Skin in the Game.

This is not what I had in mind. 

If patience is a virtue, I am clearly not in line for sainthood. I know instinctively what I want and what I don’t want, and rarely has the rational me chosen to go down a path that my instinct and elusive sixth sense hadn’t already embraced. And yet when it comes to matters of the heart and of the flesh, my impatient self is oddly patient.

I am … um … selective. Some might say picky.

But just because I don’t let every man who happens to wander by with a hoe to till the fields, doesn’t mean you don’t reach a point where the dirt needs to be turned. And turned. And turned. And turned.

(You get the idea. And my mother doesn’t need the mental image that goes along with this.)

When I pictured the next time a set of eyes laid eyes on my naked body, I imagined something more intimate and chemical. The hands touching me? A little demanding and a lot of caressing.

And yet here I am. Standing naked and cold while every inch of my body is poked, prodded and peered at from an uncomfortably close vantage point. With a magnifying glass. And a measuring stick.

Every year since college I have dreaded this annual review—like a final exam I haven’t studied for and for which there are no re-takes. But my options are this: have three holes carved into my left buttock or stand here naked once a year while the relative spread of my birthmark Bermuda Triangle is documented for posterity. And, frankly, three holes are not going to improve the view or the odds.

But my father hit the cancer jackpot. And then my ass was left abruptly on the line without backup. And then an annual inconvenience became an inconvenient necessity to save my ass. So as long as she doesn’t tell me that there has been an unexpected expansion of my back end, I quietly let her peer at every freckle and birthmark.

And look up and pray that the next time my ass has an audience … it isn’t wearing scrubs.