Shadows in the Spotlight

 All too often, a moment will turn up that I think worthy of a Chesterton-style write-up. And I let it float by, its magic left somewhere in the inter-dimensional heap of subconscious sparks.

I wonder do other people experience these seconds of hyper-awareness. Like, a haze descends over a scene, making it seem very significant. Is that the universal subconscious informing me of somebody’s life turning upside down? An omen of some sort? Or just my own partially damaged brain fogging over, while the excitable mind reads too deeply into it?

---

One of these meaningful moments was waiting for a delayed train with everybody including the operators completely clueless about the correct platform for the next departure. It creates a real sense of camaraderie to share exasperation and work out an immediate problem with a nearby stranger. I still remember the quirky ginger lady with a determined look in her twinkling blue eyes as we took our seats in the train on Platform 2.

“You look like you’re poised to run across the platform,” the bearded man behind her told me with a grin.

“I have an odd feeling it’s actually going to be that one,” I replied. “What do they know that we don’t?” For more than half the punters had remained on Platform 1 when the confused voice over the loudspeaker had said the Platform 2 train would be next to leave towards London.

“No, they said it was this one,” the redhead said irritably. “Those people may be going to Brighton or something.”

I had my doubts that fifty people would be heading from Luton to Brighton on such a day as this, bypassing the much more obvious King’s Cross, but held tight until the Platform 1 train did indeed turn up.

We all ran across to it, whereupon a black man inquired, “is this just going straight to King’s Cross? Is it a fast one?” of the general public, none of whom knew the answer.

He decided it would be quicker for him to rearrange his journey via King’s Cross anyway.

People are fed up when public services go wrong, but they suddenly realise everybody else is as lost as them. 

I still see those passengers’ faces clearly in my mind from the simplest interaction. How easy it is to forget that all these bodies taking up our coveted seats are individuals with personalities we had not yet imagined!

The combination of character traits is infinite. It may be a chore to launch a conversation with a stranger, taking a gamble on the cut of their jib, ending up potentially dragged into a time-wasting exercise. This is why discussing the matter at hand is a great opportunity to realise we’re all as helpless in this world as the next man, cool though he may look in his Ray-Bans and salty-pepper beard.

As the Platform 1 train ambled between fields and industrial units, I no longer recall what I was doing aside from grinding my jaw as it slowed to bicycle pace through north London on its way into King’s Cross Station, spitting on every passenger’s schedule with its lumbering chug.

I no longer recall whether I was reading or writing or planning the next move to reduce my inevitable tardiness. 

One thing I do recall is that redheaded woman exclaiming, “just go already!” from her seat nearby me in the idling beast. I wished I had some quip to follow up her outburst, a sense of entirely unnecessary guilt rising up inside for leaving her hanging. So I remember her, but will she remember me and my bland silence? Was the guilt towards her or myself?

I am naught but a shadow flitting between stations. When no attention falls upon me, I disappear, unaware of my face and body. When it eventually comes, every inch of me burns with self-importance. Caught by surprise in shadow form, the fire takes time to ignite, and the mind struggles to think fast.

Is everyone just a shadow until another puts the spotlight on them?

Let us all shine lights on each other to keep our minds in practice and our bodies alive.

Bye Bye Crack Den

 The crack den across from my flat is finally up for demolition.

Walking past it this sunny evening, I observed a variety of different objects in its front yard.

To begin with, my eye was caught by the simple yet complex beauty of the spring-fresh flowers blooming in the overgrown yard, daisies laughing towards the sun and butterfly bushes flopping dozily at passersby.

The grass, largely concealed under the rubbish, was long, electric green. Nature knows not the concept of “wrong neighbourhoods”.

Among duller items like an unused roll of bubble wrap or a castaway glass coffee table, lay a kick drum from the nearby gospel church and a long pink wig, possibly worn by the sex workers – or were they slaves? - who had been using the building for their business. Or was it someone else’s business?

I half-expected to see human excrement but it may have been buried under the well-fertilised lawn.

The demolition men had set up a conference table and chairs just outside the entrance door, through which I recall watching members of the underworld passing day in and day out for various nefarious purposes.

On the day the developers had boarded it up, I remember hearing local junkies gossiping about it in their unmistakable, aggressive tone: “how are people supposed to get in there now? All their stuff’s in there!”

