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Edited on Sun Aug-21-05 12:09 PM by jobycom
lying on my floor.
I had been outside taking pictures of my car, to sell it, and climbed back up the stairs to my room, thinking about a weird thing that had happened last night. Last night I bought an inner tube for my bike. I had gone to my usual store, but it had already closed, so I cursed mightily at my luck. It was hot yesterday, and my 1983 Mercedes gets really hot. I had taken a shower that morning, but I hadn't shaved or trimmed my beard, and by now, after riding around in a hot car, I looked like a bum, and smelled like a bum, and had no good mood left.
So I went to an Oshman's in a local mall. It's an old mall, about to close down, and no one goes there anymore. So I walked in, wandered around the bike section for a while, found my tube, and walked, sweating and smelly to the counter to pay. I had to wait behind someone else who was ringing up clothing, so I started staring aroung the shop. There was an attractive blond at a different counter, but since I have no flirting skills anymore, and was as grimy as a man on a streetcorner, I barely glanced at her. After a moment, though, I realized that she had been watching me, so I looked up, and she was still watching me. Overcome with self-consciousness I looked down again, then felt stupid for looking down, and began to sweat. As I say, I have no skills anymore.
Then something clicked. I looked up again, and she was still watching me. "Becky?" (not her real name) I said, full of surprise, with the type of voice you use when you rediscover someone you have been thinking about for a year.
Okay, backing up. My company last year underwent a process--won't reveal what kind, it might reveal too much. This was how I met Becky. She's a little older than me. Fairly attractive. Very intelligent, and very straightforward, or direct. At that time I was undergoing some changes. I had been diagnosed with high cholesterol (236) and had been working out and dieting. (I lowered it to 159 without drugs, thank you very much). I was in primo shape for me, and felt good and had lots of energy. I was then thinking of going back to grad school, to get a CPA, to help my career. Becky and I talked about things like this, and about her life and her goals. Won't reveal them, obviously. During the conversation I mentioned I hated bookkeeping. She asked why I wanted an advanced degree doing something I hated. Later I mentioned my writings, and she asked why I wasn't trying to get anything published. I told her I wrote for fun, that being published wasn't important--all the things lazy writers say. Earlier we had talked about our kids, and I had complained that I couldn't get mine motivated to try anything. So when I mentioned the writing, this woman I barely knew asked "So you are complaining that you can't get your daughter motivated to do something you won't do, either?"
It's very rare that someone points out something about me that I have never realized before. I'm very introspective. I have answers for everything--and yes, that annoys people. But this I had no answer for. I thought about what she had said, and decided not to go to grad school, but to write my novel, and I have spent the last year writing and polishing it. All because of her comments.
By the time the process was finished I was having fantasies about Becky. Not lurid teenage fantasies, but the kind where you live happily ever after. She seemed to have similar thoughts about me, from the way we talked, looked at each other, etc. But I was married, though in a really bad marriage, and I didn't want to insult her by asking her out or even talking about what I was thinking. I felt like I was being noble. The last time I saw her, she seemed to be hinting that I should ask her out, but I didn't. I was afraid to, I didn't want to upset her, I didn't want her to go out with a married man, no matter who unmarried I felt. So she left, and literally didn't look back at me, but I could tell, I thought, that she wanted something and was disappointed I couldn't give it.
So over the last year I lost my diet, gained twenty pounds, and have been miserable for the last few months. I separated from my marriage, which has improved my outlook on life greatly, but there has been a lot of stress, and I've gotten very out of shape. Last night, aside from being sweaty and smelly, I was dressed in a raggedy shirt, slouched over with a pot belly, and generally looking unpleasant.
And there was Becky, looking better than I remembered her looking. For a year I've wondered whether I did the right thing, figured she was seeing someone else by now, wondering if I should be really brave and try to call her. It wasn't an obsession, just a nagging thought at times. Since I was separated now, why not, right? I had a lot of fantasies, again not lurid, that began with me standing at a counter and seeing her watching me from across the store. And there she was.
"Becky?" I said, my face all lighting up, though I was still sweating. Being bald, I probably glowed like wet neon sign. She smiled a little, looked a little curious, then said "Business X? Right?" (Business X being a made up name for where I work), as though I were someone she was struggling to remember.
I nodded, said yes, and felt like I'd been slapped with a wet reality noodle. I wondered if she were playing it cool, or if she really hadn't thought any more of me than that, or a hundred other possibilities. I placed my inner tube on the counter, then dropped my wallet in my distraction. Becky left, walking past me, asking how I had been. "Fine. You?" "Can't complain." And she was gone, leaving me dizzy and confused.
I'm still confused. I got mad at myself after, for how I looked, and how I'd slipped in the last few months. I got back to my apartment, put on my less-than-utilized jogging shoes, and pounded the trails around here for over an hour, losing enough sweat to fill a reservoir, and vowing off sodas and junk food again. When I got back to my apartment from the jog, I began the second novel I've been planning to write. Becky did it to me again, in other words.
So that's what I was thinking about when I climbed the stairs a few minutes ago, and opened my door to find a younger, attractive women stretched out on a pile of blankets in the middle of my floor. Second time in twelve hours a woman has confused and befuddled me. I looked at her face, ran over every person I knew who would even know where I lived, realized that there was no one who looked like this, wearing very tiny shorts and a tight teeshirt. This took only a moment of me staring with my mouth open. She just smiled up at me, waiting for me to say something. I had interrupted her television watching. Then I realized I didn't have cable, or anything else she could be watching on my television. Nor did I have the furniture I suddenly noticed around my apartment.
Yep, I live on the third floor and had walked into the second floor apartment by mistake. "Oh my God," I said, and explained what I had done. Luckily, she laughed about it, and I returned to my floor, embarrassed, laughing, and suddenly realizing that I hadn't broken out in a sweat for walking into an attractive stranger's apartment, even though I had sweated like a pig seeing someone I knew in a sporting goods store the night before.
Anyway, the moral to the story--always use your deadbolts, because you have no idea what the person who lives above you is thinking about.
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