Despite what L might tell you, I don't go out of my way to find situations in which bitchy quips are my only escape route.
Wearing this t-shirt in the Logan Circle "gayborhood" notwithstanding, these things just happen to me.
I meet men on street corners, I make it pretty far along in reality show castings, and I have more than my fair share of encounters with women who have something to say and have the courage to say it out loud.
Had it not been for that 2-3 second window between Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" and Neil Diamond's "Shilo," I never would have overheard the conversation between the two blondes standing just ahead of me and to the right this morning at the intersection of 16th and M.
"It's not like it's frickin' summer, you know? I mean, uh, desperate for attention much?" the thicker of the two said in a deliberately loud whisper while stealing a not-so-subtle peripheral glance my way.
"No kidding. It's still Winter, technically," the other one retorted, her delivery and pause before the word "technically" - a trying-to-think-of-the-right-word pause, not a stylistic one - demonstrating her rank as the more doltish of the two.
Pausing my beloved Neil mid-"Papa says he'd love to be with you if he had the time" to concentrate on their accusations, a twinge of panic went through me. Thinking maybe in my haste to get ready this morning I'd accidentally put on my chocolate brown sateen short shorts or tulip mini, I looked down to assess exactly what it was about my appearance that so outwardly, so offensively screamed, "summer has arrived!"
After taking inventory of my outfit, however - 3/4 sleeve wrap-dress, lightweight trench, peeptoes, no tights (there's a high of 63 today, after all) - my panic turned to sass, my embarrassment to arrogance.
"You know," I said, "you're so right, it is still technically winter and I am pushing the season a bit. I guess I was just excited and jumped the gun at the prospect of the first warm work day in months."
"Uh," the thicker girl muttered, learning her place in our exchange very quickly.
"We...um, it wasn't like..." the doltish one stammered, unable this time to think of a word - much less a sentence - to counter my unexpected niceness.
As I walked away, they in their black, thick-soled flats and ill-fitted gray poly-blend dress pants and I in my just-plucked-from-warm-weather-shoe-storage caramel leather skinny-heeled Charles David peeptoes and fits-me-like-a-glove DVF wrap-dress, turned back ever so slightly and in my best passive-aggressive Regina George impression said, "Just be thankful, girls, you still have about 70 days before you have no choice but to share those (pointing with my eyes and tilting with my head at their lower halves) with the world. You should check out Gold's Gym, I'm pretty sure they're offering six weeks free through this Friday."
And with a no-really-I'm-just-trying-to-help smirk, I twirled on my stiletto, unpaused Mr. Diamond, and strutted the remaining three blocks to work.
