In the pandemic era, faces are mysterious

A funny thing about the pandemic era is that we now (in some places/cases at least) now have people we routinely see, who in effect have faces that stop below the eyes 

This makes the rest of the face a mysterious, intimate place, much as things must feel in cultures that routinely veil. 

There is a young woman at my physical therapist’s office (one of two who run the front counter) on whom I have a wicked crush. Pink hair, glasses, lots of very well done tattoos. She’s bubbly and friendly, relentlessly enthusiastic. We talk, at least every other session (I do PT twice a week, rehabbing a shoulder surgery), about tattoos, and she can’t wait to tell me about her last piece, or next piece, or pieces she’s planning for future. I’ve told her about piece i’m getting next week, and again, she can’t wait to see it. 

We’ve never seen each other’s faces, in all the months we’ve been chatting. 

Today, we were talking about coffee; someone had just brought her some fancy pour-over latte thing from philz coffee, and she was complaining about it, meanwhile laughing and telling me in great detail about whatever was wrong.

And then she tuned partially away, pulled down her mask and sipped.

Seeing the whole of her face, lips parted as she brought cup to her mouth, was as thrilling as catching a glimpse of accidentally exposed underwear, and to be honest, was nearly as thrilling as a brief glimpse of nipple. 

Because i’ve now been chatting with this beautiful young woman for about three months, twice a week, and never gotten her whole face, it was a wildly intimate feeling. Her face seemed too beautiful to believe, but I think that’s entirely the veil idea; the fact that I should not see it, made it intensely wrong, which is hotter than hell. 

I’m not, to be clear, saying anything positive about cultures that enforce veils/hijabs. It’s indefensible to enforce any such rule on a woman.

What i’m saying instead, is that the side effect of a practical need to protect each other with masks during a deadly plague, has produced a side effect that never occurred to me; faces have become a hidden, intimate place, a mystery. And I do love a good mystery.  

I already wanted to kiss this young woman. But this glimpse makes it a hundred times worse. 

land of pretty waitresses

Victoria, BC; land of pretty waitresses. I know. It sounds funny. But oddly, it’s true. I’ve been on Victoria Island for roughly 30 hours. That’s a dinner, a breakfast, a lunch, and another dinner. It’s not just that every waitress who’s waited on me has been unusually pretty. It’s that every waitress I’ve seen has […]

Victoria, BC; land of pretty waitresses.

I know. It sounds funny. But oddly, it’s true. I’ve been on Victoria Island for roughly 30 hours. That’s a dinner, a breakfast, a lunch, and another dinner.

It’s not just that every waitress who’s waited on me has been unusually pretty. It’s that every waitress I’ve seen has been unusually pretty. And not just the waitresses; this includes busers and hosteses. Hell, there are even pretty waiters.

What do they do, farm them? Is it the water? That clear Canadian air?

At lunch today, the waitress who served us looked every-so-slightly like Christine Taylor. She was distractingly cute. The woman who seated us at breakfast, a dark-haired british girl, had a sort of school-teacher, marion-librarian look, like she she had a little bit of wild thing lurking behind a a professional demeanor. And she wasn’t even the prettiest of a staff of pretty girls (and boys) at Canoe Brew Pub.

This afternoon, I sat in my hotel’s lounge watching a bartender and cocktail waitress who could have been sisters; olive-skinned and exotic, and even when I pictured them together.

Even the girls who waited on us tonight at the snack-shack at Butchart Gardens were cute as hell; one corn-fed, plump and sweet, the other skinny and pale with way too much back eye makeup.

The killer, though was Saturday night’s dinner. The hostess looked like a twenty-year-old Mira Sorvino, in a dress that came about as close to naked as one can be and still work in public. This girl was so stunningly pretty I had trouble paying attention to my meal, ordering the wrong dish and forgetting (three times) what I meant to order to drink. I can’t remember a thing I ate, and was almost completely unable to maintain a thread of conversation.

