Friday, April 04, 2008
Street Theater
I’m trusting you to believe me when I tell you this, but I don’t usually notice first off whether another dude is cute. That’s just not where I usually go. So I was actually a little surprised at myself to be thinking, first off, that this was a truly handsome young man. The next thing I noticed was that he was talking on a cell phone, then his ballcap, perched awkwardly on his big anachronistic afro. His other hand, at his waistband, held pants that drooped in back well past his knees, exposing comortable-looking black boxers. His track jacket was slung deeply off both his shoulders and the team jersey underneath was ruched voluminously. His pristine court shoes sported thick heavy laces that he had left eblaborately untied. He walked slowly, his knees mired in his track suit, both hands immobilized in ungainly, opposite positions, openmouthed, wide-eyed, slackjawed, slump-shouldered, shuffling, vacant. He looked a little like a young Will Smith, but the overall effect was pretty damn ludicrous.
He turned, confusedly, exposing a designer’s name written in large white letters across his ass, and checked in with a young woman standing nearby. She stood near a a sapling that was just coming into leaf, wearing well-maintained form-fitting jeans, black leather boots with heels, a designer T and a denim jacket. She seemed a little younger than he, also attractive though clearly still in sight of her childhood. She looked, regardless, like she meant business. She gestured toward the young man with agonized frustration, hunching, reaching forward, both hands outstretched; then she stood quickly back up, hip cocked, arms crossed, lip curled in a disappointed sneer, and her eyes began to scan.
Our eyes met, just for an instant. I was just walking past, after all, ears plugged with wires, looking at stuff as it went on around me on my way to the bus stop, just another dude going home. Her eyes registered my presence but glided right past, kept turning towards something nearby, something that whithered that sneer right off her cheeks and sucked all the starch from her spine:
A woman, white, normal, on her cell phone. She’s sensibly dressed for having spent her day in an office downtown, light on the make-up and moderately long in the tooth. Did she carry an attache’ case? Was it leather, or cloth? I don’t recall, it made no difference. Everything about her read “mainstream moderate.” Her personal credo, I couldn’t guess, but she was the personification of the downtown everywoman, a starling noteworthy mostly for being isolated from its anonymizing flock.
She was putting away her cell, watching the lanky, painstakingly disheveled young man, and laughing her ass off at him. She made no pretense of subtlety; she stared and guffawed. And truly, he was ridiculous; it took willpower for me not to join her. But I had seen the hurt look in that young girlwoman’s eyes, and I’m really glad that this time, for a change, I restrained myself.
