Oil of L.A.
Spring 1988. I’m in the express line in a supermarket just off the Pacific Coast Highway south of Los Angeles, pretending to be verifying that I indeed have ten items or less (which should be “ten items or fewer,” but this is in a store that probably ought to have an apostrophe in its name and it doesn’t), when what I’m really doing is sneaking the occasional peek at the person in front of me: five foot eleven or twelve, hair a color that might exist in nature but nowhere I’ve ever been, wearing a fairly skimpy swimsuit and a white top notable for its lack of opacity. No spring chicken, this; she’d clearly been around the block a few times, but this being Southern California after all, I’m probably guessing too low. Thirty-nine? Let’s try forty-six. “Seven, eight, nine,” I mumble, trying to avoid being caught in the act.
And as she’s pulling currency out of a billfold, I am taken aback by something else I’m seeing: one of those senior-citizen discount cards, of necessity printed in LARGE TYPE. Aphrodite here, it seems, is somewhere on the far side of fifty-five.
Cut to me peeling out of the parking lot, windows open, singing a couple of choruses of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” O brave new world, that has such women in ‘t. Then again, I’m a guy, and this is to be expected. Women might not be so forgiving.
House of Eratosthenes »
3 July 2008 · 10:23 pm
Why Gorgeous Women Shouldn’t Wear Skimpy Clothes
People do not make sense when they do their snarking about beautiful women in skimpy clothes. The most common nonsensical thing I see happen, is that the objection to the girl in skimpy clothes is given far greater visibility than the underlying reason…
CGHill »
12 July 2008 · 9:36 am
A related scenario, from Coyote Blog:
I have been sitting in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel for about 15 minutes and in that time I have seen the most magnificent display of beautiful women in small dresses I ever expect to see.