2005-07-22 - 7:22 p.m.
Random Musings on Public Embarrassment
I’m one of those fortunate people who works about 10 minutes from home. It is very rarely a bad thing, except for that time when MCWL came out, and I could only listen to 2 ˝ songs each way. But as a general rule, it does save me from too much time alone with my thoughts. They tend to gang up on me.
Another benefit is that I’ve banked a lot of unused “commuter time.” So, when I have to drive three hours to the airport, arrive two hours before my flight, and then spend another 7 hours or so on a couple of airplanes to see my boyfriend sing for less than two hours, I can justify the apparent lopsidedness of the situation.
Anyway, today, I had to go to a meeting about forty minutes away, so I started to think about things on my drive…..and oh, good god, if you were giving me the benefit of the doubt before, now you’re going to know I’m just plain perverted.
I don’t even know where to start. Let’s see. Mr. Eeyore and I have been jogging for the past couple of months. This has generally been a good thing. We’re spending time together, we’re getting into better shape, and somehow generating a few more hormones while we sweat. One night last week, while our teenage son was running with us, Mr. Ee mentioned something about my “nice highbeams.” So I’m all like, “shut up.” “What? They look awesome.” (shooting angry youaresuchapervert glare and nodding head toward spawn) “Shut. up.” “What? You always get highbeams when you run. I’m sure he’s noticed by now. Why do you think he’s always two steps ahead of you?”
(Yes, there’s another clue for you about what my world is really like. And why I am the way I am.)
But yeah, thanks, Mr. Eeyore, good to know. Now I jog with my elbows squeezed in toward my chest (not exactly hard for me to do). I’ve perfected this position at some point during my weekly speedwalking treks down the two freezer aisles at our local grocery store (as a point of interest, this is the same grocery store that pre-released 14 copies of Harry Potter a couple weeks ago and which made me squeal in fangirly delight when it was mentioned on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart).
I’m sure many women can relate to the aforementioned embarrassment. It’s probably not as bad as that other potential female embarrassment and the reason that many of us will never wear white pants, even if they didn’t make your butt look twice as wide as usual, which is reason enough to avoid them. I don’t know if it’s as embarrassing as passing wind in public, because if you’re at, say, a football game, everyone’s gonna think some guy did it anyway, but it could certainly be embarrassing at a classy event like the Joyful Noise Tour, even if you’re sitting in the 25th row and you make sure to put your hand to your nose and cast a disdainful sneer in the direction of an elderly gentleman quietly snoozing three seats away from you. Not that I did that or anything. Certainly, Clay can’t prove it.
Anyway, the thing about “shining a little too much light” in public, is that there’s really nothing you can do to stop it if you forgot to bring an extra sweater. Such was the fate of poor Angela, Clay’s backup singer and counter-foil to his self-proclaimed family friendly on-stage sexual exploits, one chilly night last summer. I can’t even remember where the concert was, but it happened while they were singing Still the One. According to one fan, Angela came out after intermission sporting some real “wine corks” in the chestal region, and Clay never passed up an opportunity to point them out to her. Every time they crossed paths on stage, he held his hands up to the corresponding area on his own chest, and gleefully made little gun shooting motions with his fingers. Bang bang! I’m twelve years old. *sigh*
But we all know that Angela got him back a few nights later in Kingston, Rhode Island. I have no actual idea what transpired, but I imagine a scenario like this after the first concert:
Angela (slapping Clay): Clay! You were such a meanie tonight!
Clay (feigning innocence): What? What’d I do?
Angela: You know what you did! You embarrassed me!
Clay: Now, Angela, I think you embarrassed yourself.
Angela: You didn’t have to be such a brat about it.
Clay: I know you are, but what am I?
Angela: Just you wait. You know I can get you back.
Clay: Ha ha! But that’s where you’re wrong. We don’t exactly dance together the way we did during the Independence Tour, so there’s no way you can get me back.
Angela: Do you think we have to grind together in order for me to get you….worked up?
Clay: Duh.
Angela: Oh, I don’t think so. (approaching him seductively) I think I could just maybe stroke your arm a little. (speaking slowly and demonstrating) Just nice long stroking motions, up and down your forearm. Feather light strokes. Up and down. Maybe a swirl or two…
Clay: You stop right now!
Angela (eyeing his crotch): Exactly like I thought. Just you wait, Clay. You’ll get yours. But I’m not telling you when.
