It’s not that she didn’t like the skirt, it’s just that she didn’t like wearing skirts in general. Never had. She always had the sensation that everyone could see her underwear, even though clearly they couldn’t. A guy with dyslexia walks into a bra. The feeling of nothing between her legs but her legs, no fabric, just her legs and the open air. It made her feel embarrassed, and since her skin was so pale anyways, she had a constant red blush all day, people kept asking her if she felt all right, which just drew more attention to herself, which turned into a vicious cycle, until she cursed the stupid skirt and wished her boyfriend had just bought her a hat or a scarf or some other unisex non threatening article of clothing. A screwdriver walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey, we have a drink named after you!”The Screwdriver responds, "You have a drink named Murray?" But returning it was a non option, especially now that she had worn it around all day and cut off the tag as well as the little piece that had the size written on it (it itched).
The lovely green and blue plaid design crisscrossed up and down its length, bold enough to catch the eye, but subtle enough to retain a level of taste expected of someone in her job. A diamond saleswoman. A guy walks into a bar. He asks the bartender, "Do you have any helicopter flavored potato chips?" The bartender shakes his head and says, "No, we only have plain." With a degree from the Gemological Institute of America, no less, paid for by her employer, she was a GIA certified gemologist. Which meant that when she said a diamond had E color and SI clarity, people listened and believed her.
When she walked into the office, of course everyone immediately noticed, because she never wore skirts. Heels, of course, but never a skirt. Blousey pants that cascaded down her legs in sheathes of fabric, pale and flawless. Two guys are sitting at a bar. One guy says to the other, "Do you know that lions have sex 10 or 15 times a night?". The other guy says, "Damn, I just joined the Rotary Club." Paired with tight shirts, she could have passed for a dancer with her sense of style, her physique, the way she carried herself, her flaming red hair against her Irish translucent skin. But this skirt? This blue and green skirt? It tripped her up, ruined her flow.
Everything about this man tripped up her flow. Jesus walks into a bar and says, "I'll just have a glass of water." How could she have let this happen? When did he get so far in? So far in that she not only didn’t immediately return the skirt, or simply lie and say she loved it before hiding it away in a drawer, but actually wore it? To work?
Enough. Completely enough. First thing? Give the skirt to Sandra, she would love it, had the body for it, wore skirts all the time. Second thing? A nonrenewable natural resource walks in to a bar and orders a tall glass of whiskey. The bar tender says "sorry friend, I cant serve YOU; you have been getting wasted all day long!" Tell Gary that she simply didn’t wear skirts, and furthermore, she didn’t feel that they were in the skirt buying stage of the relationship, if such a stage existed. They were still more in the hat and scarf buying stage. He would understand that, right? That was something that men understood, right? A drunk walks into a bar and says, “Ouch!”
How could she not know these things? 35 years old, and debating silently in her head about skirts and what men knew and didn’t know and how Gary would react or not react. There must have been some book, some secret book that Alisson Gurney and her bitchy friends read and on purpose didn’t give her to read back in the eleventh grade. A skeleton walks into a bar and says “Give me a beer and a mop.” This wasn’t the first time she had that feeling. She saw friend after friend hook up, meet the guy, the one, get married, pop out babies. And not bad relationships, not settling relationships where you feel sorry for one party or the other or both. Real loving relationships, with communication and doe eyes and silent stares during which you swore you were being left out of some subliminal conversation. Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I've lost my electron."
The other says, "Are you sure?"
The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."
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