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Thursday, December 18, 2014

THE GIRL ON THE MALL SHUTTLE



Denver.  August 8th.  4:00 p.m.  The hottest summer since records have been kept.  I am on the mall shuttle on my way to the library and then to an AA meeting.  I noticed her
standing across from me.  Shortish.  Just short of beautiful.  What a lovely face----and then, cleavage.  Not enough to be as obscenely in your face as so many women do now, as though I would miss the point.  This was displayed just tastefully right.  Firm and a light creamy brown.  Pert.  The more I gazed the more my desire.  Look gave way to an unabashed stare on my part.  My lips parted and the tip of my tongue involuntarily played out and gently…..And then she smiled at me.  It was a gentle, friendly smile off invitation.  Or was it?  She exited the bus and glanced over her shoulder at me as she entered a McDonalds.

And then---my concept of reality, or fear….of rejection, or what took control.  I am no longer a young man.  Was it that female cop who specialized in entrapment back again having polished her act.  This woman was young enough to be my daughter if not my grand daughter.  Still I could make contact perhaps sound he out.  I faintly heard a voiceover of  
Eartha Kitt singing September Song.  And it is a long, long way from May to December.  Perhaps I had read the signals wrong and I would be rejected and embarrassed.  But then I did have to go to the library and I did want to catch the meeting.

So the risk taker of old regretfully turned away from another ‘face in the train window’ and plodded. stoop shouldered to the library thinking of the old saying,  “Nothing  ventured, nothing gained”.

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