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On my way to Seattle, I landed in Salt Lake City for an hour and a half stopover. After a humble turkey sub and a Starbucks, I ventured out through the airport terminal and quickly found myself behind three young men as they “boarded” the moving sidewalk ahead of me. They were twenty-somethings in starched, button-down shirts, expensive slacks and dress shoes, like frat guys out together on a swanky business trip. They weren’t following the normal moving sidewalk protocol, refusing to walk at a standard pace, or at least, to politely step aside to let others pass on the left. Good thing I’m not in a hurry, I thought, wondering, whatever could be distracting them from the rules? I would say the unwritten rules, were it not for the clearly posted sign: “Please stand to the right.” I peered past them and realized what was making them amble along slowly, like guys ditching class in a high-school hallway.
The woman ahead of them was also young, and she was wearing a number, if ever there were one: tan rayon dress cut tightly, stopping well above the knees, cut low enough to display her generous cleavage. Long brown hair flowed behind her, and her feet minced along in little tan heels. She had mastered the art of "the walk,” sashaying her buttocks down the moving sidewalk over her little heels, under a barely-there dress, while balancing a fifteen-pound carry-on. Yes, she had put some thought into her ensemble.
The button-down guys snickered silently behind her, jockeying each other for a better view.
I was stuck behind them. There was time to mark the faces of the guys that passed her coming from the other direction; I counted dozens of leering male looks, high-school sophomores and middle-aged dads, one by one by one, drifting past. I don’t exactly frequent strip clubs, so I had never seen that many salacious stares in my life. I thought of "Moulin Rouge," all the faces calling to mind the men in the absynthe-soaked cabaret, the villain that Ewan MacGregor tries to sweep Nicole Kidman away from.
Moving-sidewalk woman's outfit was inappropriate, but the lustful stares from others—with no attempt to mask them—made me squirm. Teenagers, sure, but their fathers should have somehow known better how to fix their eyes somewhere, anywhere, else.
Am I being naïve when I think the fathers should know better?
Then, as the moving sidewalk rolled by an airport bar, I spotted some women friends clustered around a table at the bar’s edge. Their jaws set in contempt as they took in the sight, as if to say: "Now, there goes a slut." To them, she was a mud-flap image, trailed by a mud-flap-mesmerized entourage, rather than a living, breathing girl, followed by idiots. I wanted to stop the sidewalk mid-roll, grab them by the corners of their leering mouths and rebuke them, “Sure, her outfit sucks, but where exactly do you get off?...”
I felt every muscle tighten against them and, at the same time, against this girl-woman, who would disrespect herself in this way. She was “only” mirroring so many fashionable women on magazine covers or on billboards or in primetime TV advertising or the soft-porn Bebe posters that hang on the side of the SunTran stops. That shallow, sexualized beauty has been championed before her, her entire life. And she was receiving equal parts attention and contempt for merely taking it upon herself. Contempt and attention in equal measures: apparently that was better than risking no attention. She had taken the bait.
I felt all the spiritual hooks dangling. I followed close behind her, strangely protective. I despised whatever Thing was pursuing her, unseen, through the terminal, inciting Thingness in its wake.
She stopped, looking up to study the departure screen, searching for gate and time: in that moment, her face devoid of attractiveness, of anything beyond tiredness or, maybe, repressed fear. Perhaps she was terrified to fly, or of what lay on the other end of the flight. The clean-cut young professionals finally peeled themselves away toward their gate, and I followed her on to her own gate, where I intended to wait and guard her.
Guard her. I felt crazy for even thinking it. How could I possibly guard her?
Her flight was already boarding. I watched her wait for only a minute or two, her line moving up, slowly swallowed by the boarding tunnel. The plane would take her to Phoenix. So I prayed her to Phoenix and beyond. I prayed for intervention on the other end.
What had pursued her there?
What was driving her forward?
In an airport of jeans and khakis and t-shirts, why was she so desperate for attention, and yet so dead to it all?
Would any man ever truly care for her?
I finally turned my back on her gate, asking God all of the above, receiving no answers. Although I knew he had listened very well, and had cared very much. I turned back toward my own gate, a gate one letter away in that very religious city, and I didn’t feel the love, and I felt very much alone.
KEB, November 2006 |
