You were staring at my ass, weren’t you?
Do you ladies really think I can’t see you mentally peeling the jeans away from my bottom, watching in anticipation as I bend down for my briefcase before heading to catch my train? I know what’s going on behind your upraised copies of Marie Claire and The Economist.
It’s hard to live with an ass like this, if you want to know the truth. Sure, all I have to do is take off my overcoat and do a little twirl for the hostess, and right away I’ve got my pick of the tables at any restaurant on a Saturday night. But it’s as much a curse as it is a blessing.
Do you think it’s easy not knowing if I’m the assistant to the director of purchasing because my boss believes I’m tuned into the fashion world — or because I’m a trophy, a piece of eye candy, something she can take along to meetings to make the other directors drool? Believe me, I know what that sounds like, but come on. If I came to your meeting, it would be like watching a Rolls-Royce pull into your driveway.
When you’ve got somebody with my caliber of ass working for you, it has ripple effects. People start to wonder, “Why is he working for her? She must have something going on beneath those panel skirts and culottes. Someone with a great ass like his would never stick with her unless he had to. … And why would he have to?” It’s a simple equation: The better the ass, the better the fortunes of everyone around it.
As you can imagine, it’s a plague of dropped pencils at work. So transparent. I see the women sneaking looks in the lobby mirror as they hold the door for me like we’re at a Sadie Hawkins dance. And don’t think for a moment I don’t know why my mail slot is so close to the floor.
Sometimes I have to travel for work, and I’ve learned to dread the hotel pools. Even when I don my baggiest trunks, I have to deal with the hush spreading over the lounge chairs as I glide through the cerulean depths like a kingfish. I can understand why. As I hoist myself out onto the lip of the pool in the gathering gold of the afternoon sun, I can feel the wetness defining me like Vermeer’s brush.
And when I take the train into work, I can sense the women — and sometimes even the men — jockeying for position as I collect my tablet and my Greek yogurt and my Tupperware of chopped cucumbers. They all want the seat I’m about to vacate, so they can feel the warmth of my derriere rising to embrace them in that cradle of industrial-strength vinyl.
I wear thongs, so you could say I’m my own worst enemy. But who wants to see the outlines of somebody’s briefs inside a pair of chinos? For me, at least, it’s like putting a shopping mall in Yellowstone or adding a mustache to one of Degas’ ballerinas.
But look at those guys over there — folding their pizza so they can fit still more of it into their chomping maws. I can imagine them slathering butter on every millimeter of available bagel. I can imagine them opting for the corner piece of cake and all the frosting that entails. They don’t care about the dismal state of their asses, and yet there’s a bovine happiness about them. It cannot be denied. From where I stand, quietly doing my clenches, it looks like they have nothing to be happy about. And yet they guffaw and slap their knees, they refuse to napkin up the grease.
It’s gotten me to thinking. You hear stories about the rich giving everything away and going to live in the woods. Or beautiful women suddenly deciding to let their hair go gray. Why do they do it, and how do they later meet the world with earnest smiles? The cynic in me wants to say it’s because their asses gave out. Or maybe they looked at their parents and saw their future — a calculated surrender.
Or maybe there really is something more to life than money and fashion and callipygian delights.
I’ve decided to make some changes. So go ahead, ladies. Get a good look at it while you can. In fact, give it a poke with your index finger — like you’re late for a party on the 43rd floor. It’s pure muscle. I could open champagne with these cheeks.
But starting today, I’m having a donut at every meal. I’m dropping out of my Zumba class. I’m buying a bigger TV. It’s a brave new world out there, and I stand upon its precipice, poised to enter the less complicated existence of people with lousy asses.
Don’t shake your heads. I know what I hear. How many times have I left a room and paused upon the threshold as somebody whispered “Unbelievable!” or “Look at that guy — a perfect ass”?