BACKWARDS K

1. About a year ago, I was running on a Friday night when I heard a voice from across the street shouting, "Hey! Hey, runner!"
   
   I ignored the voice. When you're a runner, you get accustomed to ignoring people who shout things at you, because those things are usually not complimentary and are sometimes accompanied by thrown beer cans, tossed by men driving trucks displaying the Confederate flag. So I kept running.
   
   Suddenly a girl materialized, running beside me. A pretty college-age girl with long, dark hair and a smile beautiful enough to momentarily distract me from the taut curves of her body. "Hi!" she said brightly.
   
   "Um," I said. (Full disclosure: I'm blogging this conversation from memory, so some inaccuracies are inevitable -- for example, I may actually have said "er" here.)
   
   "Do you always go running on Friday night?" the pretty girl asked.
   
   "Sometimes," I said.
   
   "You must be in really great shape!" she said. "I don't know how you do it! I'm out of breath already!"
   
   "Heh heh!" I said. "Um."
   
   "Well, I better go back," she said. "I just thought I'd see if I could make a new friend."
   
   "Okay," I said. "What's your name?"
   
   "Amy," she said.
   
   "Hello, Amy," I said. "I'm Kilgore."
   
   We shook hands and then she jogged back to her house. I ran the last few blocks home and ate a Tombstone frozen pizza. I never spoke to Amy again.
   
   
2. I bought a new jacket in Morocco. It's a hippie-type thing with a hood, hand-woven in Technicolor Dreamcoat hues -- orange and black and yellow. I wore the jacket a couple of weeks ago to The Tattered Cover, where I was browsing hard when I spotted movement in my peripheral vision. I glanced up and saw an alternative-looking girl walking toward me. Cute, with dark blonde hair flowing carelessly from beneath a stocking cap.
   
   She nodded. "Cool jacket, dude," she said.
   
   "Thanks, man," I said. And... and nothing. The cute alternative-looking girl kept walking and disappeared into another section.
   
   
3. Yesterday, I was walking back from Wash Park and stopped at the intersection of Downing and Alameda. As I waited for the traffic to clear so I could cross, a thirty-something-or-other woman ran up and stopped at the corner. Cute, very cute. Olive skin and freckled cheeks, dark hair and a runner's lean physique.
   
   She turned to me and smiled. "Do they turn off the water fountains in Wash Park in the winter?" she asked.
   
   "Um, yeah," I said.
   
   "Oh, I see," she said, and smiled again. "I just moved here, so I didn't know."
   
   "Where did you move from?" I asked.
   
   "Arizona," she said.
   
   "Well, if they don't shut the water off, the pipes will freeze and burst," I said. "I guess they wouldn't need to do that in Arizona."
   
   "No," she said, and laughed.
   
   Silence.
   
   (One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.)
   
   The traffic cleared and the cute, very cute woman ran across. "Thanks," she called back.
   
   "You bet," I said, and watched her cute, very cute butt recede into the distance.
   
   "Well, that sucked," I said.

+posted by Lawrence @ 10/31/2004 11:58:00 PM