Creep: A Love Story

Mysterious, veering, treacherous codes: long, loose hair is innocent, until it’s whoreish; tanned flesh is lowly, until it’s exotic; cleverness is charming, until it’s embarrassing. With everything we give, we get smaller – and if we don’t, men take it anyway, pinching and nipping and penetrating. We pat creams around our eyes, cover upper arms, as men coarsen and grey good-naturedly.

You don’t marry the person they will be in ten or twenty years, he continues. If you’re prepared for that, then the variations, the up-and-down nature of living, of life, can be dealt with without feeling like your marriage will be disrupted.