The Goddess of Social Graces

From the book Tales from the hood

I watched her admirably as she and a small group of her mall co-workers, all got-off the escalator and walked over to the coffee counter, here inside of the downtown mall where I also happen to work.

She in particular this one young black female among them, who I’d seen off-n-on around in the mall before, but on this particular afternoon, from where I sat at one of the tables designated for the coffee-shop customers, where as a sexually attentive male, I couldn’t help but to notice the orchestrated see-saw motion of her hips that gave life to the natural order of the way she walked, and by her finer points being evenly balanced, the top half round and firm, matched by her bottom half that was just as firm and plump, which made it all that much-more easier for one’s eyes to take-in her entire outer body of works.

But then once I looked beyond her exterior endowments, what I saw in this young thirst-quenching creature of life was a cultural beauty; a black Nubian Queen. She was dark-n-lovely with the face of a heavenly angel, but in exchange for her halo, she instead had a full head of gold and black corn-rolled extension-braids that hung from the top of her head, down to her soft brown shoulders with the right side flowing down-over her front and across the configuration of her breast, stopping just at the curve of her thin waist-line, while the other half was worn back-across her left shoulder, where it hung dangling-down, just at the top of her lovely behind.

And even though she stood there in line with her back to me, I could tell by the way she interacted with those around her at the coffee stand that she possessed certain social graces befitting a woman that a man like me would find pleasant to be around, and that’s what really set her apart from being just another pretty face in the crowd.

Yet, all-the-while as I watched her as she engaged in mild conversation with those in close proximity to her, it wasn’t hard for me in that fleeting moment to imagine in my head, quietly strolling hand-n-hand along some tropical beach, or having a romantic candlelit dinner underneath the stars with a woman such as her. Where either we’d be married with a couple of kids in tow, or just in a relationship based purely on hot sex, and it wasn’t until she turned halfway around to speak to a male patron who was standing in-line just behind her; where it was during their mild interchange of idle chit-chat, that for a brief moment, I was able to see the alluring effect of her steel gray eyes that twinkled like diamonds when she glanced over in my direction, and acknowledged with a polite nod of her head that said how she was aware of me sitting there. And even though there was never a solemn word spoken between us up to that point, I felt as if she and I had finally found a common ground that could bring us that much closer to areal live mall hook-up.

But then once I glanced over at the clock on the wall, I saw that it was now time for me to return back to work from my lunch break, and it was as I stood there folding away my journal-sentinel that I happened to glance over in her direction, which was just across the corridor, hoping to seize one last look, when once again our eyes gravitated towards one another just over the lip of the large Styrofoam coffee-cup that she was softly sipping her coffee from, and as I stood there in a questionable silence, she took the initiative and did something that I wasn’t quite expecting on our first date.

It was with a few choice words that she excused herself from the company of her coffee-stand friends and headed over towards my small corner of the world where I stood under heavy anticipation of how my love life was about to take on a whole new meaning.

Where for me it was truly a video moment caught in real time-lapse as I watched the mall’s overhead fluorescent lights capture all of her beauty in stride, noting the way her ankles popped underneath the hydraulic motion of her mechanical hips. And It was by the way she tossed her head back as her braids flayed and then slowly fell back in place, back-across her shoulders thereby letting everyone with striking distance know that she’d brushed aside any questionable doubt of her womanhood.

But just as I’d convinced myself of how wonderful my life was about to be from that moment on, that’s when she pause short of where I stood in-waiting, placed her right hand on her right hip, that was now slightly bumping, then snapped her finger across the open air that stood between, and poignantly stated “Yea It’s my hair, I paid for it d****t!”