Saturday, March 29, 2008

Butt Crack

Musings on a Butt Crack

I wonder if she felt it. Almost the entire split of her backside bulged out over too-tight pants as she sat on the picnic table bench across from a Jack Spratt skinny man. The table was situated alongside the busy road carrying workers and moms, students and musicians, athletes and gardeners to and fro. I mean, didn’t she sense a draft back there? Didn’t the tightness of her southerly waistband cut off circulation so that her legs would tingle like when you sleep on your arm wrong? Does she not have nerve endings in the back of her body? Oh, well then. She MUST think it’s attractive. Or maybe sexy. Jesus, there ought to be a law.
How can people a) get that way or b) think that the exposure of such corpulence is appealing? Maybe her man likes the publicity, as in “my wife has a wonderful derrière, and I want everyone to see it.” Has he ever looked at a Playboy? The centerfold has to be unfolded vertically for a reason. They don’t require a horizontal unfolding as well. I have never seen a “large” print version of Playboy. Maybe there’s a market for this mature AARP version. Call it Aging Ass for Retired Playboys.
Back to my friend at the park. She had a long, thick braid descending almost to the top of her bare buttocks--the kind you see in K Mart and 99 cent stores--or at health food stores draping down the backs of gray haired male and female hippies in their sixties and seventies wearing sandals and no bras. I kind of like that idea, though. There must be an age at which it’s okay not to care any more. Or rather, there must be a time when you can choose to dress to the nines OR roam around in the slovenly furnishings of the rich and famous when you’re fixed-income poor and decidedly unknown, or want to be.
Maybe my new acquaintance was a starlet in disguise wearing a Mrs. Doubtfire body suit and a Sacagawea wig for a privately public picnic in no-name Cypress, California on a Thursday afternoon. Or not. At forty miles and hour on the way home from work, I didn’t take the time to circle around for a closer view. After all, it looked dreadful the first time around. However, it DID garner my attention in the sick way writers find grist for the writing mill in just about anything.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Why No One Does Windows

Washing Windows

You don’t know what you’ve missed seeing until
You wash your windows and
Watch your dingy world clarify itself.
You hum as you work and ask yourself
“Why don’t I do this more often?”

The outside looks great until you’re inside
And you see a smudge--a streak that got by you.
You mosey outside, sure it will be the last time
And you look through, assuming perfection.
Now it’s smeared on the inside.
The smudge that wasn’t there is there now.
Crap.
Back and forth; in and out. And then finally…
It looks good!

--BEAT--

You start to walk away; and turn your head
For one last look at your beautiful, flawless windows.
But from this new angle --
Crap!
Another streak.
You walk back-- rag in hand.
You are no longer humming.
In fact, you are cussing.
You think, “Newspapers will do the trick.”
You will win. You know it.
You can smell sweet victory.
You wipe feverishly,
Holding your breath until you are ALL done.
You step back, gasping. Your arms ache.
A smile twitches at your lips.
“HA HA. I Win,” you say to yourself until --

--BEAT--

Your laughter slows. Your grin frowns.
There. In the corner. Right near the bottom.
What is that?
Damn!
There’s another.
One more.
Oh, to hell with it.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Italians

I am half Italian. But I missed out on the beautiful half. Having been in Rome in December, I can honestly say that there were some astonishingly handsome men there. Sexy, dark, sculpted, swarthy, alive with youth or wizened with smug self-knowledge and worldliness. They did seem self-absorbed, but then who wouldn't be with their dark and curly hair, black-brown eyes ringed with luscious, thick eyelashes; lips full and Latin, the whites of their eyes and teeth made whiter by Mediterranean dark skin? And cheekbones. God, the cheekbones. No wait. Check out the tight, telling jeans.
On their arms, or in a clutch of young people, there stood the equally striking women -- long, straight silky how-do-they-do-that-all-day-long? hair with complexions from magazine ads, rouged just right, full of lips, dark perfect eyebrows with just the right arch and no stray hairs, because it would detract from their oval-esque, dreamy, green-brown eyes, perfectly shadowed and lined. Complete with natural beauty marks, dressed in short fur jackets, no-scratch boots, designer jeans, and tight, full tops, they laugh perfect-teeth laughs, not working-class London grins, but affected, Italian grist-for-paparazzi laughs. And they probably spend way too much time in front of mirrors to look that way, say I, middle aged, and with hugely different values, a lot less free time, and thank-you-very-much wrinkles.
In short, men and women of any age can enjoy the eye-candy on the streets of Rome, in a country that struts lust-for-life with its head tilted back laughing. Or at least I'd like to think so.