So now I say to Angela: Bravo, girlfriend! That was a performance we ALL appreciated! I still can’t believe no one noticed it for TEN DAYS! Well, no one in the audience seemed to notice it. Certainly the Clack shows that most of the folks on-stage were aware of our young hero’s plight, most of all, our young hero. Oh, yes, he was mortified, even while he applauded Angela for avenging his wrong so artfully.
So this got me thinking. For women, there’s nothing that we can do to dim our lights. We can’t think of England or baseball or anything else to wish them away. In fact, if you think too hard about what’s happening, it just seems to make things worse. But guys are taught from a very early age to think of something else, anything else, to squelch the outward signal of their inner desire. This is a very good thing, because guys are seriously horny all the time. I remember reading a Dave Barry column several years ago, where he said (paraphrasing) that the best thing about turning 40 was that he now had a few seconds each day when he wasn’t thinking about sex.
Adolescent males usually haven’t perfected the fine art of counter-programming, or else they haven’t yet come up with a suitable subject that doesn’t automatically lead their brains back to images of naked women, and will often feign illness or ignorance in an order to avoid having to walk to the front of the classroom to complete that math problem on the blackboard. Adult males in their mid-twenties? Usually have a subject or two that undoes the trick.
Some subjects are obviously totally off-limits, and can’t readily be accessed during a bout of uncontrolled horniness. A guy really can’t think of his mom or the plight of third world children at those moments, because it’s just plain icky and would probably put him out of sexual commission and into therapy for years to come. So they have to pick a subject that could come into peripheral contact with sexual thoughts, but which wouldn’t automatically pull a U-turn and head right back to those dancing naked women.
So, that got me to thinking. What does Clay think about? Baseball? Hardly. England? Well, that depends on what happened when he was over there. If he went shopping for clothes, I’m sure the salesladies were all over him, smoothing out his lapels, double-checking the fit of his inseams. And he seems to enjoy his memories of dressing and undressing repeatedly so much that he mentioned it in his first blog entry. Well, crap, if I could be looking at what he’s looking at, I’d enjoy it too. Clay most definitely had a few lazy mornings in bed while in England, and who can say whether or not he had any company? (Well, HE can, and maybe I’ll ask him if I get in for one of those meet-n-greets. Of course I'm totally kidding. Obviously I’m more interested in him doing me than doing anyone else.) Either way, thoughts of England might take him even further into his special place. And while the food itself may have been unappetizing, I think there’s a law in England that it must be served with a heavy helping of cleavage on the side.
If you’ve regularly read my stuff, you know I’m under the new and improved delusion that Clay and I share a brain. But I don’t have access to everything. So I’m not completely sure what he thinks about, or even whether he has to think these thoughts more frequently in an effort to calm things down, or to drrrraaaaawwww things out. I do have a suggestion for him though, if he’s finding his current chosen subjects too arousing.
Clowns.
That’s it. Clowns.
They’re not sexy. Not even remotely sexy. Well, except for this one Russian clown I saw in a Cirque du Soleil show. Damn, he was good. I was mentally removing his make-up while I was trying to determine whether his shoes were really too big. And the way his suspenders hugged the lines of his highbeams….man.
But that’s me. And ONE clown. One GUY clown. Clay would NOT have found him sexy at all. So he can still use it. He’d just better hope that the clown thoughts aren’t coming from a sooper sekrit drunken rendez-vous in my half of the brain before they stop by to shoot down his…..acrobat with a well-timed squirt of water from some cheap plastic lapel flower. Coss then he’d also have highbeams (guybeams?) to contend with, and we’re right back to where we started.
(Help! I’m trapped in Eeyore’s brain! – bet you didn’t know that’s what the Clay-in-the-Box was thinking. Hey. A Clay-in-the-Box is kinda like a clown too, isn’t it? Now I dare you to think about Clowns and not feel just a little sexy yourself.)
p.s. The Russian clown really was mesmerizing. The show was Allegria, and the clown did this scene involving a jacket, a suitcase, a train, and thousands of scraps of paper.
eta: The above postscript was just intended to describe the clown's scenario, in case anybody else saw the same performance. I wasn't trying to get anybody all worked up over thoughts of suitcases and scraps of paper. Nothing sexy about those, no sir. Jackets and trains, on the other hand...definitely have potential.
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