3/24/03: Like a Lion

The smell of mud in the air, the fresh pollen-y breeze, the untz-untz-untz of a car going by with its windows open -- it's spring in the city. My thoughts have returned to what they return to whenever it gets warm. I can't help it.

There they all are, their shirts hanging off their shoulders, their hair shaggy on their heads, their faces with just enough stubble, and I melt. There are too many of them, and they walk by, smelling good or sometimes even smelling sweaty or smokey and still, it's the same, I can't help it, I react.

There goes one now, a GRE or GMAT student, too tall for his own good, and confused, smiling uneasily. "Can someone help me with this?" "I can help you with that," I say. "Oh no," he says. "It's a math problem." "Yes," I say. "I can help you with that. Step around into my office." So he sits close to me, smelling of boy smell, and a little bit like coffee but in a good way, like my old friend Matty used to smell. I just want to give him a hug and tell him it'll be okay, that it's just geometry, and that there's nothing to be afraid of. Just circles and triangles and it always comes down to that 180. I love it when tall boys are confused.

There goes another one now, an LSAT or MCAT student, cleaning off a booklet he wrote on. His hair is too long and it looks cute that way. I tell him the blue magic marker on his hands is a mark of valor and distinction. He holds up his hands for inspection and I am struck by the meaning of hands, all the ways they can be used. We are there on two sides of a counter, but I am still physically a woman and he is still physically a man and things could happen. They won't, but they could.

I am in love with this, with the streets and the trees, and the way the sun shines down in a slant, so that when you come up the stairs from the subway you can't see at all. I sit in the park with my gay friends and we cruise the boys. I go shopping at Joyce Leslie and buy the dress that a random stranger in the dressing room tells me looks good on me. It's all a ploy. If someone's going to whistle at somebody on the street, it better be somebody whistling at me.

And I am going to Greece!

I love it when I drink a lot of coffee, teach a GMAT class, flirt with someone for a bit, then write a musing. I basically gush about nothing, don't I? It's so humorous.