to do but to start a new pot of coffee, invite TMC for to share it with me including some breakfast; but first to disappear into my bedroom for a few minutes, in order to put on some less dangerous clothes.

After I was more properly attired, we sat on my couch, TMC and I. We listened to music and had a very nice breakfast together, with only the occasional snicker from one or the other of us. Strange how uninhibited we were with one another, considering it was the first time we met and everything. We spoke about games and Sevilla, and all sorts of things; and about an hour and a half later he left again. We never did make it out to check out the game store. I was pretty dang certain about how after seeing me completely naked the first second upon meeting me in person, and instantly their after assisting in housework; that that morning would have been the last contact I would ever have with TMC. You know what? It was not.