I’ve been doing some “inventorying” of my life: going back, looking back, making lists. Where did I live when? Where did I work, when? What pets did I have? What drugs have I tried? What places have I traveled? Those sorts of things.
I thought I’d inventoried all the places I’ve worked. Turns out I hadn’t. Last night I saw a picture in my head and remembered I had done some work, through some temp agency, some time in my early 20s. Maybe I was in college. Maybe I was just finishing up. IDK. Somewhere around then and there.
The image that popped into my mind was of some basement-y like, concrete-floor, window-less place I worked for maybe a couple, few weeks. It was a temp job. I don’t even recall what I was doing there. I remember it was more blue-collar-ish than more of the pink-collar-ish jobs I typically got sent to. The company was located somewhere in or near Jessup, Maryland, which was near where I lived.
What I remember most about this temp assignment–other than the basement-y feel of the place–was a particular man who worked there. He wasn’t “my type” at all. If I liked “X” in a man, he was “anti-X;” if I liked “Y,” he was far on the other side of Y. Never in a million years would he have caught my attention if we’d passed on the street, or had I seen him at a party or a bar … or wherever it was I hung out in my early 20s.
But, oh, my, goodness! When this man walked and I would hear the sound of his boot heels hitting the concrete floor of that basement-y work environment, it sent shivers through me. I remember pausing, my back to him, feeling my heart racing and thinking to myself, “What is going on? The sound of his walk, his gait … it’s intoxicating! How can this be?”
He was married, and that was a boundary I respected. He was older. He never came on to me, and I don’t think I flirted in any particularly focused way with him. IDK. It was a long time ago. I was in my early 20s. What I do distinctly remember was how my mind was so boggled by how disinterested I was in his “outer package” (not that he wasn’t a nice looking guy to someone; he just wasn’t “my type”), and then noticing how my ears and brain responded so intensely to the sound of his walk!
I still don’t have much of an explanation for the experience, though some 35-plus years later (and after hearing the gaits of untold numbers of other men since), this particular man–whose name I couldn’t tell you and whose face I doubt I’d recognize–still stands out to me.
