Acceptable Lechery

I watched a guy in his mid fifties turn and stare at a girl’s ass as she walked by him. She was this beautiful Latina girl about 24. This guy was some kind of sales guy, a guy that would make Arthur Miller shudder, the kind you don't see a lot of in the city but often enough to recognize. They wear slacks, what exactly defines slacks and where they come from I am unsure, I just know they exist and these guys all wear them. Always a shirt and tie-but the kind that come in a box set from a discount retailer, you will never see ties like that anywhere but bundled with a shirt in a box and these ties are also worn by television weathermen working in small mid-western markets. The best part of the their attire is instead of a sport coat they always wear a nylon windbreaker with some awful logo for the company they represent stitched on the right breast like, “Synlon-excellence in industrial fluid delivery” Rounding out the look are bad shoes, really bad shoes, either something that looks like 80’s era Capezio jazz shoes or a thera-sneaker-oxford monstrosity with a thick rubber sole-they are a hair’s breadth from having Velcro straps. Invariably these shoes have been worn so long that the cheap leather has softened and stretched the to the point where parts of the shoe hang over the sole in a grotesque, anthropomorphic way.

So I watch this guy, a component of some out-moded shadow economy I can’t comprehend, with his giant three ring binder under one arm holding an overstuffed vinyl attaché in the other check out this girls ass, turning his head shamelessly as she walked by. I shuddered. It was simply too lascivious for me pushing me far beyond my female objectification comfort zone. It was just gross. After observing this, and having this reaction, as I am checking out her ass, I begin to ponder where I fall on that scale of acceptable lechery. How long before I’m that guy. Am I already that guy-sartorial crimes withstanding.

I recall being at dinner with a friend when I was about 20 and he was about the age I am now. The waitress comes over to the table and makes some remark that I pick out some part of and reply to with some perhaps indelicate innuendo. She giggles, we flirt and she walks off smiling. Upon her return she says something that my friend then responds to playfully, she looks at him stone-faced, if not openly annoyed and asks for his order. When she left my friend looked at me and says you see the difference, at your age it’s cute-you're a smartass at my age you’re just an asshole.

I have never forgotten that because as I get older I look for that moment of open rebuke, signs of my wiles and charm sliding into assholeness. Granted I am youthful in appearance, well dressed, still arguably have my “hottie” days, and I have stretched the latitude that brings further than most, but I must accept those days are indeed numbered.