45 - Through Your Eyes

Our already paradisiacal garden turns into a full-blown Garden of Eden in summer—complete with multiple Adams and Eves enjoying themselves. The snakes whisper tempting offers too—but anyone who gives in isn’t banished. They just come back next week.

I love the feeling of sun—and love—on my skin out in the green—but with ten weeks of summer holidays, that’s not exactly easy to organize. We can barely fit our complicated date logistics into the calendar as it is; adding the weather forecast on top would require a dedicated project manager.

On my last date with Leif, the sun was firmly on our side. We spent ages in the pool, which was, I suspect, being regularly monitored by the neighbours—either for safety reasons or out of chronic home-office boredom. Later, on the secluded terrace, I wasn’t just wet because I’d come out of the water.

I’ve known Leif for six weeks. He lives in a small house in the countryside, spends most of his time outdoors, and grows organic vegetables. If I tell you that, and you know he has long hair—which I’m very fond of—you probably picture the same thing I do: a rugged, sexy outdoor type. The kind of man you assume can build a house with his bare hands, light a fire in the woods just by staring at the wood intensely enough, and imitate a wild boar’s call when he’s hungry. And that’s precisely how I see him, too.

Which is why I was genuinely surprised when, after our day in paradise, he told me he’d never had sex outdoors before—or been that intimate with anyone in water. I could hardly believe it. Secretly, I’d assumed finally having sex outside was at least part of the reason he’d left the capital. You swap Paris for paradise, right?

But of course, without a properly opaque fence, it’s much harder to have shameless terrace sex while the neighbours are eating lunch five meters away. On one table: chicken legs. On the other: mine. My image of him is built on the tiny slice of his life I actually know—the last six weeks. The fact that, until three years ago, he was basically a Parisian specialist in bedroom sex hadn’t even crossed my mind.

The reverse fascinates me just as much: the way he talks about me as a writer.

Yes, I write—as you’ve probably noticed, assuming you’re actually reading and not just hunting for the sex scenes. But up to now, I haven’t been brave enough to call myself that. He finds that completely incomprehensible, because to him it’s obvious: writing isn’t a hobby or a side option for me—it’s a survival strategy.

Letting other people get close also means letting ourselves be seen anew. They hold up images of us that refresh and recalibrate the way we see ourselves. It moves me that Leif sees me as a writer. It helps me start seeing myself that way too. New partners notice things about us differently than the eyes that have grown up alongside us. What, for one person, is merely the overture to menopause is, for another, the very core of who you are. Somewhere between those two images, my sense of self keeps flowing back and forth.

Sometimes I see myself more clearly in Leif’s gaze because he doesn’t reflect all the things I like to hide behind. He reads me like a book I’m only just beginning to write. No foreword. No blurb. No spoilers. Line by line, as I put the words down.