Her dress was made of some sort of clingy white jersey; cut loose in the front, it had the effect, almost, of some greco-roman toga. But when back-lit, the dress went nearly see-through, with that light-between-the-thighs thing that makes me insane. When she turned, the back managed to fit her hips and butt like a second skin, revealing the color, and every seam (and the exact location of the label) on her lacey thong.

This is the kind of girl who should be getting paid to take off her clothes; the fact that she’d look amazing out of them could not have been more clear. Every single time she walked though the dining room, I lost track of my meal. She’s the kind of girl who’s going to stick in my head for a while and might turn up, some day, as a character in some piece of fiction.

Is this some secret, that Victoria has cornered the market on beautiful women? Is this where they’re harvested, then taken to L.A. to be starved and then plumped with silicone and then stiffened with botox?

Or is it some plot among the restaurant managers of Victoria, to hire uniformly stunning people to serve food?

I will say, Victoria has turned into a very cool city. I Haven’t been here in twelve or thirteen years, and in that time, it’s grown up a lot. There are many, many new buildings, and many old ones are currently closed for upgrade and renovation. But what’s cool about it, now, is that it’s managed to preserve a european sense, while also developing a very organic sort of hipness. This is what Seattle must have been like twenty or thirty years ago, what I think Portland was like ten years ago. It’s a city that hasn’t quite been discovered as a hipster scene, but is heading there, in it’s own way rather than because people are coming here seeking a scene.

Thirteen years ago when I visited Vancouver I thought, I could see living here. Today, I thought the same thing about Victoria.

Of course, both trips I’ve had the luck of unusually good weather; both times, temps in the high eighties with clear skies, then gentle night-time breeze. I might have a different opinion if I’d been here in February or so.

But as with every trip I’ve ever taken to the Pacific Northwest, I look around and think, yeah, I see why people leave California for this place. Particularly this month when California has the Stench of fire and brimstone in the air.

Hollywood and Spike heels

I’m staying for a couple of nights in gray, rainy hollywood. I’d like to say that I’m here for the oscars, which are this coming Sunday and for which several blocks of hollywood blvd are blocked off; but no, I’m here instead to enjoy a wednesday evening show of Wicked (which in itself is a […]

I’m staying for a couple of nights in gray, rainy hollywood.

I’d like to say that I’m here for the oscars, which are this coming Sunday and for which several blocks of hollywood blvd are blocked off; but no, I’m here instead to enjoy a wednesday evening show of Wicked (which in itself is a good thing)

I’m staying in hollywood’s gothic glory, the Chateau Marmont (or ‘chateau marmot‘ as my mother and and children would have it); site of John Beluhi’s tragic death, and setting of episodes of Entourage, recordings by Anthony Kiedis and Ville Valo, and where bad girls like Britney and Lindsay get themselves in trouble.

It’s a hotel with a past; the kind of hotel where people look at you as you walk in and out to see if you’re anyone. It’s been here since the early part of the century, and one cannot help but wonder, who else has slept in this room.

I’d like to say I’ve been in the bar, drinking with people who make too much money and spend too much of it on cosmetics and cars; but alas, most of my day I’ve been working, solving all the problems that followed me out of work on a tuesday. I’m not out long enough to have actually nailed anything down, as I did when I went to fiji five years ago, nor even long enough that I needed to tell anyone but my boss; so of course my phone has rung a dozen times, and in the hour I spent in the air with my iPhone switched off, I got 10 emails I needed to answer and a half dozen texts.

Still; working in a king size bed at the Chateau beats being in my office.

It wasn’t all work today; I managed a very fine lunch and several martinis at one of my favorite restaurants, Musso and Frank; the kind of place that reeks of ambiance, the kind of place where cops and writers, stars and moguls, politicians and gangsters, strippers and hustlers, tourists, locals and as-beens all step in for a perfectly grilled steak and an ice cold martini. It’s the kind of place where the characters in my head meet and talk, brood, or seduce one another.

I also managed to have one of those moments I’m prone too, where I encounter a woman who gets into my head in a huge way.