I wondered whether junkies really were constantly on edge or if, like the Russian language, simply sound pissed off to those who don’t speak it.

There was a tinge of humanity to that man’s exclamation of sympathy for the squatters who had lost access to their home. But they hadn’t lost access, they were just being more discreet about it. One of the doors was left uncovered and people were using it carefully, albeit more nefariously. I’m pretty sure I saw an old man accompanied by a younger one sneak into that yard one night for a blowjob.

One morning some men in balaclavas came out of there, body language hyper as could be. Upon hitting the high street, I walked through a small gathering of men of which one spoke on the phone: “phwoar man, it’d been months since I had some pussy … fifteen!”

The last word ominously echoed through my mind as I reached the train station unscathed.

I also once saw a hooker with a Picasso face walk angrily out of there with her large Polish client, clearly having been thwarted by the newly concealed entrance.

Another image that springs to mind was that of a man easing a rubbish bag, evidently filled with his belongings, through the first floor window on a string down onto the lawn days after the boarding-up. I was out on my porch smoking a joint that night, and I caught his eye. He glared at me and I nervously waved, to which he disappeared into the depths of the room. The paranoia that swept through me that night… well, I imagined only the worst – he knew I’d made them board up the building, he knew where I lived, he hated the comfortably homed, he’d vandalise my flat or beat up my partner or rape me …

What had driven me to the police for the first time in my life was waking up one morning to a furious crackhead screaming someone’s name and throwing rocks through the windows. He had been pacing like a wild animal in his black tracksuit and cap, aiming accurately at every single pane from 6 to 9a.m. as I shivered in fear that my building would be next. The angst of having purchased a flat so ill located next to such feral inhabitants wound my innards ever tighter.

Anyway, now they’re gonna pave paradise, and put up a parking lot.

Acquaintances on a train

 It was an apocalyptic spring evening in London. The wind blew harsh cold air in everyone’s faces outside. Barney dropped his wallet on the way out the electronic gates of his City building. Ruby dropped her keys as she struggled to unlock the rusty chain of her bike, locked up outside a chain restaurant. Faces looked grey, not all of them of course. Barney and Ruby both knew that their mental state tainted the outer world they witnessed. The knowledge made it look  no less frightening, though, when a healthy-looking homeless man with blood down his front came to beg for food money in the train carriage.

Ruby offered him a full pack of cigarettes; she was trying to quit, she said. The man made an off-colour joke about it not helping him to eat! She immediately regretted choosing him as the beneficiary of this actually quite expensive gift. Twenty-packs cost something like 20 quid nowadays, and he gave her barely a thank you. He’d probably beaten the last guy up for his last hit of whatever it was. She returned her face into her book, and Barney averted his eyes as the threatening young man passed him by.

The trained wizzed past green and yellow fields rendered grey and blue by the English evening light. People stared emptily into their phone screens, proverbial “do not disturb” signs plastered over their faces, many of which would have been beautiful to look at. 

Barney was particularly drawn to the look of a sporty young woman with long hair pulled back in a half-pony and an outrageous fake tan. He was initially disappointed with the usual British habit of hiding one’s beauty under millimetres of fakery, but her hands were so dainty, the pink fingernails so gently pointed as she scratched her nose, that he lost himself staring. She was watching mindless videos on her screen with the little wireless earbuds feeding noise into her delicate young ears. He wondered what the depths of her soul would have to say about the vapid filler she was feeding it, both through the phone and through the syringes which had ever-so-subtly enhanced her lips.

Though she had the lithe body of a mare, she removed a can of Pepsi from her bag and nearly dropped it. Barney thought of Sigmund Freud and the way he attributed minor errors to the very intentional reign of the subconscious. Something inside her knew this was not a good habit, but she absent-mindedly proceeded to open the bottle and glug its contents, one eye following the insignificant events on the screen.

Ruby meanwhile had been observing a young mulatto in a black hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. He had very white trainers. His face looked exactly like something out of a nineties children’s cartoon she had loved. He was so endearing, and he was least of all absorbed in his screen. Such people were a minority in these times. She rested her eyes on his childish yet angular face, his one-inch afro, his big black eyes and his lanky figure. He never once returned the look, though Ruby was not bad to look at herself.

Men who returned women’s looks were a minority by then, too. 

