Where: Q-trainWho was reading: A woman in a dingy olive trench coat and textured linen suit, with limp, straightened hair glued right to her scalp. Her face was so bright and youthful peeking out of this drab costume that it resembled a rosebud emerging from a dead mass of vines.
And metaphorical flowers weren't the only thing blossoming on the train-car... love was in bloom too. The woman cast more than a couple longing glances at a fellow reader standing in the aisle.
Tall dark and handsome, the beige-sweatered object of her affections was scrolling through the news on his iphone. The type on his screen was set extremely large and you know what they say about men with large typefaces....
Unfortunately, he either failed to notice, or made the conscious decision to spurn her ocular advances.
More on this in the sequel to Chapman's book: The Five-Hundred Dialects of Scorn
Random Pet Peeve: While the text-resizing feature on e-readers is useful, I kind of prefer when things are unnecessarily difficult. Like with analog and garter belts. Is there a love language for people who think like this?
In a (slightly) related story, Ben Schott’s column in today’s New York Times listed this strategy for wooing:
ReplyDeleteHave an employee at a bookstore walk over to the object of your attention and say, “The gentleman over in fiction would like to buy you a book.”
Would this really work on a bibliophile, or would it warrant a response from the The Five-Hundred Dialects of Scorn?
Missing you bookspy ... can you spy on people reading on park benches while you ride your bike to work ?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous #1: I have mixed feelings about the bookstore pickup. I like it in theory, and the method you describe strikes me as geekily suave, with just the right amount of audacity. I could see some dapper gentleman from the 1920s pulling it off with real class. The problem is that the real word contains persons who are not dapper gentleman from the 1920s. The one time I was hit on in a bookstore, the pickup artist in question was neither attractive nor particularly literate, and the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like I could no longer peruse the shelves in peace, and ended up leaving soon after, grumpy and bookless. But to each their own, I suppose.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous #2: I think I could make that happen, let me cogitate on it for a bit.