Hollywood blvd is lined with sleaze, and I mean that in both the very best and very worst way. Cheap, glittery sex stores, tee-shirt emporiums, the kind of shops that have name brands on everything they knock off. The too-beautiful and the broken down, the very rich and very poor, the shiny and the tarnished meet in mid-block, the lines where one becomes the other never close to sharply defined. This means it’s both a great place to shop for things you can’t get anywhere else, and a great place to watch people.

Case in point; where else could one find, not one, but many places to buy thigh-high, florescent green plastic platform boots with seven-inch heels – in a men’s size fourteen.

These sorts of stores draw me in; places that sell cheap leather and the sort of lingerie you’d only see on someone paid to wear it, or someone who can’t tell the difference between whore-hot and whore-sleazy. The sort of stores where the shoe soles are not made for walking, but for pointing toward the ceiling.

We were browsing in one such store – my youngest daughter in a frenzy of fashion-shopping, finding the innocence and charm in all that vinyl, my older one trying to look pointedly away from all that funk and sleaze only to find it’s every single place she can think of to look.

I was admiring a rack of stainless-steel-and-leopard-print stiletto heels (wondering vaguely what they’d feel like walking up and down my spine) when I noticed a very pretty young woman trying on a pair of shoes in the back of the store.

Now, I’m not really a foot fetishist; I love women’s feet in that I love every single thing about women’s bodies. Feet are important because they are connected to ankles, calves, knees, and on up, every inch being something love. But – well, some things make a fetishist of me, at least for a moment.

She was trying on the sort of shoes no one – at least no one I’ve ever known – actually wears; this sort of thing.

“Those shoes look incredibly good on you,” I said to her, as she got up and wobbled across the store.

“Thanks; I don’t know if I can walk in them though.”

I looked at her feet, at the six inch spiked heels, at the impossible arch of her instep in them, like a body stretched just short of breaking on a rack; that perfect point of tension that’s just short of too much.

She had tattoos on her feet and ankles, lovely curves to her calves, and these shoes did things to her legs and feet that would break hearts and start wars.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“They’re not really made for, you know, walking,” I said.

She smiled at me in the mirror, then went on practicing walking in them, wobbling around and looking at herself. I helped her look.

I made a vague attempt to leave her alone, but found couldn’t. “They just look make your feet look incredibly sexy,” I said, and she smiled and thanked me; it was the kind of smile I’ve seen before from women who make a living being sexy, but it was also real, with barest touch of self-consciousness about a compliment from a stranger.

“I’m used to platforms,” she said. And I began to visualize tucking dollar bills in her g-string.

I had to walk away from her, my kids interrupting me before I could say more; I was going to ask to see her tattoos, to give me a chance to look at her feet some more; maybe ask her is she was a dancer, and more importantly (since I already knew the answer to that), where she danced.

I lost the moment though, and when I looked back at her she’d decided against the shoes, walking away with empty hands and flip-flop clad feet.

“I don’t think I could walk in them,” she said to me, as se left the store.

“too bad,” I said to her back. Too damned bad.

I was distracted for a good hour, thinking about it, as I found Musso and Frank and ordered lunch; my mind filled, not with images of her hips, or thighs, or face or breasts, as would usually be the case after such a moment, but with images of her feet. I could not get them out of my mind.

Fetishes are funny things.

nevermind that, tell me what you’re wearing

I’m a sucker for women’s voices. This happens to me all the time. I spend a lot of time on the phone as part of my job, dealing with software vendors, support people, sales. Sometimes I think, particularly in sales, they hire based on voices. So sometimes, while I’m on a business call, I’ll get […]

I’m a sucker for women’s voices.

This happens to me all the time. I spend a lot of time on the phone as part of my job, dealing with software vendors, support people, sales. Sometimes I think, particularly in sales, they hire based on voices.

So sometimes, while I’m on a business call, I’ll get distracted by a woman’s voice. Some accents do it to me – girlish southern charm or british elegance, or, god help me, scottish or irish (grrrrowl). But it’s the voice itself, and I can’t even begin to define what makes one voice sexier than another. It’s not just deep, or breathy, or whiskey-and-cigarettes. It’s not low, or high. It’s not any one of those things. Like what is and is not art, I can’t tell you what makes a voice sexy, but damn, i know it when I hear it.

