by Jim Mcinvale

Created on: December 30, 2010

I Watch

The man had either hacked or gnawed the sleeves off of his NASCAR tee shirt, thinking, perhaps, that it would better compliment his beer gut and mullet.  He knew that herds of female shoppers crossed this territory between groceries and women’s wear, so he’d marked it as his own, for it was Spring and he too was shopping. He greeted each of them, from teens to grandmothers, with a wink, a slurred come-on, or a little hip-thrusting boogie dance. The women, when they noticed him, cut a wide circle as they might for a pool of vomit.

Don White watched from behind an end cap stacked with honey buns. He maneuvered for a better view, pointed his camera phone, and clicked a shot. The image was too small to make out facial features, so he adjusted the zoom and clicked another. Satisfied with this one, he ducked back out of sight and dropped the phone into his hand basket.

Redneck Romeo spotted his target - a lightly bearded big woman across the main aisle standing with her back to him, waist deep in a cloud of kids of assorted sizes, shapes and colors. He put two fingers in his mouth and shrieked a whistle that turned her head, and when their eyes met, offered up his best bowling alley grin - a seven-ten split. The ten pin, a gold–crowned incisor, glowed under the fluorescent lights. She turned her back to him again and plucked a bag of powdered donuts from an end cap, but he was undaunted by the coyness. What he lacked in teeth he more than made up for in bravado. He swayed, belched, staggered over, and planted a hard slap on one of her super-sized, spandex-wrapped buns. The report ricocheted around the store and turned heads all the way down to the beer and wine section.

She turned on him; turned so fast that her bean-bag-size butt cheeks could not keep up, and when they did catch up, they spun her hard so that she had to take a stagger step for balance. The suitor moved in to stabilize her, but was about a second slower than a sober man and had just enough steadiness to keep himself upright with none extra to offer the maiden.  They flailed for a moment and fell to the floor. He tried to cushion the fall, but ended up pinned beneath her with only a tattooed arm, a pair of flip-flops, and a grinning mug sticking out from under the mountain of flesh.

The woman floundered and cursed as her hands searched frantically for the floor. When at last they were anchored, she gave a great huff, shifted backwards, and rolled up on her

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