Vagaries of the male race

Masonic Boom is back and her latest post reminded me of my walk home from work last night. I don't know what it is about Brussels - if this is a wierd place or if I just notice weird stuff more here . . .

Anyways, I was walking down the same street I saw the window-jumper on, thinking about who knows what, and suddenly a front door opens to the view of a lovely naked man picking up his copy of Vlan. Perfectly timed, to the degree that I wondered if I was being flashed, but then his attitude was one of a man who had opened the door to get his magazine caught in the hinge without really considering the consequences of doing so naked on a busy street; he performed a little dance to try to shield his bits. All of this happened in the span of two seconds and I kept walking without turning my head or doing anything extraordinary with my eyes as though I'd noticed nothing, while thinking ROCK AND ROLL. ROCK AND ROLL.

I was in a really good mood after that, and I remembered posing for an artist a few years ago who hadn't had a naked chick model for years before that, and how he said afterwards looking at tits he hadn't seen before always put him in a really good mood. This story doesn't have a point and now it's over.

A few minutes later, when I was nearing the flat, a 10-ish boy was keeping pace with me while walking his bicycle on the pavement. My heart was going out to him because he kept crashing the pedals into his calves. He looked slightly perturbed, and kept looking at me, finally approaching me in his formal kiddie French.

'Excuse me, madame, may I ask you a question?'

'Good sure that yes.'

'Is it normal to have a red mark on my arm like this after walking my bike as I hold it by the handlebars?' And he indicated a very faint reddening on his forearm.

'No, not for truly. A little bit of ache, could be, but not a mark red. It must be something of other.'

As you see I'm not fully confident in my French so the conversation ended there. I should have reassured him it was nothing, of course, instead of leaving him hanging, wondering if the 'something of else' was leprosy or the bubonic plague, but that didn't even occur to me until five minutes later. I must shed my discomfort with this language. After all, I'm fully capable of expressing 'I am certain that it not is the plague bubonic, but you could consider of to put on it some creme anti-bacterial' and there is no need for me to go around scaring cute little Belgian kids.