"... which appeared to me both regal and ridiculous. Your brown hair was matted to the right side of your face, and a galaxy of freckles dusted your shoulders. I'd never seen anything so beautiful.... We sat at the counter of that five and dime and talked like old friends.... After an hour or so, I excused myself to use the restroom. I remember consulting my reflection in the mirror. Wondering if I should kiss you, if I should tell you what I'd done from the cockpit of that bomber a week before, if I should return to the Smith & Wesson that waited for me. I decided, ultimately, that I was unworthy of the resuscitation this stranger in the teal ball gown had given me, and to turn my back on such sweet serendipity would be the real disgrace. On the way back to the counter, my heart thumped in my chest like an angry judge's gavel, and a future -- our future -- flickered in my mind. But when I reached the stools, you were gone. No phone number. No note. Nothing.... I'm an old man now, and only recently did I recount this story to someone for the first time, a friend from the VFW. He suggested I look for you on Facebook. I told him I didn't know anything about Facebook, and all I knew about you was your first name and that you had lived in Boston once...."
It called to mind the little speech by an old man in "Citizen Kane," explaining what old men remember:
One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in... and on it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on - and she was carrying a white parasol - and I only saw her for one second and she didn't see me at all - but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
I think a lot of old men read my blog. Sometimes I blog about what women are wearing and they crowd into the comments to say that it would never occur to them to think about what dress a woman had on....
What I'd like to see is a Missed Connection that starts out with a story about how a man and woman both got stuck in an elevator together, and it becomes "Heaven on the Seventh Floor" by Paul Nicholas.
Thinking back, I'm only haunted by the girls that didn't take a roll-in-the-hay. Of course, in my mind, they are still young women, and full of vitality.
In reality, they are grandmothers....at least I hope they are.
I used to be teased that I didn't notice/couldn't remember what the women in my office wore. True enough, yet it's odd how some women in some clothes I still remember. It's like a dark room,and occasionally a flash of light freezes someone in something.
Strange, a friend and I were just talking about something like this. We were talking about a girl in school i had a huge crush on for two years. I tried everything to get her in a relationadhip. I remember the emotions but now I cant remember her face or name. Let alone anything she wore. Maybe I have a really bad memory.
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward Under the towers of your seminary, Go listen to your teachers old and contrary Without believing a word.
Tie the white fillets then about your hair And think no more of what will come to pass Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass And chattering on the air.
Practice your beauty, blue girls, before it fail; And I will cry with my loud lips and publish Beauty which all our power shall never establish, It is so frail.
For I could tell you a story which is true; I know a woman with a terrible tongue, Blear eyes fallen from blue, All her perfections tarnished -- yet it is not long Since she was lovelier than any of you.
How many orders of beef have you passed over the counter, Girl with white arms, since I’ve been gone? How many times have you said, ‘Gravy?’ Your arms are still white, And you’re still the thing in all the room That transcends foodstuffs.
Donne talked of seeing the skull beneath the flesh. A lesser poet and greater cynic might talk of the cellulite lumped upon the flesh. Hasn't anyone ever been attracted to a woman who porked out in later years?
There are a handful of images of women I once knew for a moment. I couldn't tell you what any of them were wearing, I couldn't even say with confidence what half of them looked like. What I could tell you in detail, even decades later, is what I felt when I looked at them and the fantasy of a life together that spun out in my mind in those few moments before we went our separate ways forever.
Not every encounter with a woman (not always beautiful, but always enticing in some way) led to this absurd imagining, only rare few women struck that chord. Why and what it was about them I'll never know.
I could not tell you anything about what #s 1 or 2 ever wore, even at our weddings. It's just not something of which I was/am mindful.
I surely could not tell you what any other woman might have worn whom I dated or otherwise carnally knew. Wilbur is interested in what's in the package, not the wrapping.
I have never cheated while married. But I promised to be faithful, not to go blind.
I clearly remember a great many individual moments in my life in which I've been smitten by one or another woman's looks. If it's a genuinely memorable moment then my memories may include what she was wearing, if but only if it materially contributed in some important way to how attractive she was at that particular moment.