But when it happens on a business call, I have a great deal of trouble maintaining composure.

It happened to me just now. I was talking to a sales rep for one of my software vendors about a licensing problem, and the woman (whose name was ‘Devina’) said my name, and I just lost my train of thought completely. She was talking about license versions and support tickets, and asking me questions about how we do things. I was trying to concentrate and answer, but I could feel my balls starting to tingle. I wanted to whisper call me daddy, and tell me what you’re wearing into my head-set. I wanted to start telling her to un-do a button on her blouse. or at least, I wanted to say you have a really, really sexy voice.

I behaved. I’m at work. I like my job and would just as soon not get fired. But I know there’s the one out there, now and then, who’d get it. The one who’d gasp, and respond to my lowered, growling tone the way I’m responding to her. I’ve talked to her, certainly, without even knowing it. The one who’d do what I told her, there at her desk. The one who’s panties I could dampen with a few words.

So after I hung up the phone, I wondered what Devina would sound like having an orgasm, I growled softly at the phone.

Women’s voices – they just drive me fucking wild.

hot for teacher

A dream I had last night – fading already, because I dreamed it early in a night filled with other dreams. I should have gotten up and written this at two am, when I woke, for it was brilliantly vivid at the time, that kind of taste-smell-touch memory of intense dreams. *                  […]

A dream I had last night – fading already, because I dreamed it early in a night filled with other dreams. I should have gotten up and written this at two am, when I woke, for it was brilliantly vivid at the time, that kind of taste-smell-touch memory of intense dreams.

*                    *                    *

I’d been in a class – some sort of technical scuba seminar, the kind where you study decompression and theory, but not the kind where you get in the water. This is the sort of classes i love in real life – no nonsense, no wasted time practicing skills I already have; just hard-core tech.

There were only a few of us in the class; a guy I remember (dark hair, little goatee, with a self-conscious hipster look about him) and several generic people I have no memory of. The class itself seemed to have happened just before the dream began, because the details of it are nowhere in my memory, only the sense of what it was and how I felt about it. The dream fades in as the class is ending. We’re picking up our things, filling out some sort of papers, writing checks to pay for the class.

The female instructor was the focus of the dream. She was tall, maybe an inch taller than me. Her hair a sort of sandy red. She was slender, but with the right sort of curves in the right places. She looked tan and athletic. Pretty, just short of the kind pretty that makes you stop and stare, the kind of breathtaking pretty that leaves me tongue-tied in real life.

She had that sort of smile, though; you know the kind, the sort of smile that makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room when it’s turned in your direction. She looked ten years my junior or more, thirty-three, maybe thirty-five.

As we gathered our things to leave the small classroom, two things were known to me, in that ‘previously, on‘ way things are assumed to have already happened in a dream joined mid-story. First, that I had developed a considerable crush on the instructor, and second, that the other man in the class seemed to have a similar interest. We were both dawdling as the class ended, letting the other students leave, waiting for our instructor to walk out. A sense of un-spoken rivalry hung in the room between us.

The instructor – nameless in my dream – stepped out of the room, and I timed my exit carefully to step out behind her while ‘accidently’ bumping my erstwhile rival just enough that he dropped his papers. Then I was past him and kicked the doorstop out, letting the door close behind me.

It was just enough – I somehow then had her to myself, in dream-time the minor delay I’d given him stretched out as long as I needed.

“Hey, I got a minute?” I asked her as she walked away. She stopped, looked back over her shoulder, and then smiled me and turned. She seemed glad to see I’d followed her.

I could feel the attraction, an electric spark between us.

“First, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your class.”

I went on a bit, though I’ve no idea the details; both the topic of the class, and the conversation about it, are gone now, in the light of day. What remains though is her face, blue eyes, a spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks, like Evangeline Lilly, and her look of warm attention.

“The other thing I wanted to say…”

I stumbled here, awkward, wanting to tell her I liked her. I stammered a little, then managed to get it out.

