The Offer

i was heading for a late train, walking down eighth avenue, when i saw her on the sidewalk in the distance.

she looked as if she might look good, and the closer i got, the more she did look good, which is something that doesn’t happen nearly enough. i can still picture her face; she reminded me of some female comic i’ve seen on tv with dark hair and kind of new-york-sounding whose name won’t come to me.

she smiled real big as we neared and i thought, that’s nice, something else that doesn’t happen nearly enough, and then she spoke:

ya wanna date?

whoa, ouch. for the first time in my life i had been identified as a man who might be willing to pay money for sex. in other words, desperate.

i suppose there is another explanation, that she was in fact suggesting that we go to a movie, or drinks and dinner. maybe even that, since she brought it up, she would be willing to pay. or to go dutch.

it seems unlikely, though, even if i try hard to believe it, and the thought didn‘t cross my mind at the time. nor did a clever response, though anything would have been more clever than what i said, which was:

no.

then i went home and told my wife, who for some reason found this much more amusing than i did.