How do you measure desire when you identify it? I like to use scales of one to ten in life (how am I? on a scale of one to 10? oh, i'm a six today, thanks!).
I think maybe I saw desire today off the scale.
But there is the possibility of misunderstanding; we have all been there. You mistake friendliness for desire. You mistake kindness. You mistake happiness.
But I think I saw something today in someone's eyes, and then I knew for sure when his eyes scanned the front of my body a few times, and I held eye contact and waited for the scanning to end, and it did, and then we locked eyes and it has been a long ... long ... long time since anyone has looked at me like that.
Admittedly got off to a rocky start here in New York. My hostel is not really a hostel at all, but more like a glorified shared short-term co-op. It's nice. It's too nice for me. To reverse paraphrase Candace Bushnell - the address on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue sounds like it should be disreputable, but is actually extremely upper class. I share an elevator and breakfast room with rich people ... anyone who lives in this type of building is rich. Very new rich. Tiny dog rich.
I am moving downtown on Saturday.
Failure to find an apartment near work (two rental applications rejected, likely due to other applicants making more money than me) in Santa Monica led me to make an unusual request of my boss on October 25 - let me work out of the Connecticut office for a couple of weeks before my vacation. I'll pay my own way, stay in the city.
He didn't think I was serious until I sent him an email with bullet points. Then he asked his boss, who asked her boss, who asked the VP in the Connecticut office and it was my birthday, so everyone said "Sure, why not?"
And here I am.
Finally hit my stride today - took the 7:39 train to Connecticut, walked to the office in the rain. South Norwalk is a beautiful little toy town, with toy bars and a huge toy police station. Our East Coast corporate office used to be the old city hall.
Left work at 5:10 pm, not wanting a repeat of what happened yesterday (I got sucked and guilt-tripped into working until after 7, which gave me the 7:40 pm train back to the city, which landed me pissed off and drunk by 11) and went to a business to business networking event just a few blocks away from the condo.
Met new and interesting people - I met a capitalist, a real estate agent, a writer, a headhunter, a financial advisor and a personal trainer. I ordered a $13 drink that was too strong (I could only take a couple of sips before giving up).
I walked back to the condo and sit here on the 15th floor overlooking 8th Avenue. The buildings so high and bright, the long lines of cabs, people heading out of the city, on their way home from the long-houred jobs that give them houses in the suburbs, lofts in the city.**********
The look of desire I hadn't seen in so long, the look of desire that only comes when you yourself feel attraction toward the person who feels it (if you don't feel attraction, then that look of desire is not desire at all, but just "gross") - the look of desire that some part of me thought I might never see, that look that took me by surprise, so shocked, it lasted no more than two minutes timed. Maybe three. I didn't even recognize the look for what it was to begin with, because I just had not seen it for so long.
The moments go by so fast, you want to bottle them. Put them in your pocket, so the next time you're cold and lonely and sad and wish you were dead, you could bring out that bottle like a bottle of drugs, and be dragged back to that one moment when a very beautiful man looked right at you and liked what he saw.
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