She wondered what he had on his mind that kept him so disinterested in the world of his phone. It seemed serious, or maybe he was just a zen guy. Was that such an impossibility, Ruby? Why don’t you get off your damned phone?

Barney had returned his gaze to the hole in his sleeve which had opened up throughout the work day, as he had picked at it in a state of stress. He had had to issue two corrections, one of which was his. Usually a genial chatty type, he had cursed at his screen for hours, having to stay behind after everyone else had gone. Ruby had tried to engage him in conversation but only managed to awkwardly say the wrong thing, so she had gingerly moved on and whispered a goodbye to the empty office.

They did not know they were on the same train, but Barney lived a couple stops before Ruby, in a fancier part of the suburbs. Ruby was on her way to the same place the hoodie guy was getting out at. London had been apocalyptic: Ruby’s house was already in purgatory.

She stepped out the train to quiet minority onlookers and was pleasantly surprised to see a few healthy young faces in the station. It was always a double-take when London seemed to crop up so far out in the Styx; a young hippie with hip-length hair and dreamy doe eyes? A sprightly couple deep in conversation at the station entrance? These must be passers-through. She rolled along to the main road, greeted by the more characteristic alcoholics cursing the rain from underneath the parking roof. This is the ___ I know, thought Ruby.

Barney meanwhile had already made his way through the elegant rows of Victorian houses, not a tossed-out bin in sight (Ruby had had to walk through a pile of used nappies to park up her bike) and came in through the front door of his own. His wife had made dinner and she was upstairs taking a bath. All was well and nobody needed know of his day at work which had affected him so much but somehow all stayed inside that little box in his bag, He shook himself off, hung up the day’s gear and shuffled to the bath with his wife Barbie.

“Daddy!!” screamed one of his small children. This he had not seen coming: they were supposed to be at their grandmother’s.

“What are you doing here Celia?” he asked, bewildered.

“Daddy! Mummy says you need to eat yesterday’s leftovers, the food is for grandmummy!!” Celia informed him.

How utterly rude, he thought. He opened the bathroom door only to get it sharply in the nose: both the door and the smell from inside. Barbie was not bathing, but defecating. He apologised and headed to the kitchen with Celia tailing him closely.

“You can heat up the chicken and the rice but you can’t touch the rabbit stew, daddy!” she was thrilled to announce, knowing it was his favourite.

“Why on earth not, Celia darling?” he said bemusedly.

“It’s for grandmummy! She’s gotten ill,” Celia explained.

“Oh dear.”

He felt serene and ready to comfort his wife for the rest of that evening. She always fretted so for her mother, though he had never quite seen the person behind the wrinkles. It seemed to him that ever since he’d first met her all those decades ago, she had been just a skinny lump of wrinkles. Like a Swiss cheese, somehow more air than substance. But Barbie adored her, and Barbie was spoiling her with her best recipe and far be it from Barney to impede on that decision.

Celia ran back upstairs as he lobbed the leftovers on a plate and into the microwave. It was not all bad. He was home.

---

Ruby meanwhile had been dragged into a conversation with one of her local ruffians. She’d tried to give him her other pack of cigarettes, and this had had quite the opposite effect. He took it extremely seriously, for he knew the value of this gift was more than two days’ work for him. He thanked her so much that it had attracted the attention of all his friends nearby and they, unlike the youth in the train, were not afraid to look a handsome woman in the face.

“It’s OK, really, I’m trying to cut it out,” she was saying.

“You’re lovely, you know that?”

“Think she meant it?”

“I’d give her a bit if she asked.”

“Not every day you see one up close.”

“Nice one, that,” they gossiped like Tuscan nonnas. 

The one who had been lucky enough to receive her offering was following her, much to her chagrin. This meant she would need to operate a detour, remaining in peril’s way for longer but keeping him ignorant to her place of residence; the more effective long-term choice.

She politely said she hoped he would share it with his mates back there, to which he expectorated, “those cunts? Not a fucking chance! Who’m I, mother Theresa? Fuck.”

This was a frightening outburst for a girl alone in the street with a grateful but angry homeless man. She did her utmost to hide the fear, but like dogs they could smell it. 

“You’re a lovely girl.”

“You’re following me.”

“What you mean?”

“I would like to be alone, please,” she explained.

“I’m going that way, too,” he said lamely. “But you’re beautiful, you know that.”

“I do know, thank you.”

“You ever go out with a bloke like me?”

