Having had a very sheltered childhood and adolescence, I am still deeply fascinated by the game of social interactions and flirtation. Thank goodness I went to a coed high school and had quite a number of male friends. There were no parties whatsoever for the entirety of my teenage years save one at the junior boarding house at age thirteen and the senior graduation party. Needless to say, I was quite oblivious to the flirtatious and sexual tensions at play at both.
Hence a trip to Whole Foods can become something of a wildlife exploration for me. What people want by the way they dress and behave can be so clear without ever having to examine their verbal ques. In fact, sometimes what they say tends to confuse the matter. I feel like I am witnessing something like the human animal version of David Attenborough’s LIFE ON EARTH, an imaginary Attenborough voice pointing out the important signals each member of the species provides the other in the courtship and mating ritual taking place.
The boyfriend and I were in the hideously crowded line in the Express checkout line several weeks ago, “Express checkout” being a relative term in the Union Square branch. The assembled crowd trudged along slowly when I noticed a girl with very short shorts ostentatiously displaying the back of her right leg as she shoved her basket along as her line moved. Then she stopped and talked to the fellow in the adjacent line. There was much smiling and eye contact. I looked to see if there was touching of her blonde hair at the appropriate pause. No, but when the line moved again, there was another very extravagant show of the back of her leg. I wondered if she realized that she had the slightest beginning of cellulite. Being a girl, I would notice these things. More overelaborate leg swinging. I would say not. Her cashier number came up. She finally picked up her basket and left. It was hard from where I stood to see the reactions of the fellow she was performing her display for, but given the smile on her face, I would say the mating dance was a success.
Then on our way home, I spied a couple in front of us. The woman was in a road accident of an outfit – tight grey jersey dress and 6-inch stilettos. Her heels were so high that she had to hold on tight to her date to avoid falling over. Her figure was too wobbly to carry the dress off. Her sides quivered as she staggered along. I looked at her thinking that the point of wearing a thong was to avoid visible panty lines. There was an entire visual thong line on display in front of me – the small of the back and the sides of the waist! They were going to The Strip House at 10pm.
I thought of Dean Wareham discussing visible panty lines and his now wife, Britta Phillips, in his memoir, “Black Postcards.” He said women tend to view visible panty lines as unsexy. That is not always the case, as is evidenced by someone describing Phillips as having the sexiest visible panty line in Indie Music. The woman walking into The Strip House is a million miles away from Phillips. However, given that she was out on a date to a very nice steakhouse, I would say that her choice of plumage did the trick in the courtship and mating game.
