Tiny magicks are born of necessity.
So there I was yesterday, lined up at a lab table with all of the rest of the Anatomy II college cattle, furiously scribbling notes from the lecture being delivered. My hair (which now stretches down my back and likes about another four inches –a figure I’m impatiently thinking of scrapping– before I reach my personal goal…then I will hack it off and send it to Locks of Love), which is undeniably –though sometimes pleasantly– thick and heavy, was getting on my nerves something fierce. I fished around in the voluminous pockets of my ODgreen satchel and triumphantly brought forth a natural wood pencil. Then I quickly twisted my hair, wrapped it around the pencil a couple-three times and brought the pencil up, stabbing it through the hair next to my head to make a makeshift bun. This was something I didn’t think much about at the time. Satisfied and with hair up and out of the way, I was better able to pay attention to the very detailed information on blood that I was being given.
After class, I gathered up my things, shrugged on my coat and was out the door when a sloppy-cute nineteen-or-thereabouts fella caught me in the hall.
“That was awesome,” he said to me through a small grin.
“What? What was?”
His index finger drew little circles in the air, “The pencil-hair thing. I watched you do it, and how cool!” This, as you might imagine, amused me. I am fond of tiny magicks, as well; I tend to look at things in wonder that others take for granted.
He then went on to ask a couple questions about the tat on the back of my neck before we bid one another a good day and headed off in opposite directions. As I boogied to my next class (it was cold, so co-ollld yesterday), I got to thinkin’ on the small little tricks of the trade that being a female entails. You know, little things born of necessity and/or inconvenience and/or lack of necessary materials at hand.
One time, two girlfriends and I were strolling across Millington NAS, headed for something to eat at the snack bar. Normally we skirted around the (mostly Navy) barracks, but that day we were in a hurry, so we cut through the middle. About halfway through our half-mile walk, we came up on four guys kicking a hacky sack around in the middle of the wide sidewalk. Catt, my best friend, began to bounce around.
“Ooooh, I wanna play!”
The fellas, of course, acquiesced and asked Alex and me if we wanted to play, as well. I looked down at my outfit with pursed lips, for while I was wearing boots and a linen tank top, I was also wearing a mini skirt. I gestured with my hands to illustrate that my attire was inappropriate for such an undertaking.
“Can’t play in this, fellas.” One guy who looked all of fifteen and like he was just pulled from his mother’s teat perked up. “Hey! I have some shorts upstairs in my room, if you wanna wear those.”
“They clean?” I countered. I may be a risk-taker, but I do have certain standards of hygiene. He raised a hand Boy Scout-style and swore his oath to it.
“Okay,” said I, “bring ‘em here and I’ll change.”
“Um,” one of them answered, “females aren’t allowed on deck.” He was telling me that I couldn’t utilize the facilities in his barracks ’cause I were a girl, but I already knew this.
“I know,” says I, “I’ma change right here.”
“Right here?” one of them asked incredulously. He was the one whose heart I would unknowingly and quite haphazardly go on to break later on, but that’s another story for another time.
“Ayuh,” I replied, “right here.”
“No, really,” the boy I came to know as Brian sailed back. I assured him that it was indeed so. This caused a mild ripple of titillation (scandal most always does) throughout the male segment of our little newly-formed group and sent the Boy Scout flying away toward the innards of the barracks. My own companions were unmoved.
When he returned with a longish, baggy pair of Jams (remember those? The wildly-patterned board shorts of the late eighties?), he handed them to me expectantly, waiting with his compatriots for the show of seventeen-year old flesh that was sure to commence. I took them with no hesitation.
I neatly stepped into the shorts, pulled them up across my thighs, then reached down under the waistband of my skirt to yank the shorts the rest of the way up. When they were seated across my hips, I unzipped my skirt and removed it. The guys all groaned in ‘We’ve Been Haaaaad’ disappointment (save for Brian, who was Quite Amused at my resourcefulness) after a moment of slack-jawed silence. The latter was, I assume, in order to give their brains a moment to shift from the ‘lech’ back to the ‘think now’ mode.
Some men adore the remove-bra-while-leaving-shirt-on trick, and I’ll agree that it is a nifty one. I was quite pleased with myself when I mastered it at age twelve….a little coming-of-age ritual, if you will. However, for me personally it will never top the on-the-spot performance of the Magic Disappearing Mini that a handful of sailors witnessed on a nice spring day in nineteen eighty-eight.
12 worked it out »