“I’m very happy where I am now, thank you.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“No, I haven’t.”

They were still walking in tandem, he a half-step behind her.

“There’s more to us street rats than meets the eye, you know.”

“I’ve no doubt about that.”

“Why don’t you give it a try, lovely?”

“Because I’m very happy where I am now and do not seek to change my life.”

“Well darling. I’m quite keen to change mine, and didn’t you mention stopping smoking? That’s a change.”

She had been lying about that. She had actually picked up a cheap ten-pack from an airport on her way back from holiday a few months prior and wanted to get rid of them.

“It’s… not really relevant…”

He took her arm, “I’m joking, darling, don’t panic.”

The touch was the border between calculation and panic, veering sharply towards the latter.

Ruby turned pale and stopped in her tracks. “Are you going to abduct me, sir? For giving you a pack of cigarettes?”

The question stalled him. He did not see himself as an abductor. He was only trying to charm a young woman who must have taken a liking to him, if she was to be so generous.

She continued, “please may I go ahead alone? Can you let me go.” 

Ruby knew that tears would either release her from the situation or make it ten times worse, so she fought them back and attempted a straight, detached expression.

“You look like you’re gonna cry,” taunted the jilted lover.

“Give me a cigarette,” said Ruby in a spark of inspiration, “and leave me alone. And if  you don’t leave me alone, you are actually hurting the one person who helped you all day, if not all month or year. And I’ll be a victim of your cruelty. And we’ll both have to live with that.”

A cigarette graced her fingers. “Don’t give up what you love, babycakes,” said the alcoholic with a grin. “It’s all I was trying to teach you.” He lit it for her and walked away to his whooping entourage.

DIARY OF A RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT TRAINEE

 My many weeks of intensive managerial training at L---- restaurants were how one might imagine a sojourn in the military (culinary division). These involved:

Obtaining and upholding the correct uniform. White shirt – not a seam out of place, not a dash of colour or even black writing on the nape of the neck. Blue jeans. Flat black shoes. Hair up, mask on. No jewelry or ornamentation, bra coordinated with the white shirt. Though it may look like a casual uniform to the outside observer – and that is indeed the reasoning behind the move – it is actually a very strictly regimented one, with waiters coming in early, dressed in their own clothes, to iron their white shirt in the tiny, cramped, cluttered staff room that smells of feet. Hooks on the walls hold layers upon layers of employees’ belongings, nothing protected from theft. 

They enter the arena of the restaurant floor with strict orders about how not to address customers and remove glasses from tables. I will not delve into the intense heat of the summer accumulating droplets of sweat behind the revolting facecloth they are forced to wear throughout service to help the customers feel safe (from the smiling faces of filthy peasant servants?), nor into the impossibility of proper communication with three-quarters of one’s face covered up.

They run sometimes an entire floor of punters with little to no help from the manager who delegates, does a lot of digital paperwork and deals with complaints. Running a section means getting to every table in time before the little patience bar above customers’ heads reaches critical level, juggling and staggering orders to keep the kitchen running smoothly. It means removing clutter from tables (using a delicately balanced tray) as they run to pick up a food order that includes hot, heavy and precarious dishes to balance simultaneously between hands and forearms. 

I had the honour of training under J-----, the company’s “German matron” in the boss’s words, though she be of English descent. She was a gorgeous bleached blonde with a 60s fringe, chin length hair, a button nose and sultry eyes that darted round the floor from underneath mile-long fake eyelashes. Hers was certainly a pristine face to front the business. She told me once that even on her days off she would not feel awake until full make-up had been applied. Her lips were large and handsome, boldly outlined in lipliner and a very precise colour filled in to match the rest of the artwork. But the first thing anybody saw of J----- was her most glorious, shapely and most especially sizeable feature, very clearly displayed in the woman’s choice of classy, tight-fitting vintage jeans.

When J----- contorted her face into theatrical expressions of grief or mirth, she began to look a bit like a drag queen. Vulnerability and despair floated constantly near the surface, which, combined with total competence, gave her great standing in the company as a representative for the waiters who would remain easily manipulable by the bosses. I was utterly shocked to find out that she was thirty-five, with an art degree under her belt and still no idea what to do with herself, and she worked there around sixty hours a week.

