This Mortified Coil

My life is one big blooper reel... full of the outtakes that you'd see at the end of a movie... only that IS the movie. Case in point:

I'm dating someone again. Yes, it's true. I also have a job, that is also true. And these two wonderous new finds just happen to overlap, but not in any kind of icky way. All of this is grand perfection... hooray for me!

But this is my life, so there's gotta be a laugh coming, right?

About an hour or so ago, my new boss/boyfriend had just arrived at his parents' place in New York for a week-long visit, and he decided to show them, along with one of his brothers, our trip to the Georgia Aquarium in my Flickr photos. That's all well and good, and many "oohs" and "ahs" filled the room. If it had stopped there, it wouldn't be my life.

Instead, he decided to show them my gallery of self-portraits on Flickr as well, so that they could get a better view of me. And rather than just clicking the thumbnails here or there, he decided to utilize the "view as slideshow" option for some reason. By about the 4th photo in the group, he realized that he'd made a gigantic error. There, frozen for all to see in an extended delay of a slideshow, made slower by a tedious dial-up connection, was an "art" picture of... wait for it... my bare breasts.

Okay, so they weren't completely exposed, but they were exposed enough and in such a way that, even though there was artfulness to the image, no one... I repeat, NO ONE... would want their boyfriends' (or their bosses') parents to see. Nevermind the fact that the brother was there... I can handle a brother seeing that, but not the parents!

So he called me, giggling as he told me the story, but all I had to hear was, "So I decided to show my parents your photos on Flickr..." and I instantly launched into, "Oh... no. No. No. No, no, nonono. NO. NONONONONONO. Oh God, oh God, oh God, NO!" I knew immediately where this was going.

He proceeded to tell me the details of the moment, while laughing profusely, and the story only got worse. With the picture frozen there on the monitor, refusing to advance, the room fell into a dead silence as he tried to block the image with his hands, followed shortly by his parents clearing the room entirely, and his brother muttering something about "not being able to sleep for weeks now," or something of that nature.

(Don't try to go looking for the photo now, friends. That ship has sailed. The site is completely rated G now. I ran straight to the computer and I made sure of that.)

Earlier today, while discussing our trip to Orlando in 2 weeks for a friend's wedding, he asked if I'd ever been to NYC... and hearing that I hadn't, he said, "Then that will be our next trip." After hearing this story of his tonight, however, I had to say, "You know what this means, don't you? It means that I can never show my face in New York now... or at least not in the Bronx, and definitely not around your family."

What will likely happen --because this is my life I'm talking about-- is that I'll end up married to him and hearing this story told and retold, forever and ever... and I'll live, of course, mortified ever after. That's why I'm writing it out here now, so I can get accustomed to the telling of the tale. And when the movie of my life is made, I promise you this scene will make it to the big screen. You heard it here first.