“Yeah, he thinks I need to lose 30 lbs. He’s kind of a dick. I don’t know why I’m dating him. I need to meet new people.” You’re eavesdropping on a conversation I overhead this weekend at the ever-fashionable, see-and-be-scene, converted townhouse 5 Ninth.
“Well, I can’t really tell how much you’ve got to lose. Why don’t you come walk around this table and sit beside me, so I can really check you out.” A man with gray pubic hair instructs the drunken heartbroken young woman. And she obeys hoping to gain some male insight. Once she’s seated beside him he concurs, “Well you do need to lose weight, but not 30 lbs., more like 15.”
She pushes out a disappointed, “Thanks.” She is hoping mister gray-curlies-fashionable-glasses-gives-off-gay-vibe will call her male suitor; tell him he’s lost his mind. She wants someone to convince him to love her. She stirs her Stoli-O and soda with a thin red straw drawing a half-melted cube onto her tongue.
“You know, though, it’s hard to tell if you’re body is well-proportioned. See sometimes it’s not about weight. It’s mostly about proportion.”
“Well, aren’t I in proportion?” She puts her drink down, concerned, turning her head sideways to check herself.
“It’s hard to tell from here, lovie.” She worries he’s going to ask her to walk to the other side of the table again. Instead, he offers, “I know a shady spot upstairs where you can show me your tits. That’s the only way I can really tell what we’re working with here.”
Okay, I’m in his Prada shoes for one second here. That’s right, I’m dirty old man trying to get some young puss puss. Shouldn’t I have said, Breasts? I mean Tits is so brash. And why would I tell any woman she needs to lose weight? Okay, I’m slipping off his shoes. Kicked off one, flung the other. He has been eating retard sandwiches all day in the sun.
Still, she follows him indoors, leaving the backlit outdoor garden, across the wood plank floors, past the fireplace, and then watches the man that could very well be older than her father walk two steps at a time to the reservations-only bar and lounge upstairs. She watches his feet disappear at the top of the staircase. She’s about to take her own first step.
“Miss, are you certain you want to go up there?” It’s the maitre d’. He’s stepping in and offering her some sanity. She smiles, pivots, and leaves the genteel, not at all morally straight, very much despicable scene behind her. Her first step: leaving the bar.
Then my cell phone rings. “Stephanie, I’m outside. Can we leave?” And I come to her rescue, tell her she has great breasts, and I love her just the way she is.
Conventionally good-looking men should come with first aid kits.
