Cursed by Derrieres

I've had a bad day.

It started, as is often the case, in the morning. We had a lot of wind, and everyone is back from vacation, so in addition to thousands more idiots on the roads during my commute there was plenty of wind shear on the rickety bridge that I have to cross over the canal.

Add in that every truck in Europe has these cute little flexible sides and wobbles like a drunken Joe Namath trying to propose to sideline reporters and you see what the problem here is.

I finally made it, and was very proud for not losing any paint off my car. I was carefully wending my way up the hills towards my office, obeying all posted speed limits and obeying signage, when my attention was diverted by underwear.

Red panties, to be exact. My Underwear Sense went off, telling me that panties, bra straps, or other feminine undergarments were observable within a six-hundred-yard radius.

She was crossing the street up ahead of me, and the wind was whipping fiercely, and she had a whole Marilyn-over-the-subway grate thing going, only she's a one of these brazen European women so the notion of modesty never crosses her mind and I get a view of her ass as she tries to make it around the corner of the building.

Hello, nurse!

I did what any normal man would do: I enjoyed the show, totally oblivious to the fact that I was in fact piloting 1500 pounds of metal powered by explosive fuel and traveling at speeds high enough to do more damage than my deductible.

Finally I came back to myself when she turned the corner and I realized that my rear-view mirror was laying about ten yards back and the scraping metal sound was not, in fact, the latest hit song but was rather the car scraping against the guard rail.

I'd been wondering what the fireworks outside were; turns out they were sparks from the fender.

I pondered briefly how to explain this to Wifey. I had three options:

1) I could lie, and tell her I just scraped it against a building
2) I could tell the truth, that I was distracted by another woman's ass
3) I could tell her it happened while the car was parked

If I chose 1, she would mock me. If I chose 2, she would mock me and maybe not be intimate with me for some time. If I chose 3, we both got the fun of blaming somebody who never existed, as if we were pretending to be OJ Simpson.

Option 3 is the winner! Since the car was already dinged, I just double-parked it and left it for dead. After all, I was in a hurry to get to work and begin creating value for my employer.

Okay, I admit it: I was in a hurry to catch the 8:05 show of Red Panty Lady.

Sadly, she'd given me the slip. I could have ridden up the elevator with the remnant of the smoking posse, but I opted instead to climb the stairs because it's healthier. And I'm all about healthy choices.

That, and accidental nudity.

The day went pretty quickly, and other than actually being busy wasn't so bad. I discovered at lunch that the smokers had decided to crowd the doorway in a mass five jackasses deep, so I had to wade through their nicotine stench to reach fresh air.

I mean, really, smoke all you want, but is it truly necessary to stand right in front of the only door to do it? Can't you move three feet to one side or the other? It's like watching cows go into a slaughterhouse, only the cows are slowly turning to leather before your eyes.

As I bought my sandwich, I was treated to the 12:15 show of Red Panty Lady (I remembered the floppy tan skirt). Turns out that up close, and with her clothing all in place, she's not so much to look at.

By which I mean she's ugly enough to frighten pug dogs and curdle milk with her two-watt smile. My treasured memory from this morning quickly turned into me feeling somewhat seedy, and not in a good way.

Thankfully, I keep a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in my desk for just such occasions, so I rinsed my eyeballs out to purge them, a la The Crying Game. And we will never speak of this again.

In order to resolve the issue of the dented car, I used the Machiavellian strategy of parking it up the street so that Wifey couldn't see it. I figure I can get away with this for a few months while I figure out a good excuse, plus it'll give me more walking.

So you could say that the whole thing was good for my health, if not for my insurance bill.

On the walk to the house, I passed by a wood delivery service that had piled six hundred and forty three pieces of wood in the neighbor's driveway. They had a crew of three picking up wood pieces and carrying them around back to stack.

My Panty Sense tingled, and I noticed that the chick who was bent over to pick up some logs had holes in her pants; specifically, she had holes just below her ass cheeks big enough to reach for paradise through, so to speak.

Hello, nurse!

So I did what anybody would do: I enjoyed the view. At least, until the chick straightened up, when I noticed three pertinent things:

1) A mullet
2) An Adam's apple
3) Facial hair

The chick was a dude! AAARGH! And I'd left my hydrogen peroxide back at the office!

I was immediately creeped out. What the hell was wrong with me today? I was cursed by asses!

But then I reflected a moment: do gay guys get creeped out if they make the opposite mistake and check out a dude, only to find out it's a woman?

If I were a sociologist, I'd ask the government for a hundred million dollars to study this. I'd call it "Responses to Misdirected Attention by Sexual Orientation" and invent a metric called "Ookiness Factor" to compare how gays and straights respond to this situation.

Screw it, I think I'll ask for the money myself. I mean, how hard is it to be a Sociology major? All you have to do is bitch about how no one will hire you, ask for a government job, and be bad at math.

I've pretty much got two out of three of those down already!