Our festivities began at the library, where I watched a woman mount a crotch-rocket motorcycle in the lot. Her helmet still gleamed sweaty from the hot asphalt when she pointed at the books in my arms and said, “That’s quite a range there.”
Friends, I was holding a literal children’s adventure novel alongside a slutty erotic retelling of Sleeping Beauty where Prince Charming wakes the princess with his dick.
I shrug and laugh. “I contain multitudes.” Then wink at the bookish biker butch sliding a hardback into her backpack, who probably understands. From my car, I watched her straddle the heavy machine, roar it to life, and ride off. Her hair was probably still damp when she shoved it, steaming, into that hard plastic helmet.
Then off to Lowe’s to look at showers, where Nora, in her lil blue vest and name tag, bounced up and asked if I was finding what I needed. Why, Nora, how did you know I needed you?
My husband scribbles down SKUs and prices while Nora shows me how the display’s drain cover unhooks like a fucking bra. “It’s a really popular model,” she says. “Little pricey.”
And I say, “I can afford it,” feeling like I’m swinging big clit energy while Nora’s male coworkers keep calling her on the radio to help cut blinds and make keys.
But she keeps saying, “I’m with someone right now. It’s going to take awhile.”
Friends, she was with me. Taking her time with me like I deserved time taken. She asked if I had a favorite shower brand like I’m a woman who remodels her bathroom every six months. Ma’am, last week I didn’t even know I was a bathroom-remodel girl. Next week, I could become anything she wants.
And at the grocery store, beneath the cold dairy air and the yeasty warmth drifting from the bakery, some slender, tall, braces-smile babe followed me from aisle to aisle in her Hello Kitty hoodie like we’d made our grocery lists together, knee to knee at the kitchen table.
We collided in the bread aisle while I attempted to scale the mountain of shelves for sourdough, positioned far beyond the reasonable reach of any five-foot-two woman. She flashed that silver grin and asked if I needed help.
Yes.
Her sinful little wrist peeked from her pink cuff as she stretched high enough to reach where I could barely see. “This one?” she asked. But the bottom of her shirt lifted too, revealing dark skin and a dangling belly-button ring, and I was liable to say yes to anything she asked.
My sourdough secured in my cart, she applied root beer Lip Smackers to her lips and wandered off, leaving the faint sugary scent trailing behind her while my vanilla-bean chapstick burned a hole in my pocket. Together, we could’ve made a fine soda-fountain float with a single kiss.
Oh, a delightful endeavor indeed, crossing each lovely line from my to-do list with a solid grade-A eye-fucking. To move through fluorescent lighting and asphalt heat and freezer aisles feeling not invisible, not ridiculous, but vividly, publicly alive.
To flirt. To look. To be looked at in return.
And perhaps, deep in my bones, to believe I am still the kind of woman strangers notice too.
