Read Online Not Exactly What I Had in Mind by Roy Blount - Free Book Online
Authors: Roy Blount
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test “a means of finding out what people are thinking and what the issues and problems are.”
Volunteers for the project in this suburban county … said they were planning to take tape machines into schools, colleges, town meetings and rich and poor neighborhoods to record the attitudes of people who want to reach their Government. …
What if Nixon had stuck with this program, and expanded it to the point where he was tape-recording everybody in the nation except himself? What if our government had placed a tape recorder in every American home?
I think I am going to go mix up a pitcher of Kool-Aid.
Men, Women, and Projectiles
Salute to John Wayne
A FEW YEARS AGO, before nakedness became old hat, I was standing near Times Square looking at an opaque storefront behind which, according to a boldly lettered sign, you could talk to a nude woman. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would do, but, I stood there wondering what it would be like, what I would say to her, whether she would feel obliged to respond.
As I began to move on, I found myself surrounded by green arms: an army colonel and a staff sergeant materialized, passed each other and me at the same time, and exchanged crisp salutes.
Although these two may have been the only servicemen in the entire midtown area, their eyes did not meet. You can tell by looking at a person’s eyes whether they are meeting someone else’s. Both men were in fact angling their attention toward the TALK TO A NUDE WOMAN sign, but at any rate each of them addressed himself, quite properly, to the uniform, not the man.
I sensed an epiphany, or at least a déjà vu. Except that there seemed to be an element missing. I turned back to the storefront. What if the woman were actually quite good company: hearty, secure, at peace, her skin tautly billowy like a flag?
Still, you might be at some pains to give her the impression that so far as you were concerned, she was not the only fish in the sea. And she might want to convey that although you might be with a large accounting firm, and her own occupation was being talked to nude, she was not your bit of fluff.
It hit me. What was missing.
Then she came out, slightly but not unfetchingly crosseyed, and wearing — something loose. I can never, except where they are revealing, describe women’s clothes. But hers reminded me of the time in seventh grade when I showed up at my girlfriend Amy’s house unexpectedly the afternoon before a Methodist hayride I was taking her to and she seemed more domestic than she did at school. She smelled of hand lotion, something I did not understand the appeal of. Her hair was wet, and she was wearing the kind of flapabout clothes one’s mother wore while giving herself a home permanent. Then, through fabric, I descried the unsegmented line of Amy’s whole flank. I didn’t recall having seen that line, moving and unbroken by band or ruffle, before.
Amy, flustered, offered me a Coke. While she was getting it, I sat down. Her orange-and-white cat jumped into my lap and started kneading my crotch in an embarrassing way. I half stood, but the cat clung. I pulled at the cat, the cat sank its claws into me, and I was hopping, hunched, trying to wrangle the cat loose, when Amy came in with my Coke.
“Mister Fluff!” she cried, and her eyes filled with tears.
Well, that was the element. When this nude woman in mufti came out of the storefront, she was carrying a plush but alert-looking gray cat. You know how hard it is to pin down a cat’s focus, but this one gave me a look, I thought, as his mistress went pitter-pat on high heels right by me, sprang into a taxi, and was gone.
Did she hold the cat, stroking it, in her lap or at her bosom, as she was being talked to? Did she let visitors touch it? Certain visitors? When I am trying to concentrate on something, cats drive me crazy, and yet I am drawn to them. To pet the cat of a not unfetching woman who is tangibly unavailable, as she watches, I imagine
Volunteers for the project in this suburban county … said they were planning to take tape machines into schools, colleges, town meetings and rich and poor neighborhoods to record the attitudes of people who want to reach their Government. …
What if Nixon had stuck with this program, and expanded it to the point where he was tape-recording everybody in the nation except himself? What if our government had placed a tape recorder in every American home?
I think I am going to go mix up a pitcher of Kool-Aid.
Men, Women, and Projectiles
Salute to John Wayne
A FEW YEARS AGO, before nakedness became old hat, I was standing near Times Square looking at an opaque storefront behind which, according to a boldly lettered sign, you could talk to a nude woman. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would do, but, I stood there wondering what it would be like, what I would say to her, whether she would feel obliged to respond.
As I began to move on, I found myself surrounded by green arms: an army colonel and a staff sergeant materialized, passed each other and me at the same time, and exchanged crisp salutes.
Although these two may have been the only servicemen in the entire midtown area, their eyes did not meet. You can tell by looking at a person’s eyes whether they are meeting someone else’s. Both men were in fact angling their attention toward the TALK TO A NUDE WOMAN sign, but at any rate each of them addressed himself, quite properly, to the uniform, not the man.
I sensed an epiphany, or at least a déjà vu. Except that there seemed to be an element missing. I turned back to the storefront. What if the woman were actually quite good company: hearty, secure, at peace, her skin tautly billowy like a flag?
Still, you might be at some pains to give her the impression that so far as you were concerned, she was not the only fish in the sea. And she might want to convey that although you might be with a large accounting firm, and her own occupation was being talked to nude, she was not your bit of fluff.
It hit me. What was missing.
Then she came out, slightly but not unfetchingly crosseyed, and wearing — something loose. I can never, except where they are revealing, describe women’s clothes. But hers reminded me of the time in seventh grade when I showed up at my girlfriend Amy’s house unexpectedly the afternoon before a Methodist hayride I was taking her to and she seemed more domestic than she did at school. She smelled of hand lotion, something I did not understand the appeal of. Her hair was wet, and she was wearing the kind of flapabout clothes one’s mother wore while giving herself a home permanent. Then, through fabric, I descried the unsegmented line of Amy’s whole flank. I didn’t recall having seen that line, moving and unbroken by band or ruffle, before.
Amy, flustered, offered me a Coke. While she was getting it, I sat down. Her orange-and-white cat jumped into my lap and started kneading my crotch in an embarrassing way. I half stood, but the cat clung. I pulled at the cat, the cat sank its claws into me, and I was hopping, hunched, trying to wrangle the cat loose, when Amy came in with my Coke.
“Mister Fluff!” she cried, and her eyes filled with tears.
Well, that was the element. When this nude woman in mufti came out of the storefront, she was carrying a plush but alert-looking gray cat. You know how hard it is to pin down a cat’s focus, but this one gave me a look, I thought, as his mistress went pitter-pat on high heels right by me, sprang into a taxi, and was gone.
Did she hold the cat, stroking it, in her lap or at her bosom, as she was being talked to? Did she let visitors touch it? Certain visitors? When I am trying to concentrate on something, cats drive me crazy, and yet I am drawn to them. To pet the cat of a not unfetching woman who is tangibly unavailable, as she watches, I imagine
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