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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