But I thought about this a little while ago after the day had fallen into night and Debbie and I talked for an hour and I wanted a beer to accompany my continued reading of Mr. Miller. I drove on down to the store and was perusing the beer selection, wondering what on earth would inspire anyone to buy Michelob Ultra, when I heard a deep “Yo, what about some of this?” sound out next to me. It was a towering UAB basketball player, obviously, his obligatory ballcap almost scraping the ceiling tiles. He and his buddy were looking for wine coolers, of all things, their heads continuously knocking against the advertisements for hot-dogs and beer hanging from the ceiling. They were laughing, dressed in full Blazer uniforms. So I turned, and as if from some scene in Sixteen Candles, I saw two cute girls in the aisle next to them who were smiling at each other as the two players began carrying out an open dialogue about how many wine coolers the evening might require. The girls were in college (you can tell - don’t ask me how) but they were both wearing that smile that goes years beyond the mere undergraduate experience.
They had been watching the tall guys ever since they walked into the store. It was almost surreal, these two junior/senior girls staring at each other in grins, obviously in heat. Sure enough, one of them cast her eyes toward one of the basketball players, and the whole scene slowed down, laden with time. I was watching Eve’s primal glance. Venus parting the clouds to view Adonis in play.
There I was, Scout sleeping in the front seat of my car, trying to figure if I had enough money to buy a six pack, when there goes the entire history of lust and sexuality right before me. Men walk in. Cute, single girls are smitten. The cycle starts up again. It lit up the aisles of the 7-11.
I don’t know; maybe I’ve been reading too much (or just enough) Joseph Campbell and Henry Miller, but it was beautiful. Maybe, thanks to Debbie, I’m just slap out in love with life. But whatever the origins of my interpretation of the event, it was fun to watch the first reaches of love. Not anything remotely suited to televise but real and embarrassingly honest. Hell, the girls were surrounded by chitlins and corn nuts.
Upon reflection, I wish I’d stayed and watched how things panned out; whether the gal stayed and let her gaze linger until it mattered, or whether they merely tittered into oblivion. Or the guys might have ceased being oafs and looked around themselves gently.
But it was enough in my break from Henry Miller and his onslaught of the sensual which I had been objecting to in my mind, that the earth embraced itself and made me laugh in the flow of things. And it reminded me that the streets will always pulse with the deep mathematics of attraction. A natural geometry of angled flesh.
