Press 1 for Stupid
Press 2 for Idiot
Press 3 for Flashlight and a map
That’s the way the week has been going. It’s amazing to me how, the closer we get to the deadline, the more some folks at work get more clueless.
The other problem is how unable folks are to make simple decisions. I was trying to help one of our editors pin down one of the authors on a fairly simple technical issue, and it was like trying to pick up grape jelly off the counter–he just would not commit to an answer, and the more we tried to press him, the bigger the mess got. But like the saying goes–it all pays the same.
Actually, it pays pretty well. In the past two weeks I managed to log 142 hours of work. Now, because of the [incredibly convoluted] way they calculate time, I really only worked 125, that’s still a shitload of hours, and hopefully, a honkin’ big paycheck. I’ve been drooling over a leather couch at Costco…
But while I would really love to own that couch, I do not actually *need* that couch. And so it will stay at the Costco and I will continue to visit it wistfully every time I go buy toilet paper or bananas and apples in bulk for the kids.
I haven’t had much time to think, much less to write…
Thoughts
It’s been a long time since anyone has flirted with me. My guess is that coming close to 40, gaining 25 pounds, and being marrried for going on 12 years has a lot to do with that, but I still remember how that feels–that most incredible, feet not touching the ground feeling of someone thinking you were one of the most desirable people on earth. It’s a moth and flame kind of feeling–a dangerous adrenaline rush. And in a million years I would never give up the deep and satisying love I share with DH. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel a twinge of loss every once in a while. It’s rare. But this week I felt a little of that twinge after watching a movie, and I started thinking that one of the things that’s most fun is that very first stage of a flirt when you both first realize that the attraction is mutual.
I envision the heroine of my book walking in to a bar to watch a football game with some male friends (and of course, one female sidekick to keep it realistic), and during the course of the game realizing that someone on the periphery of the group is secretly watching her at the same time she’s covertly trying to watch him. The scene progresses with some exciting football action, when she loses track of where he is until she realizes that he is standing directly behind her. He’s not too close–not at all. No one looking at them would think anything of it. But she can feel him behind her, and knows that he’s done it on purpose. She knows that he’s looking at her, watching her…and she knows that he knows that she’s aware of him. And when someone pushes past them on the way to the bar for another round of beer, he steps closer to her for just an instant and they barely touch and her entire body is one raw nerve tingling where the front of his thigh has brushed against her hip and she feels his breath on the side of her face and neck and time stops for just that instant. And he is gone just as suddenly, borne away by the crush of people cheering when the hometown team scores a spectacular touchdown.
And of course the level of intrigue is enhanced when she only catches glimpses of him for a while…building to a climax when he finds her alone somehow. And they probably won’t even talk at that point because the attraction is just too strong. Nah, they have to talk. But she’ll balk at going too far (because face it–one night stands are too freakin’ dangerous), and he’ll respect that. In fact, I don’t even think they would kiss at that point. Maybe they would just hold hands.
She’d have gone somewhere–a restaurant with a bar where she’d be sitting getting her thoughts together having a salad and a glass of wine after interviewing someone about the old case. And he’d come in behind her, sit beside her, and he’ll introduce himself. He’ll have some sort of connection to the case–maybe he’s reporter or something from the old days when the murder/disappearance had just happened. She’ll talk to him about what she’s learned, and he’ll fill her in on details from the deep backgound of the case and as the afternoon wears on into evening they’ll have longer and longer pauses in the conversation and she’ll be overcome with a need to just touch him one time. So she’ll reach out to touch his hand sitting stretched flat on the bar, but as she does, he’ll turn his hand over palm up so that her hand trails against his as it turns in a caress and she’ll leave it resting gently there as his fingers curl gently around her hand.
I remember a scene in a movie I saw in Chapel Hill with Donald once where the forbidden relationship had the man in the back of a taxi with the young girl, both sitting prim and proper until they go over some bumps and the camera pulls in tight on their hands on the car bench seat. The editing of the film, building the anticipation, was incredible. Their hands are there, so close, but still so far apart, until they go over more bumps in the road and suddenly their hands are close enough that their little fingers are touching. I wish I could remember whose finger moved first, but one of them starts caressing the other’s finger (innocent and provocative and incredibly erotic) until the car goes through a tunnel and the next thing you see are their hands twined together palm to palm and it’s clear that this is the consumation of an incredibly sexually charged encounter. But I can’t for the life of me remember the title of the movie–only that it was subtitled so that it must have been foreign.
Ok, time to put the kids to bed. Ta for now.
