And so does my husband Stephen (our house is full), but that’s another story.

To avoid a March vacuum here on Domani Dave, I offer this piece from seven years ago, which several posts back I threatened to recycle.

Sharp-eyed Bare-breasted Boys

March 2, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I began my forth year of walking for exercise, every single day.  I walk a roundtrip distance of two and a quarter miles, the same stretch — from Broad Street, crossing Baxter, to Five Points, and back — and I do it in about twenty-nine minutes.  It would not occur to me to skip this daily routine.  Though I’ve mentioned this walk a couple of times on this blog, you’ll have to take it on faith that I do not stop people on the street to natter on about it.

Why the same strip of sidewalk?  Well, for one thing, it’s flat and it’s predictable, and it’s a block away from the street where we live.  It’s also one of the busiest streets in town, and I’d be less than honest if I said that the fact that people tell me that they see me walking all the time doesn’t give me some kind of validation.  I also see a number of other ‘regulars’ — we don’t know each other, but we wave.  Stephen jokes about how I need to get out there with my ‘peeps’.

I used to wear sunglasses, but I found it isolated me from people walking in the opposite direction.  People smile and acknowledge you if they can make eye contact, not so much with sunglasses.  Which brings me to another aspect of my routine.  The street I walk on is a very popular jogging route.  And this is a college town.  Hello!  I know it’s going to get cold again before this is all over, but recently the weather has gotten almost warm, and the jogger shirts came off.

Admittedly, I get a bit blasé as the Summer rolls on.  On the odd evening that Stephen might ask for a report, I eventually end up describing some youth as ‘standard-issue gorgeous’ because the details get so repetitive.  Only if there is a magic combination of height (six-three, maybe) and shoulder width, for example, will I get into tiresome (!) particulars.  But, back to sunglasses, or the lack thereof.

I read somewhere a long time ago that evolutionarily speaking, one of the refinements the human species acquired for survival is the ability to tell with great accuracy where another pair of eyes are trained, even at a considerable distance.  Let me corroborate.  If I espy an approaching jogger, and closing at thirty feet away I allow my eyes to b r i e f l y drift below his navel, inVARiably there will be some subtle indication that this glance has been detected.  Though I’m well-past caring, it IS somewhere between frustrating and fascinating.

In spite of this post, my handful of readers will know me to be a gentleman of taste and breeding, and nothing like a dirty old man.  Well, old, yes, and maybe a bit dirty, but not dirty and old in combination with each other.  It should also be pointed out that whereas I have great legs, it would never occur to me to display my own bosom while out on the hoof.  I’ve s e e n contemporaries in this state of déshabillé, and the next one that comes along, well, there’s going to be an intervention.