Red, And.

Red, And.
by james bezerra


She was wearing something gray.

It was a gray skirt that hung loose around her legs, the way that she had them crossed that way. And a ribbed gray top with three-quarter sleeves, not quite as dark as the loose skirt. And red shoes. Red and with a strap over her foot. And with clunky, squarish heels.

And I wanted to breeze up to her table and say, “We should have an affair.”

And she would maybe run her fingers through her straight golden hair and maybe shake it out so it would catch the light coming through the dirty café window like ripples on a sunset ocean, and she would probably just laugh a little and her thick clunky bracelets would rattle a little and she might say something back like, “Do I know you?” But what she might really mean is, “Why not?”

But I don’t breeze up to her just then and I don’t say that to her and she doesn’t laugh and shake her hair and her hair doesn’t catch fire like dust flakes too close to the sun.

But I do look at her and she does see me looking at her and I don’t look away when she sees me. And neither does she. So there we are. She isn’t flirting and neither am I. So here we are. Looking at each other.

And it isn’t lusty or haughty, the way that she’s looking at me.

Maybe just a little haughty.

And I don’t think that there’s any lust in the way that I’m looking at her. Or, at least not too much lust. A little lust is good. What woman who owns shoes like those doesn’t want to get looked at with at least a little bit of lust – be it respectfully looked at – by an attractive stranger.

Though I’m not that attractive.

Attractive enough I guess.

I dress well.

Or try.

I know who makes her shoes, so there is more than just lust to this long look I’m giving her across this café. There’s admiration in it too. And maybe that’s why she is curious. Not quite sure if I’m gay. Not quite sure if I’m looking at the silky fabric of her billowy skirt because I want it or because I want to take it off of her.

The truth is, both.

Really.

I feel like I’m in drag when I’m dressed as a man. Though I am a man. And though I do dress in drag – just a little - it doesn’t feel that way when I do. Usually.

So perhaps she is holding this look this long because she’s trying to define a curious glint in my eye. The way a chef might pause and linger over a brand new flavor. And maybe I’m that new flavor.

She carefully smoothes down the fabric of her skirt along the tops of her thighs, though she doesn’t look down as she’s doing it. I don’t know if this is some kind of calming, self-securing gesture for her, or if it is something for me. Something for me to see, to witness. Some act of innocent self-touching that is otherwise innocuous here in the café. Some quick, secret-code of eroticism that only she and I have the key to; a coded message on a radio band that only we know to listen for.

And I sip the last from my tiny cup of coffee. Espresso, it actually is. I dislike the taste, but enjoy drinking from the tiny cups, so do.

Just like she must actually hate walking in those red shoes, but does.

Finally she smiles a little smile. Just a white flicker of her teeth beneath a tight-lipped smirk. She looks back at her table, back at her friends, who have been talking to her this whole time, unaware that she and I just had a curious moment.

They’re unaware that I just imagined the person who is her and that she just imagined the person who would be me. Her friends are unaware that we just saw each other and mapped one another and assessed one another. And they’re unaware that so many imagined moments just passed between us. But not between us, they passed separately about us. That she wondered how my voice sounds and what my little bit of stubble feels like. On her cheek. And I wondered how the skin of her shoulders feels, what her hands are like. I wondered about talking to her and what I would say, who I would suddenly be once I spoke to her. If I would be funny, if I would be droll. Or maybe I would be serious, calm. Cool. Maybe I would be the man who can wear this suit and inhabit it without trying to. Without knowing that he’s wearing the very smallest of women’s panties under these slacks. Or maybe I would be the man who could do that without wondering what she would think, what she would say when she unzipped these slacks. Maybe I would be the man who became sexier to her simply because I wear them. And maybe she would make a small noise, pull away from our kissing, from my mouth and from my tongue and she would look down at them – the silky red peeking out of these open slacks - and decide that she liked me this way, “Sure,” she might say, and then return her mouth to my mouth and quickly and simply slide her fingers beneath the flimsy red fabric that covers me. Maybe she would feel me and I would feel harder and bigger and more impressive to her because the coarseness of my skin causes a delicious kind of contrast against the feminine silk I wear.

And perhaps – I had thought this about her – my hand might slide up her calf, up her knee, up along the inside of her thigh, my thumb might hook the hem of her skirt and hitch it up, drag it up as my hand slid up along leg, up along that softest part of her thigh, until my fingers were there pressed between her thighs and she might wiggle a little there in the booth where she sat in this café, might wiggle a little so that she could part her thighs a little so that my fingertips could just brush the breath-thin fabric of her own panties. And I might pull her skirt up higher; that light, loose fabric bunching up around her hips and I would see that hers – small and dainty and delicate – were the same color underwear as mine. And I would look at her and she would laugh a little laugh and shake out her straight golden hair and it would sparkle and I would kiss her softly on her neck and she would feel the coarseness of my little bit of stubble on her cheek.

But of course not. This was just what she imagined of me – or, possibly, what I imagined of her – during that long look, before she turned back to her friends.
Before she turned back to the people she actually knew and the life that she actually lived, and thereby closed off all of the possibilities of all the lives that she didn’t lead. And just like that I passed away, passed out beyond some event horizon of her possibility. But maybe, just maybe, I stuck there, ever-expanding along the rim of the black hole of her forsaken possibilities. Stretching like a beam of light toward that dark center, never really disappearing, just slowing and more slowly and more slowly ceasing to exist in any relevant way.

And part of me liked this. About her. About me. About the fact that that long moment of ours would never really cease to exist because it had never really existed in the first place. And the moment of her unzipping me, of seeing me, of accepting me, of liking it, of liking me, of enjoying the red fabric along the back of her hand while my skin was on her fingertips, that moment when she did better than not caring, that moment when she cared and liked it. That moment doesn’t go away for me. We shared that, whether she ever knows it or not.

I replace my empty little espresso cup on its little saucer. I fold up my paper. I fold it in half and put it under my arm. I leave some bills from my pocket on the table. I look at her in the instant before I move toward the door. She sees me but pretends not to. Her lips press into that tight smirk again.

I have to walk past her table to get to the front door. So I walk past her table. The black linen of my suit makes a very satisfying sound as I walk. I push open the door. I like to think that she looks up to watch as I pass through the doorway and away. I don’t look back to find out. I don’t want to betray what we had.



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