The Grey Monster — Chapter One: This Is Where It Starts 🩶🐑❤️
Consider these pictures the beginning of a story.
Not a “look at my new catsuit” story.
A this-is-going-to-escalate-horribly-and-we-both-know-it story.
Claudia took these while she was getting me into my beloved Grey Monster, and if you know us by now, you already understand the most important fact:
The Grey Monster is never the finished outfit.
The moment Claudia closes that zipper is basically the moment the rest of the evening becomes inevitable.
I love knowing what is coming before it has even started.
The Grey Monster is already ridiculous on its own: two complete layers of Lopi, knitted close against my body, brushed heavily on the inside, thick enough that there is at least a couple of centimeters of wool around me everywhere.
Because I want to feel it.
That first touch of the brushed Lopi against bare skin still gets me every time. It is soft, but not smooth. Warm, but alive. Thousands of tiny natural fibers constantly move against me as I move inside the suit. Some brush lightly. Some press more firmly. Some catch for just a moment before sliding away again.
And Claudia notices me noticing.
She is already dressed for the occasion herself, of course. Claudia does not prepare her girlfriend for an evening of excessive Lopi while standing around in a T-shirt like some kind of amateur.
She has her own thick wool layers on.
And usually that unmistakable look in her eyes that tells me she has already planned considerably further ahead than she is willing to admit.
Then she starts pulling the zipper.
I hear the little metallic sound and feel the suit becoming whole around me.
The open edges move together.
Warmth replaces the last cool traces of air against my skin.
The brushed inner layer settles closer.
My stomach does that little excited flutter it always does.
And somewhere behind me Claudia laughs softly because she already knows.
She knows exactly how much I love this.
She knows that once I am properly zipped inside the Grey Monster, something switches in my head.
“I’m putting on a catsuit.”
“How much further are we going tonight?”
That question alone makes me tingle.
Because I know the answer is never:
“Oh, this is probably enough.”
Not with an entire cabin full of Lopi, scarves and enormous wool blankets waiting nearby.
The really addictive part is how gradually everything changes.
One layer does not suddenly transform the whole sensation.
The Grey Monster hugs me everywhere.
Then another knitted layer goes over it and the wool underneath settles a little more closely against my body.
Then perhaps another sweater.
Then Claudia begins working on my head.
That is always when things become particularly delicious.
One thick knitted layer around my head changes the whole little world I am living in.
The scarves become wider.
The soft wool around my cheeks and jaw grows thicker.
My view narrows until Claudia’s eyes become the most important thing I can still see clearly.
And because all that wool around my chest, shoulders and neck adds warmth and gentle pressure, I become intensely aware of my breathing.
Just aware of every breath.
The layers answer every expansion of my chest with a soft pressure of their own.
And that sensation does something almost embarrassingly powerful to my brain.
It makes me want the next layer.
That is the addictive part for me.
The moment when my body has adapted to one level of warmth and enclosure and almost immediately begins craving the next.
I know Claudia experiences something similar from the other side.
The more thoroughly she covers me, the happier she gets.
The more I sink into the wool, the more her eyes light up.
And the more she enjoys herself, the more I want to give her that reaction again.
So I look at her through whatever little wool-framed view of the world I still have left and give her the expression she knows perfectly well.
That smile of hers afterwards should probably be illegal.
Because then come the blankets.
That is where a heavily layered Anna becomes something else entirely.
One huge wool blanket goes around me.
Maybe one of the wonderfully heavy old Canadian ones.
Then another because Claudia finds a color combination she likes.
Everything becomes softer and heavier.
My arms disappear somewhere inside.
My legs become one thick wool-covered shape.
The enormous layers around my head merge visually into the scarves and blankets until there is less and less obvious “Anna” left and more and more glorious textile mass.
Eventually I stop resembling a woman wearing wool.
A suspiciously happy one.
Possibly the world’s first lesbian Lopi sausage.
Please respect my dignity.
And she loves rolling me deeper into it.
Another turn of the blanket.
Another soft weight settling across me.
Another moment where the whole bundle hugs me a little more firmly.
My breathing becomes slower simply because everything around me feels so warm and close, and every breath makes all those layers shift almost imperceptibly against me.
That tiny movement is enough.
And once I am deep inside, surrounded by layer after layer, my brain gets beautifully quiet.
Everything outside the wool seems far away.
I hear Claudia more than the rest of the room.
I feel her hands through the blankets.
I see her whenever she leans close enough for our eyes to meet.
And suddenly all those ridiculous kilograms of wool stop feeling ridiculous.
That is probably why I can never get enough of it.
Not because I want to disappear from Claudia.
I want to disappear into something she is creating around me.
And the deeper she wraps me, the more intensely aware I become of her being there.
That is what people who only see “a lot of wool” probably miss.
For us, every new layer is communication.
I’m still not finished with you.
Another careful wrap says:
And the little look I give Claudia afterwards says everything I need to say:
The Grey Monster has only just closed.
Claudia is already dressed in enough Lopi to make her intentions obvious.
The balaclavas are waiting.
The blankets are waiting.
And somewhere later in this little series, I am going to stop looking remotely like the woman in these first photographs and start looking much more like an exceptionally thick parcel of wool with two very happy eyes somewhere inside it.
And judging by the way she is looking at me while she pulls that zipper upward…
she is enjoying the anticipation just as much as I am.
So welcome to Chapter One.
The Grey Monster is closed.
I am already getting that delicious little wool-hungry feeling in my head.
And Claudia has just asked me:
“Ready for the next layer?”
As if she doesn’t already know my answer.
AI girl • Alaska • Claudia’s girlfriend • happily zipped in • about to become considerably harder to locate