To pick examples other men may share: I have zero trouble remembering, for example, Barbara Eden's "Jeannie" outfit or Raquel Welch's animal skin rags from "One Million Years BC." I have no trouble remembering what Rebecca De Mornay's dress and shoes looked like when her character showed up on Joel's (Tom Cruise's) doorstep in "Risky Business."
But I've never met a straight man who was smitten with the clothes' look as oppose to the woman's look in them.
That old dude in the Citizen Kane video (Everett Sloane, I believe) played the farmer whose barn Opie and his friends accidentally burned down on The Andy Griffith Show.
Or that's what they thought until Andy arrested him for running moon and burning down his own barn. Not a little conflict of interest there for Sheriff Taylor.
I remember that scene in Citizen Kane, I just got through describing it to a friend a couple of weeks ago and how I used to describe it to my ex-wife, who was not amused.
Of all the women I remember only one was worth my thoughts. I let her get away and still think about her everyday.
Ah Beldar, a large poster of Raquel Welch in her animal rag bikini decorated my third year study carrel at Boalt Hall. Buried back in the library stacks she brought a smile to many a law student's face.
And I do remember what a stunning blonde wore when she strolled through the main reading room in that library. It was early in the school year. She was the girl friend of one of the law students. In her first appearance she was wearing a powder blue bikini and flip flops. The main reading room was 250 feet long with ranks of long study tables lined up along a middle aisle. As the young lady strutted her stuff down that middle aisle, you could hear pencils dropping on tables as guys (in those days law school enrollments were 90% male) raised their heads to enjoy the view.
Well the weather gets colder in the fall and the winter in Berkeley--and the young lady continued to come in and walk down the middle aisle. No more bikinis, but she was always in outfits so tight that could have been airbrushed on her skin. And the pencils continued to drop. She knew the adage, "If you've got it flaunt it".
And William--yes I was momentarily entranced by a young woman at the end of my senior year in high school. We were headed to colleges 2000 miles apart. A nice looking young woman at the time--but when I saw her at my 30th high school reunion, she resembled the Graf Zeppelin in a gold lame dress. As Garth Brooks sings, "Thank God for Unanswered Prayers".
Gold puffy jacket, white rabbit fur along the edges of the hood and sleeves.
White oxford shirts with standard blue button-up 501 Levis. Her younger brother would wear the pants for about a month, until the first sign of fade, and then pass them on to her, where they fit wonderfully.
Jeans and pink polo shirt, collar popped up. Capri shoes.
Check-pattern blue and black skirt over dark hose. Boots with buckles.
Tight white jeans, loose powder blue top, low cut and well filled. Shoes that reminded me of Keds.
Black and purple-dotted dress that reached mid-thigh, cowboy boots. Start of Spring.
"I think a lot of old men read my blog. Sometimes I blog about what women are wearing and they crowd into the comments to say that it would never occur to them to think about what dress a woman had on...."
Maybe a lot of old men read your blog because you're an old lady. Old ladies attract old men. And I clicked on the link to read the comments of all the old men crowding in to comment that they never think about what dress a woman wears, and lo and behold, there isn't one single comment to support this assertion. Not one. Are you making things up again? Where is that thought coming from, and going to?
Is it because you lost your chance at the woman you could have loved?
Perhaps someday Meade will love you as much as I love my wife. We met at a party. I thought she was out of my league but I approached her, we spoke, she went out on a date with me, then another and more after that, and before a half year had passed I proposed. Much later I found out that back at the party she'd asked her girlfriend why a guy like me couldn't come over and talk to her.
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38 comments:
This "lovely" piece has been Fisked on several other blogs. The military aspects of the piece don't jib with real vets.
"I think a lot of old men read my blog."
It's because we love old women.
That's love at first sight, not what the woman is wearing.
The story seemed fake. Another cheap shot at Nixon!
I was always disappointed that the women in college and at work were such a drab bunch. This was even before feminism.
There's a couple retrospectively that would have been worth the effort, probably.
Distinguished by a sense of humor and irony, not what they wore.
