So Mom and I are laying (lying?) at (near?) the pool at the Mirage and it’s 92 degrees outside.  It’s true what they say about dry heat - it’s different.  It’s not as hot.  However it is just as hot when it happens to be 116 degrees like the last time I was in Vegas with Mom because dry heat or wet heat, at 116 degrees you feel aflame.

So lately I’ve been thinking, “You know what kid, you’re not all that bad.”  Most of this is at the urge of Me at 50, who resides next to Me at 35 and Me at 70, because I’m thinking that Me at 50 will not fit into a pair of size zero Levi’s.  (Okay, okay, I admit it - I’ve been dying to tell someone.  The new Levi’s I got are a size zero.  They should be a size two.  Believe me, by all accounts they should be a size two because really I’m pretty much a four all around, which still, hey, give me some credit.  That’s cute.  It’s just the cut of these.  And Levi’s stretch like a muth so I shoved myself in them in the dressing room but not to the point of muffin-topping and headed to the cash register with the loudest secret I’d never tell anyone except for my two phantom followers on this blog and likely the ex-boyfriends that read this from time to time.)  So I’m thinking, “You know what kid, you’re really not all that bad.”  I happen to like my clavicle quite a bit and I’ve been told more than once my tits are totally decent, by different people!  Yes, my thighs touch but the older I get the more I’m thinking this will make me look less old when I am Me at 50 because really skinny women never age well.  So okay, my thighs touch and my thumbs were meant for midgets and one of my eyes opens wider than the other when I smile and even after four years of braces my left canine protrudes more than the right and I bite my nails and I’m very fearful that my butt may become a flass (flat ass) when I’m Me at 50.  But God dammit, Me at 50 is all, “Girl, that suit looks banging on you.  When you walk to the pool, walk proud, because that can fool them all.”  So I take Me at 50’s advice and I do walk to the pool proud.  Fuck the haterz.  Besides, if even a moderate 5 from Chicago on The Scale were to take a jaunt to Vegas, they’d feel like an 8 the whole time.  For better or for worse, I consider Vegas to be a very representative handful of America.  Perhaps it’s missing The Heartland (your Oklahomas, Kansai, Montanas, etc.) because those people actually understand what’s important in life, but for the most part people from all over the country visit this city (a term I use loosely in this instance).

I walk down the steps into the crowded pool full of men and women mostly my age.  I feel the slime of tanning oils and beer and (likely) pre-ejaculate floating amuck in the pool and whimper.   I feel some looks.  Not in a narcissistic way, if that is possible here, but really, when you are a girl, you know when people are looking at you.  They look at you your whole life.  Because you are a girl.  And to many men, you were made for looking at.  And it feels good.  And it feels bad.  But this time it feels good - the slimy water and the looks.  I sit on the ledge for a few minutes.  I get out of the pool.

I dry off, read some of my book, and head back to the pool when I feel too hot again.  I walk down a set of stairs next to a guy about my age.  Two ladies are talking to him as he interrupts to inform me that I look like someone.  

“I’m sorry?” I respond.

This person is shitfaced.  ”You look like PIng.  Png!”

“Who?”

“Pink!  That singer Pink!”

The onlookers silence quickly.  There is one thing that men who offer occasional compliments to strange women need to know and that thing is to never, ever compare your target to a woman whose lower body looks like that of a GI Joe figurine.  Women all over the United States know this.  Is the singer Pink awesome?  Yes.  Is she feisty and does she seem like fun?  Yes.  Is she attractive?  No.  Ask any girl.  

The two girls interested in this person instantly “Ooooh” when they recognize, like I, that this is not a compliment.  This person, who I later learn is from San Diego and named Claude, backtracks hurriedly.   “No way!  She’s hot!  She doesn’t look like a man… Really?  No!  She doesn’t.”  

“Fine,” I concede.  ”I will take it as a compliment.”

So Claude and I get to talking.  Claude was wearing white sunglasses.  I usually find men wearing white sunglasses revolting in the way I find eating feces revolting - it’s pretty up there.  But whether I like it or not, it’s 2009 God damn it, and with the spread of hipster culture and pointy-toed shoes for men on the rise I am learning to lessen my distastes so as my face registers merely as stoic when I come upon a male fashion offense.  We continue talking.

Claude starts laying on thick, okay?  Real thick.  I’m thinking, “Does this work in San Diego?”  But he was there with his friends, it was the middle of a beautiful day, and he was drunk in a pool in the desert.  Can’t say I’ve never been there.  I try to be polite.  

I mention I’m there with my mother.  He thinks it’s cool.  He asks if she “parties.”  Almost more than I despise the word “naughty” (I really do - both in serious and non-serious connotations), I absolutely abhor being asked the question, “Do you party?”  I was first asked this in college, I think at some frat party when I was dating the Brazilian pothead and I sincerely, not in the innocent-cute-virgin way that I was at the time but as a relatively smart individual, did not know what they meant.  I assumed that the question “Do you party?” meant “Do you like to go to parties?”  Of course I like to go to parties!  I replied yes and it was only during the consecutive years embedded in oft-impervious college colloquialisms that I realized the question “Do you party?” either translates to “Do you like to drink a lot?,” “Do you fuck random guys?,” “Do you like to drink a lot and fuck random guys?,” or “Do you do cocaine?”