The management trio were all of an eerie reptilian ilk. The owner’s version was softest, and most human – or at least, he put it on well enough. He would often wear faded workman’s clothes and boast about the humble grunt work of his lofty role. He would swan into a branch by surprise, sheer authority and grandeur oozing from his every pore, and engage in a breezy chat with lowly employees as the manager on duty soiled himself in the background.

He would often briefly take said manager outside, deliver a dressing down about the lighting levels and the sore victim would return to the floor, cowed, as boss man resumed light banter with the fawning staff. The man was a master of manipulation, effortless calculation in his every move, his every glance, his words both kind and cruel. He was tall, Swiss, wide-set with long grey hair and piercing hazel eyes. His face was oddly nondescript – hard to picture, but instantly recognisable. A slight lisp in his genial English accent added to the illusion of humanity.

The managing director was worst at concealing his reptilian nature. Not only was his approach snappy and often harsh, but his sharp face with its incredibly tight brown skin were immediately reminiscent of the common gecko. Every detail of the tall, svelte, perfectly ironed, ageless man’s skull was visible – down to the gap in his temporal bone. His cold black eyes bulged from sunken sockets, his mouth drew back in a painful smile when necessary, but never when talking to his subordinates. He was creative with his words, and quick to dispel my notions of hierarchy: “no, everybody is equal in this company” - just before roasting the manager on duty for forgetting to make him a coffee in plain sight of everybody in the restaurant.

Hard to backpedal from such a merciless depiction of the man; but I will mention nonetheless that he was far from bad-looking, and his exceptionally authoritative demeanour evoked heavy flirting from the sultry adolescent waitress who, on her way out the door, coyly asked him when she could have her meeting with him. Under my knowing laughter (at the gorgeous girl’s sheer audacity), he reacted without an ounce of awkwardness, keeping the exchange professional while sufficiently acknowledging her advances.

He was the embodiment of the corporate machine, a perfectly kept tool for running every cog in the company down to such vagueries as “conflict management”, “diversity and inclusion”, protocols, policy and procedures. He would adapt his tone – as per every management training programme under the western sun – to whomever he was talking to, in order to get his message across in the most scientifically proven way possible. To me, laid-back pragmatist that I am, he effectively communicated an empathetic reaction to my distaste for checklists and countless, (unpaid) time-consuming online courses, making me fold to his commands like a teaspoon in a tub of ice cream.

I recall the managing director’s family coming in for dinner one day, a tired looking woman sitting across the table as their daughter pranced around on his lap. It was an odd vision, an exhibitionist performance of “classic family man” for all employees to enjoy.

Both the managing director and especially his owner almost hypnotically incite bootlicking behaviour in all those in the vicinity, even customers.

The third and absolutely key piece to the ------- puzzle was the handsome human resources lady. While equally reptilian in appearance to the managing director, she had a natural clumsy charm that gave her that HR edge. She was their secret power, the manipulatrice extraordinaire, the “good cop” - everybody sang her praises for how accommodating and understanding she was. She worded demands and contracts perfectly suited to the business needs while appearing to address employees with genuine compassion. When she made a mistake, such as having me work two, not one, unpaid trial shifts, she apologised emphatically, pretending to beat herself up over the injustice she had caused me – a trick I am no stranger to, but gave her a pass nonetheless.

When I, however, made the mistake of double-booking myself, she sent me a tactfully worded threat of demotion: “perhaps you would like to start with us as a waitress, and finish your management training sometime in future.”

When she or the MD would fail to respond to e-mails, they would keep schtum; should an underpaid manager meanwhile fail to be contactable outside of work hours, may the wrath of the corporate gods smite him.

The deeper I plunge into this strange, award-winning, so-called ethical company, the more misery and stress I discover. Minutes after my earful from the MD about their policy of not putting staff on more than five shifts in a row so they can get adequate rest (so that they don’t trip on a slippery tile because they’re tired, which is part of a risk assessment, which must be recorded, blah-di-blah), I learned from the harassed head waitress that she had had one day off in twelve as equally harassed managers continued to pile work on her petite frame. All seemed satisfied by her sulky reply to their empty question, “how are you?” - “fine”.

The tension is palpable during busy shifts, with waiters sniping at each other behind the scenes while putting on highly convincing displays of warmth to their customers, or “guests” as they are euphemistically called (despite pains taken to ensure rapid table-turning and regular remarks about the size of their wallets).

