My girlfriend had sent me to pick up food and I was reading at a table as I waited. The restaurant technically allows phone orders, but they’ve never answered when I’ve called and they are always so busy that I doubt they’d be able to hear me right. They barely seem to hear when I order in person. They primarily cater to college students but it’s four days after Christmas so they’re somewhat slow for dinnertime, meaning I was able to find a seat at the only indoor table and comfortably read my book while I waited.
A girl just sat at my table. I had noticed her in line about three places behind me. She was pretty but there was no way to fully check her out because of where she stood. Her short jacket covered too much of her top anyway, and I couldn’t see lower except that she was wearing tight black jeans. Tight black jeans are usually worth checking out but now that she’s sitting, that’s impossible. But she’s not that pretty anyway.
Now I’m wondering if she intends to say anything now that she’s sat at my table, or if she’s genuinely just waiting. I’m completely indifferent. A few years ago I would have hoped she would say something. In college I would have hoped she would have gone away, unless we weren’t in a college student place. In high school I would have felt like I had to say something, but wouldn’t have been able to sustain a conversation. She looks like she could be older, but she’s probably in college since that’s the age of dining hall etiquette, where you can sit at tables of people you don’t know. So probably early in college, still used to dining halls and not yet jaded by the amount of men that surely hit on her. Although perhaps the fact that I’m reading meant she wasn’t worried about being hit on.
The restaurant is as quiet as it’s ever been at dinnertime, which means loud but you can hear within a six or ten foot radius. This girl moves a lot and is clicky. When she sat down, her Coke can made a sound on the table. Her nails clicked as she moved the can and pulled out her phone. Her nails clicked against her phone. I wonder if she feels the need to read her phone because she’s sitting with a guy reading a book. She puts her phone down rather quickly and returns to the Coke can. More clicking: the phone against the table, her nails against the can, the can against the table, her nails against each other.
I really want to read, which I’m managing to do. And I’m over checking out this girl in front of me, she’s pretty but not pretty enough to get weird about seeing some black jeans. But I also want to check out one of the girls at the next table. They’re definitely in college. They’re all dressed for seemingly different occasions. My mark is dressed like she’s going to a club (even though she’s probably not 21), while the others, well I haven’t looked at them in that much detail. I first noticed this girl while I was standing in line because of her French tips. At first I thought she had a solid white polish, which would look great with against her olive skin. But when she moved tempobet yeni giriş her hand again, I saw they were French tips, probably fake. A good fake, but still fake. That’s the problem with French tips, you have to have super strong nails to get a good French tip, and most women only have those strong nails during pregnancy, though a few keep them. That girl’s surely never been pregnant, so her nails aren’t strong enough. But I can tell fake nails.
But well-done fake nails and a modestly pretty face aren’t enough to get me acting weird. My ephemeral obsession came when I was walking to my waiting seat and noticed her tight white miniskirt. My glance was far too brief. Now I’m trying to make sure I get the one opportunity to see her legs again, and hopefully also her shoes. When I was in high school, before this 18- or 19-year-old was born, girls usually wore flip flops with miniskirts. That trend is long gone, probably because that’s just too much lower body exposure, and was probably never fashionable during evenings in the dead of winter. I probably would have noticed a high boot, and it’s too cold for something open-toed. So the good stuff is out and it’s probably either sneakers, which I consider neutral, or ankle boots, which I usually don’t like. But what I’m really concerned with is if they finish eating before my food comes. Then I have to find a way to get my glasses back on so I can check her out, but do so in a way that doesn’t make it obvious I’m putting on my glasses to see them. If a guy reading with glasses on top of his head just so happens to put them on and look around the room when you stand up, wouldn’t you think that was weird?
No, what’s weird is my secret obsession with checking out women. There’s no point, no endgame. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I would never have an opportunity to talk to them, nor would I be able to remember much detail later. Perhaps I conditioned myself in college when I would see the same girls around campus, and after seeing them enough I could remember their appearance enough to get new masturbation fodder, something in high demand at that age. Or maybe I’ve just never bothered to break myself of that one primordial habit because I see the actions as completely harmless, since I take great pains to prevent anyone from noticing that I’m checking them out. Although sometimes I do misstep. One time at a Subway I saw a mom with her son and daughter, talking about the daughter’s first month in college and the movie they were going to see to celebrate her first weekend home. Realizing she was eighteen, and I was just a bit older at the time, I freely checked her out without her noticing. But then as I left and got into my car, I saw her brother say something before her and her mom’s heads both whipped around at me, the mom with a look of disgust and the girl with the excited look of “someone likes me!” So she didn’t notice, but obviously her brother did.