“…I find you really, really attractive, and I just can’t stop thinking, you know…”

She blushed faintly, and looked away, and bit her lip. And then stepped closer to me, across that invisible ‘personal space’ line.

“Oh my god,” she said, half a whisper, her voice gone breathy; “We’re both on exactly the same wavelength here.”

You know the feeling; that spark when someone you’re interested in, someone you’re attracted to, admits or demonstrates returning the feeling. A spark, a thrill.

I put a hand on her arm, and then she was touching me; and right there in the middle of the store or school or whatever public place, we were embracing, and kissing. It had an almost cinematic quality, like I was feeling our kiss, and seeing it. Her hard nipples against my chest, the skin of her waist under my fingers as they slid up under her shirt; the taste of her mouth, the smell of her, the musk of arousal and a faint floral scent in her hair.

At the same time, i could see us; her strawberry-blond hair, her white blouse, now half-un-tucked. Her jeans-clad leg half wrapped around mine and she leaned into me. My tattooed arms, one around her waist, one around her shoulders, pulling her to me.

And behind us, my frustrated rival, knowing he’d lost; raging at his timing, though in truth he’d lost long before I cut him off.

Things blur after this – at some point we are in her car, a frustratingly small honda. She’s half on top of me as we kiss. Her shirt’s half-off, bra unhooked. Her nipples are like fat, pink gumdrops and I want them in my mouth. We need a place to go, but her house is an hour away; we’re debating a cheap motel, lamenting that her car’s too damned small, way to damned small.

We agree on some destination. And then, oddly realistic, for my dreams – we stop to buy condoms.

*                    *                    *

I woke here – as usual, arousal ripping me out of the dream before I can near any consummation. But i was struck, as I lay half-awake – by the unusually narrative quality of the dream. I have such dreams rarely, though at least a few of my best erotic stories are inspired by such dreams. But also, I was struck by the reality of it. My subconscious had placed me in an entirely hypothetical, and yet absolutely true-to-life situation in the scuba-related training class; the stumbling awkwardness I am prone to when flirting with a particularly pretty girl is, while not universal for me, frustratingly real. And the fact that my sub-conscious said condoms is unprecedented. I’ve never in my life inserted condoms in a sex dream.

I wish I’d woken enough to write it down at two am. The dream was so richly detailed, and so emotionally vivid. What I’ve reconstructed here is a shadow of the dream I woke from. But it will have to do.

i want maggie gyllenhaal

I’ve come to the conclusion that Maggie Gyllenhaal may be the sexiest woman on the planet (well, apart from a couple of my readers, though I’m not naming names. Just assume it’s you). Now, I sort of had this feeling after seeing Secretary, as I’ve discussed at length with the lovely Miss Syl. I mean, […]

I’ve come to the conclusion that Maggie Gyllenhaal may be the sexiest woman on the planet (well, apart from a couple of my readers, though I’m not naming names. Just assume it’s you).

Now, I sort of had this feeling after seeing Secretary, as I’ve discussed at length with the lovely Miss Syl. I mean, it’s a great film, and she’s impossibly sexy in it (I could watch some of those scenes of her getting spanked over and over, and in fact have, in my head at least). But the whole film’s brilliantly sexy, with that pervasive feeling that makes one want to go home and grab someone (or oneself) and have many orgasms.

But y’know, one film, you can’t always judge. I mean, Melanie Griffith was a contender (who am I kidding, she owned it), for like six months after Something Wild came out, But by the time she’d made Working Girl that was well over and it proved that sexy as fuck in one film doesn’t mean much when the film’s over (and don’t get me started on Ms. Griffith now – *shudder*).

So the other day I watched Stranger Than Fiction. And that cemented Maggie’s place on that ‘sexiest women’ list.

Now, that may be a strange movie to do that. It’s not a particularly sexy movie. It’s a very good movie – with a surprisingly good dramatic performance by Will Ferrell (and you know, I think he can do still better), a great performance by Emma Thompson, and an incredibly clever script. But even with a vaguely romantic element, there’s no sex to speak of. This could not be more opposite Secretary, which radiated sex.