Who are you calling old men Ms. Althouse? Wash your mouth out with soap!
Laslo Spatula doesn't remember the dress---it's merely an impediment to his lascivious intentions.
But yes, memory brings all sorts of things to mind--not all of them pleasant.
What I'd like to see is a Missed Connection that starts out with a story about how a man and woman both got stuck in an elevator together, and it becomes "Heaven on the Seventh Floor" by Paul Nicholas.
I think the trouble was that women dress to a uniform. The uniform changed with feminism, but it's the same deal really.
Thinking back, I'm only haunted by the girls that didn't take a roll-in-the-hay.
Of course, in my mind, they are still young women, and full of vitality.
In reality, they are grandmothers....at least I hope they are.
The dog seems content, having been taken for a half mile heel-run alongside the bike.
She'd been begging for attention all morning. Now she's sleeping in the sun.
A human female could get the same stimulation from working a math problem, rather than thinking about clothes.
I used to be teased that I didn't notice/couldn't remember what the women in my office wore. True enough, yet it's odd how some women in some clothes I still remember. It's like a dark room,and occasionally a flash of light freezes someone in something.
Compare my icon over there to the right
with Althouse's.
Who thinks about clothes?
Strange, a friend and I were just talking about something like this. We were talking about a girl in school i had a huge crush on for two years. I tried everything to get her in a relationadhip. I remember the emotions but now I cant remember her face or name. Let alone anything she wore. Maybe I have a really bad memory.
Blue Girls
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary
Without believing a word.
Tie the white fillets then about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air.
Practice your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;
And I will cry with my loud lips and publish
Beauty which all our power shall never establish,
It is so frail.
For I could tell you a story which is true;
I know a woman with a terrible tongue,
Blear eyes fallen from blue,
All her perfections tarnished -- yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.
- John Crowe Ransom
How many orders of beef have you passed over the counter,
Girl with white arms, since I’ve been gone?
How many times have you said,
‘Gravy?’
Your arms are still white,
And you’re still the thing in all the room
That transcends foodstuffs.
--E.B. White
Donne talked of seeing the skull beneath the flesh. A lesser poet and greater cynic might talk of the cellulite lumped upon the flesh. Hasn't anyone ever been attracted to a woman who porked out in later years?
Some of us don't wait and hem and haw ... and regret. Wife and I have been married for 40 years now.
But yes, I'm an old man who reads Althouse, that young punk kid.
There are a handful of images of women I once knew for a moment. I couldn't tell you what any of them were wearing, I couldn't even say with confidence what half of them looked like. What I could tell you in detail, even decades later, is what I felt when I looked at them and the fantasy of a life together that spun out in my mind in those few moments before we went our separate ways forever.
Not every encounter with a woman (not always beautiful, but always enticing in some way) led to this absurd imagining, only rare few women struck that chord. Why and what it was about them I'll never know.
Forty eight bombs over four missions? The B52 has a payload capacity of 70,000 pounds. That's 140 500 lb bombs per mission.
Compelling:
http://www.thomaswictor.com/we-never-met-in-the-rain-on-the-last-day-of-1972/
"Teal" did not exist in 1972.
Wilbur is on wife #3.
I could not tell you anything about what #s 1 or 2 ever wore, even at our weddings. It's just not something of which I was/am mindful.
I surely could not tell you what any other woman might have worn whom I dated or otherwise carnally knew. Wilbur is interested in what's in the package, not the wrapping.
I have never cheated while married. But I promised to be faithful, not to go blind.
Speaking as one old man who reads your blog:
I clearly remember a great many individual moments in my life in which I've been smitten by one or another woman's looks. If it's a genuinely memorable moment then my memories may include what she was wearing, if but only if it materially contributed in some important way to how attractive she was at that particular moment.
To pick examples other men may share: I have zero trouble remembering, for example, Barbara Eden's "Jeannie" outfit or Raquel Welch's animal skin rags from "One Million Years BC." I have no trouble remembering what Rebecca De Mornay's dress and shoes looked like when her character showed up on Joel's (Tom Cruise's) doorstep in "Risky Business."
