The dozen or so blocks of Park Avenue just north of Grand Central are lined on either side with office buildings. At lunch hour, and then again from six o’clock to seven, the sidewalks are filled with men. Surely women work in those buildings as well, but the crowd always has a distinctly male cast.
I missed their reemergence this spring. Most years I look forward to the coming of warmer weather and the annual shedding of the overcoats. In the good weather, I’ll take a stroll over to Park and engage in a bit of surreptitious ogling.
Unfortunately, my spirits this spring were depressed by death throes of a love affair. I didn’t amble over to Park to look at the office boys. In fact, I didn’t pay much attention to the boys anywhere in town.
My spirits have not returned to their previous level, and I have not yet gone out with the idea of looking at men uppermost in mind. However, I was on my way home the other day and I found myself, with no premeditation, walking down Park Avenue around six-thirty or seven when my man-o-meter started clanging. It took me by surprise. There in front of me were three persons dressed for business. The woman in the middle was flanked by two men.
Now the man on the left had a nice athletic build, but it was the one on the right who truly set the meter off. I’ve always had a weakness for the thinner boys. Perhaps it was like an alarm going off after a good deep sleep, because suddenly everywhere it turned there seemed to be a nice looking young man. The one directly in front of me had a wonderful line from on shoulder to the next and, of course, narrow hips. He had a that loose limbed gate that belongs only to the young and his shoulders swung easily in opposition to his feet.
Although I only saw the backs of the three individuals in front of me, I judged them to be less than twenty-five years old. The the thin one turned to say something to the woman. Until then, I had mainly noticed his body. His cheek had that smooth fullness which made me think that even twenty-five might be a high estimate. His dark brown hair had a slight wave with made it slightly unruly but not sloppy.
That sort of physique I might never again know intimately. Oh well, at least I once did. Alright, maybe more than once. But my man-o-meter has finally begun working again. It seems to me that this is the not the first time that, after a temporary hiatus, my libido upon its return seems to respond to entirely inappropriate stimuli. The man-o-meter definitely needs some recalibration.
Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, depending on the weather, I will head over to Park around lunch time. At lunch time, in the nice weather, the men walk slowly or just mill about.
