There were fresh marks on my thighs. Thin crisscrossing lines of abraded red skin. In the six weeks since the itch had arrived, it had harassed every part of my body but its favorite place, by far, was my legs.
I lifted a foot up onto the rim of the bathtub and examined the welts. It looked like a cat had been using my legs as a scratching post while I slept. I turned on the shower, hoping the water might help soothe my skin.
Marcus was sprawled on top of the duvet wearing nothing but his boxers in spite of the cold. He didn’t look up from his phone as I entered the bedroom. His body was the thing I liked best about him. To my mind, he resembled the ideal male specimen — lean like a slab of beef and perfectly proportioned. He didn’t have any excess weight, and he didn’t spend all his time in the gym working out an arbitrarily chosen set of muscles.
He put the phone down and watched me as I dropped my towel and began dressing. I noticed a gentle stirring in his underwear. I always found it both flattering that I could elicit this unconscious reaction from him and also somewhat pathetic that he had so little control over his own body.
+
The dermatologist’s office was decorated entirely in shades of green — moss flooring, sage walls, the furniture in hues somewhere in between. I was standing in my underwear, an opened paper gown draped round me, answering questions about how frequently I washed while the doctor examined my legs. She was a short woman, shaped like a barrel, with frizzy hair and thick glasses.
“Are you using pH neutral soap?” she asked.
“I have been since the itch started.”
“Moisturiser?”
“Morning and night. It’s also pH neutral and non-comedogenic.”
I’d acquired a whole new vocabulary with the onset of the itch — parabens, phthalates, bisabolol, glycerin, dermo oils. I scoured the supermarket aisles reading the ingredients list of every product I bought.
“Do you wash your clothes and bedding regularly enough?”
“Define enough.”
“Do you use non-biological washing powder?”
“Non-biological, ecological and hypoallergenic. I got it from a special website.”
“Are you taking any prescribed medications?”
“An SSRI called escitalopram.”
“Non-prescribed medications?”
“My work takes up too much time for that, sadly.”
“Show me your hands,” the dermatologist said, standing up suddenly. The top of her head came to just below my chin. “Your nails are cut down to the cuticle.”
“That’s because I bite them.”
“That’s fine, you can keep that up. Your skin would be torn to pieces otherwise.” She slapped my wrist. “But you still mustn’t scratch! Pat the skin instead or better yet hold a damp cloth against it.” She went over to her desk and scribbled something then brandished it in my face. “This is a prescription for corticosteroids. Take one tablet three times a day with food. I’m also prescribing you a medicated emollient. Apply it before going to bed to all the spots where you regularly feel an itching sensation. The fact that I haven’t found any irritation means it could be something internal which is causing your itch so please come see me again in two weeks if it hasn’t gotten any better.” She handed me a second slip of paper. “You can pay the receptionist on your way out.”
+
I work as a costume designer, shaping the vision of a production alongside the director and conceptualising its key visual aspect — the outfits. At that time, I was helping to stage the musical Cabaret by John Kander. I’d been drawn to the production for the setting rather than the piece itself. Berlin in the twenties, like Vienna before the First World War, was one of those times when art, theatre, and fashion seemed to leap forward a century in the span of a few years. In the Weimar Republic, the corset-bound woman took on a cocaine-induced boyish figure, complemented by bobbed hair and culottes, while the ubiquitous cabarets brought cross-dressing to the masses.
We were holding the first fitting for each actor. Anselmo, the director, had originally wanted the characters as underdressed as possible, picturing the dancers wearing little more than lingerie. I had disagreed with him though. Clothing masks a body’s imperfections and sets the imagination free. Our fantasies are always sexier than reality.
The Master of Ceremonies of the Kit Kat Klub set the tone for the rest of the characters. He was often made up in a flamboyant and perverse fashion but we had opted to put him in a sombre suit. In keeping with the period, it was high buttoned, with thick lapels and a boxy fit. Jamie, the actor playing the Emcee, complained that wearing it made him feel like a little boy on the first day of school.
“This is what we discussed, isn’t it?” Anselmo said.
“Cabaret is supposed to be a sexy show but this,” Jamie hunched his shoulders and held up his arms so that his hands disappeared inside his sleeves. “Whatever this is, it’s the opposite of sexy.”
“But you aren’t part of the cabaret itself. You’re the Master of Ceremonies. The girls’ pimp essentially. That’s why we talked about making you into a leering, sinister character. Remember? I think this suit achieves that.”
“Try on the next outfit,” I said. “That might make you feel better.”
I could feel the itch surfacing behind my left knee but made no move to scratch. There was no way to reach it through the fabric of my jeans so I crossed my legs and tried not to pay any attention to it.
“What do you think?” Anselmo asked me as Jamie left the room.
“If we put him in garters, he’d be like every other Emcee from the last thirty years. This allows him to put his own stamp on it.”