And if you’re thinking this is all normal and innocuous, let me get weirder. tempobet giriş I recently moved back to the big city that borders my small hometown. As I was moving, I remembered seeing on Facebook a while back that my crush from back in 10th grade lives in my new neighborhood. We’re not Facebook friends. I don’t think we ever even said a sentence to each other in high school, and I haven’t seen her since. I’ve convinced myself that maybe a mutual friend had reshared the post, since it was for a roommate listing, but the reality is that I was probably stalking her Facebook, which I’ve done every few years. But that’s not the weird part. Knowing that we were living close together, I did some internet sleuthing and found her exact address. Still not the weird part. And I frequently go down her street on my way to work now. That’s a little weird, because what do I think is going to happen? Nothing. I can’t think of what could happen. But it gets weirder.
Last week, I found an excuse to knock on her door. The excuse was legitimate enough that even I genuinely believe that maybe I would have done the same thing if I didn’t know who lived there. Yes, I probably wouldn’t have been noticing the things I noticed, and even so, I probably wouldn’t have felt obligated to knock, but still, the reasoning was legitimate enough. I only intended to say my quick thing and get running, but she kept talking. And as she talked, I looked at her carefully to see if she looked similar enough to high school that I could recognize her. I decided I could and asked if we went to high school together, which I knew we had. She asked what high school and I confirmed; she didn’t remember me and I’m not surprised. We never said anything to each other, I was a year ahead of her, and I look a lot different. I left quickly. Some people come out of those things thinking “What did I expect to happen?” but I expected nothing. I fully intended to just say my piece and leave. But I also knew that if there was something that could happen, random chance would probably never happen. I could never today recognize her in the grocery store because I could never recognize her with a mask on.
Heck, I didn’t even know her eye color. I had always remembered brown, but standing on her porch – probably closer than we’d ever stood for more than a split second – they looked hazel. But not hazel like mine, so maybe a different type of hazel or a green. But not brown. She was taller than I remember, but maybe that’s because she was a step up or because I remember version of her from when I had a crush better than from when we graduated and were fully grown. But she is as beautiful as ever, even in her around-the-house clothes with a top bun. My girlfriend looks cute in a top bun but it’s a puppy-dog cute; no around-the-house top bun is sexy. My crush looked great despite her top bun. I didn’t check out her boobs under her grey zip-up sweatshirt. When you’re reconnecting for a brief moment, you don’t get caught reading shirts that don’t say anything.
Her tempobet güvenilirmi shorts were a microcosm of the personality I remember. They were shorts like any woman today would wear around the house, but just a tiny bit longer. She was just like all the other girls, but just a tiny bit more mature, a tiny bit more conscientious, and a tiny bit better as a person in every way I saw. And more likely, this is why my 10th grade crush is the one I can’t shake. Because before I found a way to talk to her, I decided that she was fake, because there was no way she could be such a great person but also just like all the other girls. But as her Facebook and LinkedIn create a resume of who she’s been in the twenty years since I didn’t ask her out, I’ve realized that I was the fake, and I didn’t dislike her but rather myself. At least that’s my interpretation of Jung’s shadows, though my therapist won’t affirm or rebuff that hypothesis. In other words, I never resolved the crush. I moved on based on a false set of facts.
So now I have my 10th grade crush’s old microwave. Every time I look at that microwave I feel both awesome and creepy. I mean, it is kind of frickin’ awesome to have the microwave of your crush from twenty years ago. I cannot explain that. But how I got it, super creepy. That doesn’t need explanation.
And to explain to the people who see the microwave, there are now two stories floating around. My therapist knows most of the truth, that I’m re-crushing on a girl from high school, that I know she lives in the neighborhood and so I increased my internet stalking, that she’s inspired some writings. Therapist doesn’t know that I actually showed up at her house, or even that my internet stalking went so far as to find her house. But I might read or show her this essay. My girlfriend and nuclear family know that I have a microwave from someone I went to high school with – a good lie stays close to the truth – but they don’t know she’s a former crush. They definitely don’t know she’s a current crush. And my crush probably thinks it was a weird coincidence, but probably also suspects the truth in the back of her mind.
But what I can’t get over is why do I do this. I think I’m as good a feminist a man can be without being an activist. But I have these silent thoughts, do these subtle, usually unnoticeable things, all because I want to see big breasts or sexy legs or slutty shoes. I have a long written history of weird IMs, DMs, and emails, mostly to pretty women, some who I never even had romantic interest in. I’ve even knocked on a secret crush’s door once. My brain twists the checking out stuff into silent compliments, and I guess in a way checking someone out is a compliment but really the action is more harmful both to that individual’s comfort and to the equality cause as a whole. Yet I can’t convince myself to stop. A small, innocuous pleasure in a dull and dreary world, I tell myself. And am I really that good of a feminist anyway? I don’t really form male friendships, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m good about equality, it just means I don’t like men. Which I don’t.
My food was ready before they finished. She wore old white sneakers that didn’t show socks and her legs were a fabulous smooth brown just thick enough to stretch her miniskirt.