“Will ya look at ‘em, Grace? Holy cow, don’t they got bras in Brooklyn? City nips–there’s city nips and there’s country nips and I tell ya, right now the city nips are winning!”
That was my husband, Gerald, when we went to the public market at a park in Brooklyn last spring. When I think about it, that’s my husband all the time, but this story is about that one particularly beautiful Sunday morning in the middle of May. The flowers had bloomed and while the sun was quite warm, a slight breeze kept things (apparently) a little nippy.
We were visiting friends (city friends—we’re rural folk) and the two of us strolled to the market for local produce and whatever other treasures we might find. We were prepared to scoff but were happily surprised at the quality and variety (if not the quantity) of the goods we found. The bagels alone were worth the six-hour drive.
But this story is not about the bagels, it’s about another thing at the market that was also worth the six-hour drive.
Gerald was cleverly wearing his sunglasses so that the women with the aforementioned unfettered breasts couldn’t tell how inappropriately he was behaving. How could I argue with his approach? Seriously, I’m asking you—how?
I was people watching too. I was never one to obsess about fashion, but the women around there dressed very fashionably even when they were dressed down for running on the park’s paths or wandering around the market’s plaza. Luckily, I don’t believe that I was out of place in my blue-with-white-polka dots maxi sundress.
Gerald doesn’t like it when I chat with strangers and it’s probably because I flirt sometimes, and sometimes they flirt back. Huddled under the vendors’ pop-ups, it’s hard not to get to know the people next to you. Granted, some of the more aloof New Yorkers weren’t used to people like me but everyone warmed up eventually.
About my flirting—sometimes I follow through. I don’t do that back home, of course, because everybody knows everybody and, honestly, there aren’t many I’d want to follow through with anyway. Gerald and I travel now and then and when we do, I can’t help it if some man finds me attractive. I can’t help it if I find him attractive. I can’t help it if I end up fucking him behind a tree.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
First, let me say that no husbands are technically harmed when I fuck strangers (for example, behind trees). He gets plenty at home and let’s face it, he was so intent and content counting nipples that morning that I could have given the stranger a blowjob right in front of him and he wouldn’t have noticed.
Let’s talk about him—the stranger, not my husband. You remember my husband.
“Gawd, Gracie, did you see the pair on her? Aoogah!”
Remember him now? “Yes, dear, very nice.”
The stranger and I passed each other as we went from one vendor to the other. I smiled and nodded, and he did that too, right after he looked me up and down. I didn’t look back at him, exactly. I turned my head to the side just enough to see if he was looking back at me. He was.
He was carefully dressed to appear casual, from his well-fit polo shirt to his wrinkle-free cargo shorts to his sockless, slip-on shoes that probably cost him more than I spent on groceries in a month. Money can make an unattractive man attractive, but the stranger didn’t need money.
He had a little gray at the temples, just a little, which is so hot. He could have been thirty-five or fifty-five, and he had one of those neat beards that you can’t tell if it was on purpose, or that he just hadn’t shaved today.
I examined the celery (or potted plant or whatever the hell it was that I was pretending to examine), shyly batted my eyelashes, and unbuttoned the first of my dress’ many buttons without breaking eye contact. His gaze dropped to my chest but by the time he looked up, I had moved on to the next bunch of flowers or eggplant.
