My New Boyfriend

Looking left.



Looking right.



Looking like Mr. Right.



He has this funny thing that he does with his throat. If he sings while he does it, it’s certainly not audible to me. But his throat puffs up like a bullfrog’s and turns red. I wonder if it’s the geckoesque equivalent to a Nehru jacket and gold medallion? [Ah, Larry, one of my high school crushes and the only guy I ever met who could wear a Nehru jacket and look both sincere and seriously cool. He had more than a passing resemblance to John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful.]

I went shopping yesterday morning. Three new blouses and a red T-shirt, all marked down to $6.99, and a cute jeans jacket with great detailing, to which my 40%-off coupon applied. $171.95 retail; $40.41 with tax. [One benefit of being single: no spouse to whom I have to justify this by saying, “But honey, look how much I saved us!”]

What did I wear to the church singles’ activity? The red T-shirt and my black denim leggings, which are loose enough to be called jeans, and modest. I thought it was going to be a BBQ; it was a fiesta, so we had salsa on the table *and* on the boombox. And two kinds of enchiladas, and chile rellenos, and two kinds of soup, and tres leches cake and empanadas for dessert. Miraculously, I evaded the family curse, which is the almost-inevitable wearing of one’s food on a new solid-colored top.

This is why you shouldn’t knit in a bar/pub/club. Even if you’re a teetotaler like me.



I tried taking two close-ups and failed fuzzily, but this is the embodiment of that caution, careful not to twist. I think it must have happened at the club, when one of the Good Brother's friends pried my knitting out of my hands and gave me a stick for each hand. [I have no idea what the proper name is, but those hardwood dowels that you whack together, more or less in time to the music; we also had a cowbell for “Honky Tonk Women”, and a tambourine, and maracas. Good, noisy times.]

It was a little weird to be knitting away peacefully while rocking out in my chair and singing along, and to have my hands gently grabbed by a big ol’ boy standing behind me, who then leaned over me and wrapped his hands around mine, and mine around the dowels, and breathed beerily into my right ear, “This is how it’s done. Think you can follow that?” And to realize how long it had been since any man had been that close.

And to wise-crack to the Good Brother, while the band played “Satisfaction”, “They have no idea, do they?” [Fourteen years, in my case.]

I have to tink three rounds. This is cashmere we are talking about, and it has no sense of humor.

I almost but not quite got my fill of dancing yesterday. The Good Brother got pictures of half a dozen of the women lined up in front of the bar, boogeying to something. [Several somethings, actually.] I haven’t seen those pictures yet. Brother Yummy and his steady showed up; she slow-danced with the Good Brother, and I danced with Brother Yummy, and all the other women were a little jealous.

Then I came home and took another bath and washed the smoke out of my hair and went to Fort Worth, and Brother Yummy’s girlfriend did the same, and she tried to teach the Good Brother to two-step, and I led the line-dancing, and my knees are a little cranky this morning but no harm done.

The guy in FW is not a dancer. He is a putterer, and a good host. But it’s safe to say that he now knows that I am a dancer, and a good one. [And lively, and funny, and he should really ask me out.]

And now if you will all excuse me, I have 168 x 3 stitches to tink. Possibly more.