But from the moment she turned up on screen, sweaty, frazzled, angry and tattooed, I wanted her. I didn’t even remember she was in the movie, so my reaction went something like wow, she’s kinda hot – whoa is that Maggie Gyllenhaal?

The thing that makes her so damned sexy in this movie is that they in no way set out to make her sexy. They just presented a character, as they did with other characters in the film. She’s a vaguely eccentric, vaguely emo sort of craftsperson; educated, but working in a simple, honest profession as a baker. But being that kind of character, she wants to make a grand, if silly, political statement (silly in that she can’t win, not silly in intent, who doesn’t agree with the idea of withholding taxes that go to pay for idiotic wars? Well, idiots, I guess.) She reminded me of a number of people I know; artists, writers (and some bloggers I know.) And she was the kind of character I like to write about. She has that I just am who I am kind of sexy.

And then there’s the tattoos.

I have to say, Maggie’s tattoos in Stranger Than Fiction are some of the best fake tattoos I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. The typical mistake is to make them too perfect, too bright, too dark. They’re almost always over-done, and usually, not done with the right sort of aesthetic. They may look real to the typical viewer, but to those of us who have and know tattoos, most movie tattoos look a bit suspect. The Tattoos in this movie look exactly right; the japanese half-sleeve on her right arm has exactly the look and feel of a tattoo this character would have, and it’s done the way it really would be, not quite wrapping all the way around in back, leaving the area around the armpit bare. It was so convincing I actually wondered it it was real.

The one that really got me though – and damn if i can find a picture of it – was the star on her neck. Now, again, the temptation would have been to give her some big, splashy, obvious thing, and to have made it perfect. But that’s not what this character would have had. The tattoo, a black star on the right side of her neck, an inch or two below her ear, was sort of ordinary. It was small – maybe the size of a nickel – and best of all, it was sort of crooked. It was that, more than anything, that made me fall for the character, and by extension, for the performer. Because she looked like, was, the sort of character who’d have a weird, imperfect tattoo on her neck.

I spent the whole movie wanting to kiss and bite this little star tattoo. It was absolutely distracting when I could see it, and when I couldn’t, I kept wanting her to turn around so I could see it. And while I loved the movie (it’s incredibly clever and well written), I spent the next two days with a naked, tattooed Maggie Gyllenhaal in my head.

I think I need to go find every other movie she’s ever been in, particularly the ones where she’s naked. Mmmm. Naaaaaked….

You’ll just have to find that out for yourself

I’m standing in Downtown Disney in my black workman’s utilikilt, trying to get a cell connection (Cingular may have better service than verizon did but they really don’t have quite the quality.) I’m standing in a stream of people who I assume were heading towards the disney trams; i am the rock around which the […]

I’m standing in Downtown Disney in my black workman’s utilikilt, trying to get a cell connection (Cingular may have better service than verizon did but they really don’t have quite the quality.)

I’m standing in a stream of people who I assume were heading towards the disney trams; i am the rock around which the stream part, standing with my back facing the upstream mass.

“Don’t you dare, mother!” i hear, and turn, to see an attractive older women woman and her even more attractive late-twneties daughter heading my general direction. I smile at them, and know they were somehow talking about me.

They glance at each other, and the mother leans is close, not stopping, and asks the question.

“We were wondering if it’s really true that you don’t wear anything under there.”

They’re stepping past me, and I am intent on the phone call I’m trying to have.

“You’ll just have to find that out for yourself.” I say. And they shriek, and giggle, and it’s that kind of giggle. Then they’re gone one way, and I’m walking away another; but I know that these two attractive ladies are now, as they head home, thinking about my cock. And that alone makes my evening.

kitten heels

I stopped my truck to let her cross. She’d emerged from from a shiny, modern auto, and was headed for starbucks, or jamba juice, one of those corporate purveyors of sweet-soulless beverages. I generally let people cross in parking lots; it’s one of those general rules of courtesy I try to follow, all the more […]

I stopped my truck to let her cross.