I reply, “My mom can get down.”  I wonder how Claude takes this.

He says, “But you probably can’t get too crazy right?”

“No,” I hesitate, anxious where this is going.

“So do you guys, like, wanna go out with us tonight?” He’s slurring.

“…um, yeah, no, you know, like, my mom’s here…”

“Okay, that’s cool.”  He continues inquiring about how crazy I plan to get this weekend.  ”So you can’t get too crazy with your mom here.”

“No.”  I already answered that.

“Like hooking up with guys and stuff.”  LIKE HOOKING UP WITH GUYS AND STUFF.

“No.”  I have zero desire to hook-up with Claude.  ZERO.

“Not saying that we’re gonna hook up!” 

“Yeah, no!”  Ohmigod eww.

“I didn’t say we were going to hook up or that I would hook up with you.”  Is he insulting me now?

“No, I know!”  Ohmigod eww.

Silence.

I want to get out of the pool without being entirely obvious.  This is where I go wrong in life.  I worry about (a) hurting people’s feelings too much or (b) being too obvious.  Both of those things are things I must (a) get over and (b) practice.

Claude inches toward me.  Notice the word “inches,” all Hitchcock like.  ”I really want to dunk you right now,” he whispers.  

Sweet Jesus.  Sweet baby Jesus and the Heavenly Father at the Right Hand of the Cross Son of Mary.  ”Don’t!”  Read this in the least flirtatious way possible.  It was the way I’d tell Mike Tyson not to dunk me.

“Why not?”  He’s smiling.  It’s gross.  ”I really just want to get this hair wet.”

OMG.  ”Seriously.”  I take my hands out of the water and bring them near my face.  ”DON’T.”

“Why not?” he flirts, still smiling.  

Again, I try to be nice.  He’s about four inches from my face. “My hair’s my pride and joy! and then I’d have to wash it and I know it’s gross but I never wash it that’s how it looks so good HA! and then I’d—”

Three inches from my face.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” I literally quasi-yelled.  I yelled at someone in a pool not to touch me.  Like some after-school special “I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with your sexual advances” shit.  

“Whoa!  Hey!  Okay!  Jeez!  Crazy over here!”  I would say he’s obviously embarrassed but he’s pink as a lobster already and do they make albinos in red-heads?

Again, I try to be nice. “No, it’s just that…  Seriously.  Don’t touch me?”

He backs off very quickly, quite obviously, and leaves to talk to his group of buddies.  I stand there, looking at the girls that wanted Claude and do one of those fake smiles I do.  I leave the pool.

I immediately tell the story to my mother while I can see Claude in the pool telling the story to his friends.  I bother by what I know will be differences in the stories:

Claude: “So this bitch gets in the pool right, not even that hot or whatever…”

Nicole: “Ohmigod, this fucking DOUCHEBAG in WHITE SUNGLASSES yells, ‘Hey, you look like Pink’ when I get in the pool, right…”

And as I’m narrating the story to my mom and caring less and less what Claude is telling his friends, I began to think more deeply about the word “crazy.”  This circumstance would make a great prompt for a paper in a Gender & Women’s Studies class would it not?

“Judy is lounging by the pool with her mother in a two-piece bathing suit.  She enters a crowded pool full of young people of all races and backgrounds.  A young man named Herald begins to talk to her and eventually asks, very hastily, if he can ‘dunk her.’  After he comes closer to her to the point where she feels mildly physically threatened, she yells, ‘Don’t touch me!’  For Monday:  3-5 pages on who’s crazy here.”

You know what, GWS teacher, fucking Herald is the crazy one!  Not me!  I mean, Judy!  That bitch was just minding her own business, trying to get back some self-esteem she feels she used to have more of, and Herald’s all up in her grill?  Eff that.  You don’t fucking touch strangers!  And the only time you do is when prompted and listen up, boys.  Learn to read a fucking signal.  If I wanted to “party” with you, I would have.  Simple as that.  Really.  If my mom’s badass enough to travel to Vegas with me, she’d probably let me hang out with you.  I’m 26 God damn years old.  Herald, she’s not into it.  Get the signal and read it.  YOU are crazy.  

But what is crazy, what’s really crazy here and should be another prompt for another paper is that were I attracted to Herald, I would have let him dunk me.  I would have.  Because that’s flirting, that’s fun, that’s sexy, etc.  But then, if the dunking had occurred, Judy would have never yelled the crazy phrase and thus, never referred to as crazy.  But because Herald’s poor ego was bruised, what does he do?  He turns it around on Judy.  It’s Judy’s fault because she’s not into you, right?  Because she prefers guys with discernible eyebrows?  Because, you’re awesome, right Claude/Herald?  You are the almighty Man with pectoral muscles and a penis, correct?  Radical feminism is just a few steps away for me, my male friends.  Keep pushing…

You don’t touch strangers.  Yon don’t dunk strangers.   Whatever the fuck happened to “I’d like to see you sometime?”