First, some questions about modern waitressing:
Why would I want to know the name of my “server” before ordering a hamburger?
Who introduced the now-universal, ear-splitting waitress bat-squeak?
Is there a required course in “How to be Obtrusive While Serving Broccoli”?
When and why did servers start saying “Let me get that out of your way?” My plate, my napkin, my butter knife are “in my way?” What would Frank Sinatra say to that?
Waitresses
At the Covered Bridge up here – a restaurant sadly gone – the most heart-poundingly sexy woman ran the few tables – boisterous, succulent as ripe cantaloupe and dead-on with every order, especially the drinks. I once made an internal bet that she would spot my empty gin and tonic glass within 15 seconds. At the count of 13, her finger shot out and
“Refill?”
They can’t teach that in bartender’s school.
The Dushore Hotel, during our first years here, was run by a laconic Donald Sutherland lookalike who tended the tiny L-shaped bar and cooked some of the dinners. When he poured a shot of Yukon Jack, you could not have forced another drop into the glass in a hyperbaric chamber. He also served dynamite prime rib on Fridays (seasoned with rosemary).
But his server trio sealed the deal:
The barmaid was a mass of muscular, exuberant flesh only somewhat restrained by a halter and surrounded by an almost visible cloud of pheromones.
Can a 5′ 10″ woman be cute? Oh my, yes. Our usual waitress would lean just so over the table with a smile equal parts sweet reticence and expectancy. Purrrr.
The other waitress had magnificent legs. The first time we dropped by, she was standing in the alleyway to the kitchen in shorts, one foot cocked back, knee bent. I’d never seen the like and never expect to again. Funny though, I never really found her erotic (which, for me, is pretty strange). It was more an appreciation of perfection in form. How often do you witness a living ideal – what should be, even when you had no advance notion of “should”?
Legs
Though that waitress takes my All-Time Gam Award (told you there was a connection), others were not far behind. Out the window and through the louvered shutter where teen-me would mush over the rabbit-owning girl next door, I also ogled Gertrude, our landlord’s wife, smokily tanned in the shorts-and-halter set that was near ubiquitous in 1950s summers (but never featured in TV sitcoms of the times, leaving later generations with the impression that all females back then were encased in frilly blouses and knee-obliterating skirts). A local amateur actress – her name once appeared on a program as “Gerturde,” which sent her into repeated hoots of hilarity – she could and would cross and recross her legs succulently with unstated ease.
While I was in college, a co-ed from Rhode Island with an unexceptionally pleasant face had lovely, delicate, shapely legs that seemed to belong to someone else. I was glad she’d borrowed them.
In the office of the UPenn book store, in the basement of the student-union building, a pert young woman with glasses and high heels had the habit of sitting on the edge of her desk, legs swinging in a sexual metronome while I pretended to look for something in the file cabinet. One of her duties was to fetch minimally edible snacks from the takeout counter upstairs, where she stood in line holding a cardboard carton marked “Peggy’s Box.”
The Welcomat advertising department held an unofficial position tagged “Lustful Lower Limbs,” held by three extraordinary lasses in a row – one after the other, I mean – they weren’t on linear display (alas).
During the 20-plus years we shared the massive Italianate twin on Baring Street, LCH [Let’sCall Her] Effie, the female half of the other couple, had a most unlikely and provocative physical presence.
In the early years, our two families shared communal meals. Wearing a loose denim skirt, she would draw her bare feet up onto her chair and consume her dinner with her skirt dropped to her waist. She took the same position on the porch swing that faced the street, presenting an unhindered view of expansive, delicious legs and cotton panties. Working in the back yard, she would sit in the grass with feet drawn up slightly, clipping at the weeds beneath her raised legs in a relaxed, remarkably inefficient but stunningly erotic pose, constantly fidgeting and rearranged her contours.
She fit into the ’40s soft-porn, pinup category. I’ve never been able to figure out if this unexcused exhibitionism was intentional or incidental, whether it sprang from innocence, physical disinterest or suppressed aggression. Whatever, I benefited.
One unlikely candidate was the office assistant at the funeral parlor that was arranging my brother Rod’s burial. (The reception room was strewn with clocks of all sorts, few working, none telling the correct time.) A cheery, funny, early-40s woman, she had legs that would put 99% of the world’s models to shame. I think she was genuinely unaware, certainly unconcerned. I was neither, but it’s impolite to pant loudly during your brother’s funeral preparations.
Oh, and there’s the 6’ 1” blonde insurance agent in town up here. (That description is enough in itself.)
Such stuff marks me as the quintessential dirty old man, I know, but I come by it legitimately: I was previously a dirty middleaged man, a dirty young man, a dirty teenager and a dirty little boy. I fantasized about anyone and anything but never deliberately hurt another being higher than insect or rodent. Any serial-killer genes I may possess are quiescent.
For which I’m glad.
lickhaven 