The cabaret girls opened the second act with a chorus line that, in an unsubtle foreshadowing of things to come, deteriorates into a goose step. Halfway through the dance, the Emcee revealed himself as one of the girls, and it was this outfit that Jamie displayed for us as he came back into the room.
Before that moment, I had known Jamie was conventionally attractive with his high cheekbones and strong jaw, but what I hadn’t appreciated was his physique; the way the dress clung to his hips, his slender but powerful looking thighs, his flat, hairless stomach. He was more beautiful as a woman than an actual woman ever could be.
I had suggested to Anselmo that he omit the Emcee from this scene. Now I was glad he’d ignored me. I saw how wrong I had been about the entire character. I should have gone with the original suggestion and put him in fishnets for the whole show.
“What do you think?”
“It’s perfect.”
I shifted in my seat, realising as I uncrossed my legs that the itch was gone.
+
Actors make terrible partners. They can be self-obsessed, insecure and worst of all boring. No one blessed with any original thoughts or ideas chooses to make a living out of pretending to be other people. In between parts, an actor is a hollow vessel desperate to be filled. The compensation for these shortcomings is, of course, the way they look. Regardless of how attractive they may be, an actor is always thinking about their poise, the image of themselves they are projecting. They demand to be looked at, admired, and I’ve dated more than my fair share of them because of this.
As Jamie left the room again I excused myself, saying I was going to the toilet, then followed him back to his dressing room.
“Sorry, there’s one more thing I need to check,” I said, shutting the door behind me.
“Don’t you already have all the measurements you could possibly need?”
I stuck my thumbs in the waistband of his suspenders and ran them round to his back. Actors are so used to being manhandled — having other people dress them, style their hair, apply make-up — that he didn’t react at all.
“I loved you in that Netflix show. I couldn’t believe you got dumped at the end,” I said.
“They’ve just started filming the second season.”
“Are you appearing in it?”
“No.”
“I’m sure no one will watch it then.”
I smiled at him then flicked my hair over my shoulder, putting a hand on his bicep at the same time as if to balance myself.
He asked me to go for a drink with him the following week, as if it was his idea.
+
I had been following the dermatologist’s instructions to the letter — getting into bed each night oiled from head to toe like a new-born baby — but I found that the best way to get rid of the itch was to think about Jamie, picturing him in his garter and suspenders, the camisole lying flat against his chest, two hip bones protruding either side of his stomach.
“What is baby oil made out of?” Marcus asked one evening as he sat on the toilet watching me grease myself up. He always offered to help but only wanted to apply the oil to spots where it wasn’t needed.
“If it’s mineral based, normally liquid paraffin or petroleum jelly. Vegetable based ones are derived from all sorts of oils — coconut, palm, almond, sunflower.”
I had memorised the ingredients label of every brand of baby oil and moisturiser in the supermarket.
“So not babies?”
“No.”
Marcus and I had now openly acknowledged the itch. I’d interrupted him during sex in order to scratch it — something even he couldn’t fail to notice.
He’d decided to christen the itch Clive and had started talking about it as though it were an unwanted third party in our relationship.
“Is Clive coming to dinner with us?” he’d ask. Or, “Can you ask Clive to stop bothering you? I’m trying to pay attention to the film.”
I’d ignore him and think about Jamie. I was counting down the days until I could see him.
+
“This is no good at all,” the dermatologist said, pointing at my thigh as though it were a foreign object. “It’s a mess. I’ll need to prescribe you an antibiotic cream so it doesn’t get infected. Haven’t the steroids helped?”
“I thought they had. The itch seemed to be getting better.”
She took my hand and held it up to her face. ‘This is the problem. You’ve been letting your nails grow.” She rolled her chair across to the desk and started searching for something in the top drawer. “Here,” she said, handing me a pair of clippers. “Do you know why we scratch?” she continued, as I began trimming my nails.
“To get rid of an itch.”
“Wrong. We scratch because it causes our body to release serotonin, which stimulates the pleasure centers in our orbitofrontal and insular cortexes. But it also generates new itch signals that are sent back to the brain, making us want to scratch even more. There is a famous case in dermatology circles of a woman who, over the course of a year, scratched through her skull and into her brain.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“So you understand that although scratching may seem harmless, it can actually do serious damage.”
+
“What are we drinking?” Jamie asked.
“A negroni for me,” I replied.
“Good idea, I’ll have one too. It’s funny, I remember when Campari was a drink for old ladies. Gin, too, come to think of it. Everything comes back round into fashion I guess.”
I was feeling too disappointed to pretend that he had uttered a witty insight. Having been fantasising about the Emcee for more than a fortnight, Jamie had turned up wearing a blue reproduction mid-century cotton work shirt with raw denim jeans. He was dressed like any other millennial man soon to be approaching middle age — chasing masculine blue-collar respectability. He hadn’t shaved for several days and had dark stubble around his chin but almost nowhere else on his face. His hair looked unwashed. I could feel the itch emerging from its hiding place.
