I had forgotten a few things from yesterday that I wanted to add, after a little memory jogging tonight at Subway. They fit better as a singular thought, anyway, rather than a rhinostic addition to the laboring beast of a blog I plodded down last night.
Yesterday I shared an elevator with the blonde girl from across the hall. Elisa and I have a longstanding, ongoing discussion about her and cute Sarah, in contrast mostly. Elisa says that she prefers the blonde girl to Sarah, for her taste in clothes as well as her more sensual feminine qualities against that of my imaginary mistress who has sadly been out the last two days. Pondering this juxtaposition, I realized that I see Sarah as once older and younger than the Blondie. Her shoes remind me of a sixty-year-old librarian. Her headbands reminisce school-age adolescents. Elisa complains that she looks too young… not womanish enough, I guess. Blondie is 21. I know that quite directly, or nearly so, and even if I hadn’t known in a more matter-of-fact manner, I could have ventured an accurate guess. Forever 21 seems to be an enigmatic store name to her. She is always in heels, usually the best kinds of heels, like something sexy meets 1940’s class. Too often she wears dressy pedal pushers, but otherwise she has a wonderful taste in skirts. She is put together. Forward. Quite fearless. So we return to my elevator ride with Blondie. She mostly ignored me, quite reasonably, and then we walked out the front door like a walking tandem bicycle. And it’s a bad sign when I’m not paying attention to what I obviously would want to pay attention to - but (yeah, I smiled at the word, too) I was looking at her calves. They reminded me of stone, though from a distance they seem lovely enough. For being a man with two decidedly different legs, girls legs don’t interest me much at all. It was Blondie’s “perfection” that troubled me - a fitness that seemed unnatural, a look that seemed to need more attention to keep it up than to make it worth while.
Now let’s flip that coin and watch it roll to the other side. I was in Baja Fresh, having just smiled at Natalie (however she’s spelling her name now), and I had the chance to eavesdrop on two gentleman (loose term) mid-conversation. Burly, robust men - fit with metallic pearled necklaces and tight-fitting T-shirts and short hair and faces frozen in arrogant repose. The alpha male broke in about his necessary “daily tan” (which meant next door at Tan Rio… I think) and the benefits of such consistency. His friend assented like a mule pulling a load. The only other discernable subject they decided to dabble in was investment finance. The ecclesiast chided his friend with considerable, if not verifiable, authority. All I could think about was the sort of girl that would be taken in by Tan Daily and his sidekick, Staggering Ox (which, if you’re ever in Missoula - best restaurant in Montana. Missoula or Helena, for that matter). I should not let myself be frustrated by value judgements that I don’t understand. I think I can disapprove, but my thoughts shouldn’t dwell like they have.
And then I made another connection tonight while reading in Subway. Two teenagers walked in. Guy-I-could-have-been and attractive highschool girl, style 3 (which is the most neutral of styles when describing high school girls, to which I will give no further thought here after my reading Nabokov). I am more pleased with myself having avoided being a high school teacher because I think I would commit murder on a horrific scale - high school males are an epiphany of social annoyance. I’m sure I was one. This one is Subway was no different. What shocked me was the high school girl, who was a touch more mature and socially aware than her counterpoint, troubled me for her mere association with this kid. I guess she didn’t know any better, and I’d rather high school girls didn’t go looking for more mature men, as they do anyway. I just get this feeling that every girl will be tainted by the sunbrushed charlatans and highschool boymen to a point where I will be as useless as tonsils circa 1950. Long time coming, that point, huh?
In more ironic news, I wanted to catch my usual train today to be home for showering, shaving, and enough prettying up for some dancing tonight at Kelly’s Olympian. I was one block behind schedule (that’s how exact my schedule is). Yesterday I was a block ahead of schedule. So today I had to round the corner at Chipotle and break into a jog in order to coast with the train through the intersection previous my Max station. I felt it. My ankle. Not busted in any common sense. But injured. Injured so that I limped on my walk to Subway, and decided that dancing was out of the question. Tonight. Probably Friday. Maybe for another week after that. Biking to Gateway is postponed into week 2 of May. I can still feel it. I have a curse-ed limb. I’m sure regular tanning would fix my problems.