Clearly these reptilian creatures are highly skilled in hiring intelligent yet obedient staff like myself.

I have not yet mentioned the head chef, who quite literally looks like a combination of Lord Voldemort and an evil Pope Benedict. He, too, is ruthless and evokes dread amongst the staff despite his hearty Liverpudlian origins. I know far less of him aside from: his unrelenting, unsympathetic reaction when I begged to wear my own shoes in the kitchen instead of the mandatory ones that hurt my feet over the fifteen-hour shifts I was made to do for peanuts; word from the other chefs that their work load increases whenever he is on a shift because he is far too important to chip in to the menial tasks. His face is what marked me most, from the very first time I saw him: a large bald head with cold, inset eyes like black holes. There was an almost inhuman aspect to the whole man. He always seemed to slither from room to room, or otherwise be standing unnervingly still.

I can just imagine head chef and boss man out on a market research mission to neighbouring eateries. Had they walked into my pub, I would be utterly fascinated by them, would almost certainly flirt with the owner. As their underling, I have deeper insight but frustratingly little use of my feminine powers. Their ironed shirts emit no musky pheromones. 

In the company environment, all messy aspects of human nature are tucked away into the recesses of the most tightly-run ship I’ve ever seen. They hire based on obedience, character and appearance, this much is clear. The innocent teenage waitresses are key to the company’s image. They are spared most mistreatment as their bubbly nature gives the business a veneer of purity, perkiness; an almost virginal appeal.

It is, without a doubt, a fascinating world to study. The kitchen staff seem happier for they are actually living their chosen career and seem to have chances of progression up the ranks. Many of them are ambitious young (and I mean young) fellows who chop fast and fry hard, learning with adorable enthusiasm from the head chef when he mentors them during a lull in service. They may gruff and moan a little, but it is what they love doing. Unlike the front of house. These guys and girls are all pursuing, or at least dreaming of, something completely different, something better, and so desperately unattainable.

Such observations make me wonder whether I was cut out for this. I have fallen too far down the commie hole, seeing all as exploited individuals and the bosses as, well, reptiles. Perhaps I can not boss around tired waitresses who have never a minute for themselves, particularly the ones with children. Or maybe… maybe it is worth seeing if I can learn this skill. Study the reptilian folk, glean some of their alien ways to gain just that little bit more efficiency in managing my own life.

I have not spoken yet of the little starter chef who made my experience in the kitchen such a joyful one. Little A-------, young ginger fellow at the opposite end of the stick from the head aliens discussed above: sensuousness ran through his every sinew. A------- told me what to do in no uncertain terms, and I talked back constantly. Our lighthearted bickering was a joy, it made the air all but vibrate around us. The electric shock that ran through my loins when he touched my back by surprise with the tips of his fingers must have been clocked by the others in the room, if only subconsciously. 

 My furious flirtations scared him a little, it seems, for I don’t think he was aware of his super power. He was half a head shorter than me, with a big head, bad skin and a beady face. It may not be every day that a girl recognises his electric faculties. We exchanged numbers and very nearly met up, until I chickened out about the following: being a manager and sleeping with a low-level chef; not liking him as much outside of the workplace; his likely age, considering the other two chefs at his level were nineteen.

For what most aroused me was his way of bossing me around: “Come over here, woman, and cut these shallots for me.” “It’s not about the size of the knife, love. You’re just shit at it.” His vulgarity was not as harsh as it looks on paper – it was gentle, even affectionate. He had a low, sultry voice that he did not overuse like so many of the other British lads in the kitchen.

 A man of few words, A------- worked hard, smoked cigarettes, and had tattoos all up and down his arms and probably the rest of his little body too. Lord knows it would fill up quickly with tats that size. He had a blue-eyed wolf’s head on the back of his right hand and it stared at me when he showed me how to prep desserts. He would flirt back by posing with his muscular back to me, arms up against the high shelf of the kitchen surface as he talked to the chef. The definition of his shoulders showed through even the thick white cotton of his uniform and the ink on his exposed forearms rippled over well-formed muscles. 

Sometimes I would kneel to get something from the fridge and intentionally hover a little longer than needed around his crotch level, just to get another hit of that erotic energy. I noticed him gruffly adjusting his parts a couple of times, a gesture I find oddly sexy, though it probably be considered gross and even sleazy by most. Maybe I am an underachiever, but I don’t think my crotch would lie to us.