The Pantless PSW

As promised, I present to you the second instalment of what I intend(ed) to be a series of posts. Let me just say that I’m pretty proud of myself for following through and returning to the topic of the PSWs who visit me twice daily. Even as I published the first, I knew it was a long shot that I’d harness the energy to keep it up, but here we are! Sometimes I surprise myself.

It’s Friday, the day she always comes, so I’m jumping this time to a new PSW. I’ll bestow her with the moniker “Pantless P” for reasons that will soon become abundantly clear.

I see PP once a week. She’s genuinely very nice, and I know that she has the best of intentions at heart. That acknowledged, she drives me up the frickin’ wall, mostly because almost every visit ends with her yanking down her pants. In front of me. On purpose.

Why? To show me her three layers of compression stuff (compression socks, tights, and underwear, in case you were wondering).

See, PP has varicose veins, with which I’m on almost intimate terms due to how frequently they feature in our conversations. Just this morning, her answer to a simple question—“How are you doing?”—was a longwinded story about how her varicose veins were acting up due to changes to the weather pattern. She’s gone to the ER four times, each for a vein check, in the couple of months I’ve known her.

Health anxiety is real. I get that, and I try to be distantly supportive when PP inevitably brings up her VVs. It’s not the fact that she experiences this anxiety that bothers me; rather, it’s how she processes her feelings.

More to the point, it’s how she processes her feelings by disrobing from the waist down in order to show me her three layers of compression garments.

I hope I don’t need to explain why this strikes me as a little … inappropriate? Disruptive? Though a single word that encapsulates my feelings when she bares her stomach as I lie in bed, unable to flee, escapes me, or perhaps doesn’t exist in the English language, suffice it to write that I don’t like it, PP. This isn’t a game of “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” If it is, then all of my other PSWs aren’t playing.

The moral of this story, then? Don’t remove your pants in front of near-strangers. Or do, but only if they’ve consented and it’s in your job description.