End of December I drove from New Orleans to San Antonio. It was 81 degrees. Knowing that I'd be back in Minnesota in two days made that both a tiny ecstasy and a little horror. Don't get used to it or you'll be one bummed out camper.
Whatever bowl game it is they have in San Antonio was sometime in the next couple days. The streets downtown and the entire Riverwalk were brimming with Nebraska and Michigan t-shirts, hats, backpacks...bikini tops. Okay, that last part was working for me.
There was a street fair taking place. Centro San Antonio. I'd been hearing about it all over the radio. It was kind of sparse. The locals didn't seem to give a damn and the tourists were flocking to the Riverwalk and the chain stores littering its banks.
Waiting in line for some roast corn I heard a voice behind me that could sterilize a rhino at two hundred paces.
She was loud. She was nowhere near the same zip code as smart. And she was bitching casually about one...two...three...four, five...ten...sixteen...Christ everybody in San Antonio as near as I could tell.
That voice. Scratchy and shrill. Grating. Those rhinos whose families she could be preemptively killing were lucky to be half a continent and a whole ocean away. I, on the other hand, was right in the kill zone. I seriously doubt children are in my future and I'm pretty ambivalent about that.
But I like having the option.
Every time she spoke and unleashed those harsh tones I could hear my supreme count decrease.
"She's, like, such a bitch. And what is up with her hair?"
Her voice was a symphony but the orchestra consisted of clanking, cracked bells, fingernails on a chalkboard, jackhammers at 6am, and squealing brakes.
"He's so totally into me and I was like later. He's such a geek. He's always, like, opening the door for me and telling me I'm beautiful and I'm like, no shit. So, why do you think I'd go out with you."
I turned around intending to ask her to please...please...pretty please...shut the hell up. To tell her she was killing off members of future generations by the hundreds every time she made that sound that sounded so close to human speech but was entirely to ugly to be anything but the spawn of Satan and that she owed it to the world at large to stop destroying its as yet unborn and even unconceived doctors and lawyers and meter maids.
God, help me. She was gorgeous. Stone-cold, drop-dead gorgeous. Stop the presses gorgeous. Peel me off the pavement and call me a paramedic 'cause my heart can't even pretend to remember how to beat anymore gorgeous.
About 5'7" with thick, shining, jet black hair, big brown eyes, a set of lips made for...well, many things not involving talking...slender but stacked with that irresistible flare of the hips that makes guys (or at least this guy) go caveman instantly.
Momentarily overcome by lust I forgave her all her shallow bitching and self-centered ramblings.
But then she spoke.
I don't remember what she said but say with confidence that it was uninteresting and ugly.
Lust dropped it's lunch tray and ran out of the cafeteria weeping.
This, then, is some kind of Darwinian aberration. Though it could be reverse-Darwinism. Perhaps this is the result of years of evolution. Her ancestors, originally normal looking humanoids with soul-killing voices and underdeveloped brains, developed spectacular looks, became infinitely desirable, because mating was something they could only do by force saddled with those voices and those tiny little cerebellums. Or...maybe it's some kind of hand of God...intelligent design...or intelligent maintenance, as the Supreme Being, realizing that she and her clan are all stupid, angry, petty, and shallow, has to take action to stop these rather dumb but spectacularly beautiful people from taking over the world and bestows upon them The Voice From Hell. The Supreme Being, who is a pretty sharp deity (thus the Supreme thing), knows that such perfect packaging will draw mates like a candle draws moths on a warm summer night. Thus the Supreme has given her voice a quality that, even if it doesn't scare of suitors, guarantees that they are incapable of procreation.
My rumination on the actions of Supreme Beings vs. the behavior of Mama Nature was blasted to pieces by a horrible shrieking sound.
"It's your fucking turn, the rest of us are waiting. Hello."
She was addressing me. I had not noticed that the line in front of me had cleared and the guy manning the roast corn booth was looking at me expectantly.
I wiped the drool off my chin, got my corn, and ran far, far from that horrible voice. But, yeah...I ran backwards so I could watch her recede from view.
Reading this story, I am comforted only by the fact that physical beauty is fleeting, and decades from now, she will still have that voice...
Posted by: Rory | January 14, 2006 at 10:47 AM