If Jamie had noticed the look on my face he didn’t show it.
I tried to imagine him in his Cabaret outfit while he began a rambling explanation of why he had rearranged our date. An American producer (whom I have been warned by numerous female acquaintances to steer clear of in all circumstances) was in London and had asked him for a meeting. “I couldn’t turn him down, you understand, the guy’s a genius. He’s had this new series greenlit by Disney. It’s a detective story but set in Japan during the Tokugawa Shogunate. I’d play a Dutch trader who falls in love with the daughter of a samurai.”
“Do you miss doing television already?” I asked.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the theatre. It’s so respectable, you know? And I think it’s better for your career if you don’t restrict yourself to one thing. I don’t want to be pigeonholed as the guy who can only play the plummy lord of the manor.”
As I took a sip of my drink, I tried to imagine Jamie in a powdered wig. I had looked through his IMDb page several times to check if there were any films he’d crossed dressed in and hadn’t noticed any period dramas. He didn’t seem a natural fit for one either. A convincing Regency aristocrat needs thin lips and a weak chin. Jamie’s jaw was too insistent for him to play a Duke.
I’ve been through countless dates where I’ve effectively spent the evening sitting in silence listening to a man talk at me. It’s another of the countless irritants life subjects us to on a daily basis — like being catcalled in the street — that I’ve grown used to. That evening, however, I found it unbearable listening to Jamie talking about how he loved the aesthetic of Tarantino films. My legs felt like they were covered with hundreds of fire ants. I don’t think I’d ever experienced such a gulf between expectation and reality.
Jamie had closed his eyes while he was speaking, and I touched him gently on the shoulder to get his attention.
“I’m popping to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.”
Inside the toilet stall, I pulled down my cigarette trousers (I’d given up trying to wear jeans) and clawed at my legs with both hands. When that didn’t help, I pulled my door key out of my bag and scored it up and down my thighs as if they were scratch cards.
I didn’t feel ready to call it quits yet. There was still one more thing I had to try. Enclosed in folds of denim he was like any other man, but I thought getting him undressed might help.
+
It didn’t though. Once we were back at his place he’d paused for a moment, after pulling down my trousers, to take in the marks scaling each of my legs, then continued as if he hadn’t seen anything.
I clutched his hip bones, ran my hands down his thighs and across his stomach. I kept my eyes pressed shut and tried to pretend he was dressed as a cabaret girl. Nothing helped. It could have been Marcus or any other man fucking me. I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I could taste blood in order to feel something other than the itch.
He got up to use the bathroom once he’d finished. I pulled on my t-shirt and went rooting through his wardrobe.
“I didn’t have you down as the snooping type,” I heard him say behind me as he came back into the room.
“What’s this?” I turned around triumphantly holding up a large woman’s slip.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“I don’t want you to explain yourself. I want you to put it on.”
“What?”
“Put it the fuck on.” I knelt down, picked my underwear up off the floor and threw them at him. “And these, too, for good measure.”
Sitting down on the sofa, I watched as he paraded up and down, instructing him to pull his shoulders back and swing his hips from side to side.
“Can you push your chest out a bit more as well?”
“Is this professional curiosity or something else?”
“This would be more enjoyable for me if you didn’t talk.”
The chemise didn’t fit as well as the cabaret girl outfit but it still made him look incredible — a vision of physical perfection. I felt the itch melting away as he minced back and forth. Every inch of my skin began loosening up as if the itch had never existed in the first place.
When he became tired of performing I took him back to bed. Not because I felt the need to sleep with him again but because I wanted to drag the moment out for as long as possible. I insisted he keep the slip on for the duration.
+
I slept with Jamie a few more times after that but once the show opened it didn’t seem necessary anymore. He got tired of playing dress up for me and all I’d ever really wanted to do was look at him.
Cabaret has proven the most successful production I’ve ever worked on. It’s been running now for more than a year and the itch hasn’t bothered me once in that time. Of course, I’ve moved on to other jobs — I recently finished the design for a docudrama about the life of Emilie Flöge — but I still make sure to catch at least one performance each week. Someone in the wardrobe team is always happy to let me in through the stage door. Jamie never got cast in his samurai western so he’s still playing the Emcee — performing in the zip-cut corset and knee high boots I designed for him after convincing Anselmo that I’d got his original costume all wrong.
Marcus and I parted ways after one of his closest friends started brewing craft beer and he became soft around the middle from spending too much time taste testing. When he no longer resembled the ideal male specimen, I couldn’t remember what other charms I thought he’d once possessed. I haven’t felt the need to try dating anyone else though. My relationship with the Emcee is more than enough.
Anselmo told me recently that Jamie has agreed to stay on for at least another six months. I can only hope that the itch doesn’t return when he hangs up his corset for good.
+++