meet markets

by space at 02:31 PM on April 04, 2002

It's Spring now, when a young man's fancy begins to alight on members of the fairer sex.

Because you know, we're gay all winter.

Sometimes I like to imagine I can hear you all blinking.

ANYWAY, it's Springtime, and it's time to get some of the fucking. True, here in the midwest we're still getting the occasional snowstorm, but beneath that frigid turf, the ground is beginning to warm, worms are beginning to wiggle, and pretty soon their slimy little heads will be poking hopefully up out of the soil.

Then they'll get washed out of their holes during rainstorms and dessicate on the pavement.

ANYWAY, girls. I've been trying to find them at bars, without a great deal of success. But I also know that you can get them at the same place you can get most things: the mall. I think it's just force of habit, actually. When we were 12 and 13, we'd get our parents to drop us off at the mall for a few hours so we could cruise chicks. I'm still going there, still trying to meet girls. Unfortunately, the girls' ages haven't changed, but I don't always realize that right away. From a distance, all you see is the makeup and the clothes, and you start to think "Aah." Get a little closer, though, and you kinda go "eek," because, though you had no such intention, you've just discovered that you're a pedophile.

The other major category of girls at the mall work in the various stores. This is also a touchy group. Sure they're nice, but they're paid to be nice. Unfortunately, they aren't paid enough to be that nice, even if you get them into your dressing room and offer them an additional $20 an hour. My experiences with this approach have been so uniformly negative that I really can't recommend it to you.

When you spend enough time at the mall, you start to recognize people. They're not usually girls, though. There's a guy I went to high school with, selling cell phones, gotta hide my face for that one. And there's another guy I went to high school with, working security, avert the eyes, avert the eyes. Why are these guys still hanging around here? Jeez.

ANYWAY, girls. There is one girl I see almost every time I'm there, and I have to admire her. She wears all black. She wears some ultra pale foundation and thick black mascara and black lipstick. Her hair is black. Hold that thought: this girl has no legs and one arm, so she's got something to be goth about, if you ask me. She's got a motorized wheelchair, and she does laps around the mall at what has to be that sucker's top speed. People are always flinging themselves out of her way. It's great. I could get interested in a girl with an attitude like that, but what could she possibly see in me, in my grey sweaters, grey trousers, black shoes, in my Belle and Sebastian, my White Stripes, my Neko Case? Clearly, it's hopeless.

Also, beneath the Cure getup, she's just as preteen as all the other girls there.

ANYWAY, I guess it's back to the bar for me. Things don't seem to work out with the girls there either, but at least they serve alcohol. Stupid mall.