She’d emerged from from a shiny, modern auto, and was headed for starbucks, or jamba juice, one of those corporate purveyors of sweet-soulless beverages.

I generally let people cross in parking lots; it’s one of those general rules of courtesy I try to follow, all the more because I drive a big vehicle, and because I have a somewhat threatening demeanor. So I go out of my way to make shows of public courtesy (one might say I was lulling people into a sense of false security, and one would not be entirely wrong).

But in this case, the act wasn’t one of courtesy, so much as it was one of – words fail me here, mesmerizement?

She was attractive; lovely, possibly. I can’t really say for sure. Thirtyish, or fourtyish, or more, or even less. The details melt away. Her hair was pixie-short, stylishly so. Expensively colored some wine-dark tone.

She smiled at me when I stopped my huge truck and waved her on, go ahead, you have the right of way. Her makeup was tasteful, lips some strong color I can’t recall, which didn’t particularly compliment or clash with her hair. Nice, but not striking.

But it was her clothing that left me overwhelmed.

She wore a skirt in an orange one rarely sees in clothing; an orange made for hot-rods from the seventies, for vintage british amplifiers. For plastic furniture or sports uniforms or or the inside of lava lamps. It wasn’t demurely orange, elegantly orange; it wasn’t naturally orange, the orange of fruit or blossoms. It was brazenly orange, aggressively orange. It shouted, screamed the color – Orange!

The skirt was longish, to the calf, in some swingy, flowing fabric. It was the sort of skirt my female friends will know the name for, the cut, the length, the fabric. But it was well made, and moved about her legs as she walked, flashing only a bit of calf, and flattering what wasn’t a remarkable walk.

Her shoes were like some minimalist craft; sleek and low, like cigarette boats or the sort of cars that sit so low you can’t see them from your SUV window at a stop. Barely a shoe at all; low and flat, with a slightest band across the ball of her feet, her toes peeking out. The heels were low, with angular, sharply tapered heels. They’re what I think are called a ‘kitten heel’, which I recall only because the word ‘kitten’ has so much sexual resonance for me when applied to a woman.

They’re shoes I’d never have noticed, but that they matched her skirt. They were blindingly, brilliantly, attention-grabbingly orange. Tiny, thin, barely there; yet the image if the elegantly tapered heel has attached itself to my mind’s eye. Her feet were hypnotic.

And there was her jacket; and this is where all hell breaks loose.

Imagine if you will: Drop acid with Emanuel Ungaro and Peter Max, and they spend the night watching Yellow Submarine, making love, and designing ladies jackets. Imagine a color palate featuring this mind-bending, eyeball-saturating orange, and mate it with contrasting hues in similar intensity. Imagine the yellow, the green, the pink that would go with this, and take your mental paintbrush and swirl it into a carefully planned psychedelic salmagundi.

You are short of this jacket; you have made a valiant attempt, but you fail. It is more; brighter; wilder. It is a garment made from madness and pop-art; or one might simple say, it was very bright.

And I sat in my truck, willing my eyes to close, to allow myself a moment to recover. And I thought, where is she going?

Because my town, it is not the sort of place where Peter Max and Ungaro give birth to a psychedelic love-child in dupioni; it is not the sort of place where a woman goes causally down to Starbucks in a swirl of brilliant orange skirts and matching kitten-heeled mules. It is not a town where elegant ladies wear amazing technicolor dream coats.

This woman, in fact looked like she might have stepped out of the world’s most elegant circus. I wondered, as she vanished in my rear-view mirror, if she were the office manager for cirque du couture. My mind filled with a vision of designer clown cars disengorging an elegantly clad and near-eternal stream of perfectly-coiffed clowns, not slapping about in huge, boat-like shoes but instead clicking along in dolce & gabbana. Ringmasters in chanel, jugglers in gautier, tightrope-walkers and acrobats in lagerfeld and st. laurent.

Was she the den mother for the cubscout be-in? Was she the here with a gypsy caravan? Was she a member of some mind-warping cult, a designer-dressed pied piper, ready to lure our vogue-reading rats and children off to some pleasure island of tropical-candy-colord joy and sin?

