"Can I help you?" "Nah, just lookin'."
Sunday was fantastic. Luka's birthday has become my favorite day of the year, and Sunday we celebrated by driving down to the Mall of America to gawk, shop and act like fools. It's about three hours down to get there, three back, but the company makes the trip fun. We did lotsa silliness, but I just thought I'd share one episode in particular.
We bought Luka some pretty underthings at Victoria's Secret. As soon as we walk in, a sharply dressed bald guy asks, "Can I help you folks find anything today?" "How about a sales assistant without a dick," was what I did NOT say, but he had to have noticed my surprise over being greeted in Victoria's Secret by a dude. I've never seen a dude working at Vicky's, much less one that looked like Dave Attell. I'm betting he doesn't do many bra fittings. But we found some nice stuff and made it out of the store without spending the entire bank account.
A half hour later, we decide to take a couple of items back. No specific reason, we just wanna spend the money on something else. I still have the bag with the receipt and all the items in it, of course, so I go back to the store and trot up to the counter. I explain the sitch to the nice counter girl and slide my receipt across the counter. POW! In bending over to examine the receipt, she gives me an unintentional down-blouse shot.
I am a man, but not a cad, and though my mind has noted she's been scratching at a bug bite no one else knows about, I avert my eyes to stare elsewhere. Being fairly tall, I get unexpected views down a lady's cleavage from time to time, but I'm mortified over the idea of being caught looking. A little of that Baptist shame still lingering in the background, I guess. So, I don't dwell on the show I'm getting, and I'm looking over at the rack (HA!) of promotional umbrellas they have behind the counter. Finally she straightens up and she asks me a couple questions, then asks for my card. I give her the card and she checks it against the receipt and BAM! Here we go again. In case you're wondering, her navel is an "innie".
You may not know, but there are entire websites devoted to down-blouse shots. I don't have any of them bookmarked, but I know of which I speak. Some guys would be having a field day at this point, but I'm trying to be a gentleman goddamnit! I don't look. Much. Less than a split second, honestly. But the problem is, casting about for something else to settle my eyes upon, I'm in Victoria's fucking Secret. The walls are plastered with pictures of models busting out of their frilly unmentionables (a.k.a. bras or hooter-holsters). If you're trying not to gaze at boobage, Victoria's Secret ain't the place to be hangin' out, Jack. In the words of Steve Martin, "Jugs-o-plenty."
So, while trying to ignore the live show by finding something to look at that isn't a woman in underwear, she calls the manager over to key the register. The lady comes over and, of course, checks to make sure everything is correct, including the receipt. POW! again! This is two in a row (four in a row?). Now I'm trying not to notice the manager and the clerk and not to stare at the models and not to get caught blushing. The way I figure it, getting caught blushing would be as bad as caught staring at this point. And I can't risk checking back to see if it's safe to establish eye contact because I just know that the moment I look is the moment one of them is going to look up and see me looking instead of looking away and then I'm busted for something I was kinda doing but trying very hard not to do. That's the key to down-blouse situations: you gotta look away before the look-up. So, I take out my wallet arrange shit.
I got out of the store having successfully returned stuff without looking like or feeling like a perv, but it was a close thing. Over lunch, I recount the whole thing to Luka who pats my head and reassures me that I'm not a rude, crude, lewd dude. She doesn't mind my noticing women's breasts, but she'd be disappointed in me if I were being rude. And disappointing my wife on her birthday would have been worse than getting caught ogling tits. Not this guy.
In all, we had perfect day together, and it was a blast and a half. The slight embarrassment from the boob-flashing was soon forgotten . . . until this morning when I realized that I had our digital camera in my pocket at the time. If the lady had seen me looking down her blouse and thought I was staring AND then decided to go with the snide comment saying, "Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer," I woulda had options, man.