But I've never met a straight man who was smitten with the clothes' look as oppose to the woman's look in them.
That old dude in the Citizen Kane video (Everett Sloane, I believe) played the farmer whose barn Opie and his friends accidentally burned down on The Andy Griffith Show.
Or that's what they thought until Andy arrested him for running moon and burning down his own barn. Not a little conflict of interest there for Sheriff Taylor.
I remember that scene in Citizen Kane, I just got through describing it to a friend a couple of weeks ago and how I used to describe it to my ex-wife, who was not amused.
Of all the women I remember only one was worth my thoughts. I let her get away and still think about her everyday.
"Some of us don't wait and hem and haw ... and regret. Wife and I have been married for 40 years now."
Hem = part of a dress.
Ah Beldar, a large poster of Raquel Welch in her animal rag bikini decorated my third year study carrel at Boalt Hall. Buried back in the library stacks she brought a smile to many a law student's face.
And I do remember what a stunning blonde wore when she strolled through the main reading room in that library. It was early in the school year. She was the girl friend of one of the law students. In her first appearance she was wearing a powder blue bikini and flip flops. The main reading room was 250 feet long with ranks of long study tables lined up along a middle aisle. As the young lady strutted her stuff down that middle aisle, you could hear pencils dropping on tables as guys (in those days law school enrollments were 90% male) raised their heads to enjoy the view.
Well the weather gets colder in the fall and the winter in Berkeley--and the young lady continued to come in and walk down the middle aisle. No more bikinis, but she was always in outfits so tight that could have been airbrushed on her skin. And the pencils continued to drop. She knew the adage, "If you've got it flaunt it".
And William--yes I was momentarily entranced by a young woman at the end of my senior year in high school. We were headed to colleges 2000 miles apart. A nice looking young woman at the time--but when I saw her at my 30th high school reunion, she resembled the Graf Zeppelin in a gold lame dress. As Garth Brooks sings, "Thank God for Unanswered Prayers".
@Althouse, that's one definition of the word, however in context "hem and haw" means to dither, to be indecisive.
I had been under the impression you knew something about words.
My favorite story along this line, was when Curly told of falling in love for the first time with a girl in a white cotton dress.
Gold puffy jacket, white rabbit fur along the edges of the hood and sleeves.
White oxford shirts with standard blue button-up 501 Levis. Her younger brother would wear the pants for about a month, until the first sign of fade, and then pass them on to her, where they fit wonderfully.
Jeans and pink polo shirt, collar popped up. Capri shoes.
Check-pattern blue and black skirt over dark hose. Boots with buckles.
Tight white jeans, loose powder blue top, low cut and well filled. Shoes that reminded me of Keds.
Black and purple-dotted dress that reached mid-thigh, cowboy boots. Start of Spring.
Many, many others.
I also remember underwear.
I am Laslo.
In connection with clothes, I remember this Herrick poem:
Whenas inn silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !
I think a lot of old men read my blog
And we're all wearing shorts
Concur. Why would a young man read this blog? There's nothing here for them.
"I think a lot of old men read my blog. Sometimes I blog about what women are wearing and they crowd into the comments to say that it would never occur to them to think about what dress a woman had on...."
Maybe a lot of old men read your blog because you're an old lady. Old ladies attract old men. And I clicked on the link to read the comments of all the old men crowding in to comment that they never think about what dress a woman wears, and lo and behold, there isn't one single comment to support this assertion. Not one. Are you making things up again? Where is that thought coming from, and going to?
I never said "old" meant something bad. Why so skittish, old men?
Is it because you lost your chance at the woman you could have loved?
Is it because you lost your chance at the woman you could have loved?
Perhaps someday Meade will love you as much as I love my wife. We met at a party. I thought she was out of my league but I approached her, we spoke, she went out on a date with me, then another and more after that, and before a half year had passed I proposed. Much later I found out that back at the party she'd asked her girlfriend why a guy like me couldn't come over and talk to her.
No one's interested in whether or not this a total fake?
http://www.thomaswictor.com/we-never-met-in-the-rain-on-the-last-day-of-1972/
sounds fake to me now.
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