Who was she and what was she doing in my town? And did she, I wonder now, know what she was doing? Or was this some horrible accident of taste that brought her out, perfectly, elegantly dressed in something where the word taste becomes abstractly meaningless. Did she not even know?

And I am left to wonder; what did her blouse look like, for I never even saw it. And what – my mind going there because it has to – did she on have under that sun-bright skirt? Nothing, I want to think, but i know that’s wrong. But i wish – hope – that she had the tiniest thong, covering a perfectly, lovingly waxed pussy; a delicate thread of brightest orange or acid green or hot, tropic pink elegantly cleaving a perfect bottom. I want the part I couldn’t see to be as outrageously, loudly perfect as the rest.

I will never know; but let’s all assume I’m right.

Motörhead Girl

I looked over my lunch date’s shoulder, as we ate garlic-and-chili tofu and rice. I can’t even say exactly why the girl in the corner of the restaurant distracted me so much; or maybe it’s as simple as what she was wearing. She was blond; long, wavy hair. My best guess puts in her late […]

I looked over my lunch date’s shoulder, as we ate garlic-and-chili tofu and rice.

I can’t even say exactly why the girl in the corner of the restaurant distracted me so much; or maybe it’s as simple as what she was wearing.

She was blond; long, wavy hair. My best guess puts in her late twenties, though early or mid thirties might not be far off. She had a pretty, round face, and a figure you might call lush, or less flatteringly, round or plump. She had that pretty, shy look, like she had no idea how good looking she was.

She was wearing a Motörhead tee-shirt; I noticed this second, after I noticed that she was pretty. I have the exact same shirt.

I was looking at her over my lunch date’s shoulder; she looked up, looked away, down at her menu, then looked back at me. She blushed, I think, her pale cheeks coloring just slightly.

Maybe she knew me from work; I don’t know. When I later walked out, I caught a glimpse of a work id at her belt. Or maybe she just liked me looking at her, or in her insecurity, wondered why I might stare.

She was eating with two men, one asian, one not; both geeks. I could imagine them discussing gaming, or operating systems, or which Rush album was best. Co-workers, not boyfriends; Body language made that clear. She was one of the boys. I had an eye on her, without seeming to stare, all through lunch.

Later, when I walked out, I looked at her from another angle. She was in jeans, a little too small for her but in a good way. I wanted to see her standing, walking. I wanted to see her ass.

The t-shirt had ridden up slightly. She wasn’t wearing it that way in purpose; I’ll bet she feels too fat. A soft curve of skin showed between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her tee-shirt, creamy-pale against indigo denim and jet black shirt.

I imagined the feel of her skin, soft against my palm. The contrast of rough denim and soft, soft hip. Pictured stepping close behind her, one hand there, fingers inside the waist of her jeans; one in her hair, pulling her head back against my shoulder, turning her face to kiss me.

“You are getting into my head,” I wish I could tell her. From across the room; your face, your hair, your cool, rock-n-roll tee-shirt. Because when you reach across a room full of strangers and grab someone’s attention, get in someone’s head, you should know about it.

Motörhead girl, I want to kiss you.

girl on a motorbike

I sat at a light, and watched a girl on a motorbike.

The bike was yellow; the girl was in leather, jeans. Her booted feet looked like a child’s, tiny black leather boots.

She passed me in an intersection as I waited for green, and then I tried to catch her; in my huge gray truck, it was hopeless. But I tried, ran a light to stay with her, passed my stop.

Her helmet was decorated, neck to crown, in sparkling stickers, whorls and flourish and little stick-on gems. It was a helmet a little girl would imagine on a princess, should a princess ride a motorbike; perfect and elegant, yet child-like.

I lost her at the next light, carving between cars on her fleet little yamaha; her black braid trailing behind her in the wind. I never got a look at even the sliver of face a motorcycle helmet would show, only a pair of mirrored shades, no more.

I turned my truck around, a great tire-screeching arc, and went back to my errand.

This is the song I dialed on my iPod as I drove away.

 

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