fly on the wall

My favorite way to while away the time when I lived in New York was to sit in the Starbucks at Astor Place and watch the human show. All the various acts and spectacles and the intermissions and dramas and interludes and entr'actes going on around me was so worth the price of a cup of coffee. On Friday nights, they had a thee piece combo come in - some little group offered swing dancing lessons, and then they cleared away some of the tables and chairs and there was dancing...It was really all I ever needed to stay amused, bemused, and enchanted on a Friday night.

Here in Tucson, there is none of that. Starbucks is a dull, cold place, rather hospital like, with only slightly better coffee, but at least now there is free wifi. Usually I sit quietly, doing my work, although one time someone took offense to something I apparently did/said/looked....

So here I am today, just sitting here, working on the Great American Novel my Facebook status. As I sit here minding my own business, I realize a new relationship is erupting at the table next to me!. Join me as I observe the mating rituals of middle aged single people.

Our victims are both in their late 30s, and this is obviously the quintessential "non-threatening coffee date to check each other out" before further commitment is required. She has some fruffy whipped cream drink and he is drinking water...One of them is all in, and one's apparently not convinced, according to the drink choices....She is a pert, lithe cutie, with her arched back and thin shapely arms set off by her spaghetti strapped, form fitting tank top, her manicured toes and fingers wiggling seductively. He is in rather ugly madras shorts and a casual, but clean chamois-looking (probably not, cuz it is 100 degrees here today) shirt and they both have on sandals. He has a very short conservative hair cut - I am guessing he works for Raytheon or is on assignment at the base - you can tell by the hair.

He's recently moved to town from San Diego, and he is shocked at how huge this place is, and no highway system. She has been here for years and is really disparaging of how things work in Tucson, which I agree with, but she is a little more negative than I am in public. They side step around political talk - oops, he called her a radical, no he actually meant liberal, he explains....

Then they move to interests - oh travel, I love to travel, she says. I really have no desire to leave the country, he says, slamming the door shut of THAT topic. She waxes poetic about her trip to Greece, and her little day trips here and there, and her cruise. Oh wait, he went on a cruise once - oh that perks her up! Where?? Oh the Mexican Riviera, with his parents, for an anniversary trip. Oh, a short cruise from San Diego, her shoulders slump a little.

Next subject is health. She has apparently recently lost weight, and can exercise better now - Hell, she is a frickin' twig, how could she NOT work out - if I was that thin, I could bench press MYSELF!!! Yoga does nothing for her she says, (oh, you naturally bendy twisty people all say that!), but she really loves kick boxing. Now that piques his interest and he throws a few jabs towards her, surely in jest, or was there something Freudian going on here?

"Sooo, I better get home," he says. They discuss a dance class - sounds like a mutual friend who she goes to this dance class with set them up. She invites him to come to the class next Tuesday. "If I am not there, call me," he says. He's not sure he can make the lesson - so much going on that day. They exchange a nice sideways hug, and he takes the opportunity to feel how much flesh she has around the middle. Nice, he says. "Oh, my abs have always been nice," she says, "it is here," patting her ass, "where the weight's come off." I can see him thinking, I'd like to see her naked, as they leave together....

Now there are two cops in here.....I doubt they will be as interesting.....It is days like this that I miss living in New York.