Tell Me It's Real(9)

Even though I’d seen her perform this same routine countless times, it never got old, and I watched with rapt attention, anticipating the next steps in my head. Okay, front kick. Land. Twirl. Give some sass. Give some sass. Give some sass. Walk away, walk away, and sexy pose! Two. Three. Four. And, as always, she executed it flawlessly.

But then, the funniest little thing happened.

“Poker Face” segued into another diva with the words, “It’s Britney, bitch,” and the crowd screamed its usual roar of approval. I clapped quietly, not wanting to interfere with the sound on the video camera, knowing that Sandy would watch the recording with a hawk’s eye, wanting to point out all the little mistakes he felt Helena had made (and he would, too; no one was harder on Helena than Sandy). I sat back and got ready for her Britney routine (sans all the head-shaving crazy. Dear Britney: thank you for taking your super fun-time medicine now. Love, the gay community) when I felt a curious thing.

You know that prickly feeling you get when you just know someone is watching you? I’ve often wondered how we can know this. Is it like some sixth sense kind of thing? Or are our bodies so in tune with each other’s that we can pick up on actual heat in a gaze? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I may never know.

What I can say is that I got that prickling sensation—that slightly odd feeling of being watched. I pushed it away, knowing it was probably just people down below glancing up at Charlie and me, wondering who the VIPs were and why we got to sit where we did. I focused back on Helena.

But it wouldn’t… go… the fuck… away. I was starting to get slightly annoyed and maybe even a little uncomfortable. It’s probably nothing, I told myself. Probably nothing at all. But I couldn’t get that feeling to leave, so finally, inevitably, I looked down to the crowd and saw him.

Oh sweat balls, I thought.

Standing near the wall, surrounded by what looked like a group of total fratty jockish dudes, was a man. A very fine man. He looked a few years younger than me, with brown hair that fell all over his head in an artfully messy way that looked like he might have just rolled out of bed, but you knew was done on purpose. He had thick, pretty lips that were made for sin, stretching into a delicious smile that showed even teeth. Dimples. Fuck me up, we have dimples! Deep, deep dimples that I wanted to put my tongue into. I blushed a fire red, but I didn’t stop my depraved up and down assessment.

Tight white T-shirt pulled against a strong chest, the sleeves of which strained against his meaty biceps. Since he was standing against the wall, I couldn’t see his ass, and I was slightly disappointed, as I am an ass man through and through. But I could see his front, and I have no shame in admitting that I checked out his package, what little I could see given the fact that strobe lights were going off and there was a moderately large lesbian with a mustache blocking part of my view. Move your labianical ass! I wanted to scream at her, but somehow I was able to fight the words back. After all, one does not scream at lesbians in Doc Martens unless one wants to receive a penis kicking.

And so I let my gaze rise back up until I locked eyes with the man I’d already dubbed Mr. Yes Please. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were, but I pretended they would be green, the sharpest of all emerald greens. I couldn’t remember ever thinking that noses could be hot. But he had a hot nose. Made for… well, whatever sex things noses are made for.

His grin widened.

Dimplepalooza. Dimplefest. Dimplenator 3000.

He winked.

And then I realized that I was blatantly eye-fucking what had to be the hottest man of all time, to ever exist, anywhere, ever, and that I was still me. I was Paul Auster, slightly effeminate, slightly husky, very ordinary and boring and any other adjective I’ve already thrown at you. I was nothing, and it was like my Pavlovian conditioning had kicked in and he was my bell. One of his frat-jock buds said something to him and he looked away for just a split second, but it was enough to break whatever spell he’d tried to cast over me like a level-thirty warlock hell-bent on getting my Crystal of Zyanthia. But then the fact that I’d just compared him to a level-thirty warlock hell-bent on getting my Crystal of Zyanthia caused me to hyperventilate a bit further, knowing that he was so far out of my league that it wasn’t even funny. I didn’t date guys who had veins bulging out of their arm muscles. I didn’t date guys who had muscles. I didn’t date!

Then I recognized this for what it was, that I’d totally misconstrued the whole look. It was just one of those things where we’d looked at each other at the same time and he was being polite while I drooled all over him from afar. He probably gets people falling over him all the time, I thought. He’s probably used to humanity begging to suck on his dimples, so he was just letting me enjoy the moment of being able to bask in the awesomeness that is him.