She Loves to Read

She has a variety of interests in reading.  This includes history, historical fiction, a limited number of biographies, such as Lincoln and his early years, Einstein or Amelia Earhart, Nabokov, Camus, Robert Penn Warren, Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, Kafka, SRCarson, natural history and astronomy, how – to books on gardening, or cooking, page – turning fiction with complex characters, romance —as long as the story arc has some depth to it and not predictable, and the bible, specifically the NIV Application Study Bible.

But the problem is that not only is she blessed with a sharp and inquiring mind, but she is also blessed, or often she thinks cursed, with a body that men are drawn to like moths to a light.  So, she must always try to think about the location and her attire if she wants to read in peace.

There’ something about the ocean that draws her, like most humans —the crashing waves, the cries of seagulls and most of all, the warm sun.  Although she will do some swimming and maybe some snorkeling in tropical locations, she does like to lay on the beach and read with her polarized sunglasses as the waves crash and the sun bathes her body with warmth.  Or at least she tries.  She becomes so absorbed in what she is reading, she ignores all that is happening around her, except for occasional glances at the sailboats navigating the sea, and then, she invariably hears footsteps squishing in the sand coming towards her special spot.

“Hey babe.  Looking good!”

That is a typical opening line these testosterone – filled creatures usually start with, and to be polite, she says, “Thanks.”  Then she looks back down at her book and tries to resume where she left off and take herself back to the distant place the book transported her to before the interruption.  Today, she is reading Cormac McCarthy.  He’s a little rough, but tells a good story, but McCarthy thinks he doesn’t need to use dialogue quotes, and sometimes she can’t tell who is talking, so that slows her down a bit.

He kept standing by her, and didn’t get the message she thought she sent. He was tall and his back hair was as thick as his curly chest hair, but his tight speedo made it quite obvious that her body pleased him and she could see he was not thinking with his brain.

“Where are you from?  You from around here?”

She doesn’t look up from the page and thinks to herself —can’t she have a little peace to read without horny guys devouring the view of how her little yellow bikini fits her shapely ass?  Is it the bubble butt they desire, or her lean athletic ballet – trained legs, or how she fills her top so well?  She can’t help how she looks, and yes, she wonders, is it a blessing or curse?

“I am from many places and yet, none, at the same time.”

Her words caused him to stop flashing his white teeth and he silently asked his vacuous neurons to search for the meaning of her words, but he kept staring at her even though she had her head down, looking at the book, but unable to concentrate now on McCarthy, hoping this animal would get the message.

He decided to respond.  “My name is Antonio and what is yours?”

She replied, “I am sorry, I am engrossed in this book at this time and I am not very sociable at the moment, Antonio.”

“Oh, I am sorry.  Well, then maybe I could sit by you and enjoy the ocean and we can talk when you are ready.”

She could see he wore a handsome barn up top of his broad shoulders that was unfortunately lacking adequate hay.  She realized that if she really wanted to read on a public beach, she would need to come in a potato sack and wear an old straw hat with fake fruit and plastic parrots hanging down to scare men off.  She knew he would not leave until he won her phone number or a date for sex, so she needed to employ some more effective weapons.

So, she looked at him, put her finger in her nose, moved it around a little and then wiped it on her blanket and said, “I love the taste of nose buggars, kind of like raw oysters, but I will save it for later at lunch when I am hungry.”  She knew it was gross, but unfortunately necessary, at the moment.

It worked.  He left her, disgusted, and she resumed reading in peace.

She thought, if a guy really wants to talk to me, can’t he say something like, “I see you’re reading Cormac.  I liked All The Pretty Horses but not The Road. It was too dystopian.  But tell me, do you like that he thinks he is too famous to use dialogue quotes?”

“No,” she would like to say.  “I can’t keep up with who is talking and that slows me down too much.  But I keep reading, because he tells a good story.”  Maybe a guy like that would have a chance with her on a romantic date, and the sexual attraction would boil if he treated her like a human with a brain rather than feminine meat wearing a bikini.

So as time goes on, she realizes she is both blessed and cursed, and she can’t change that. But she is proud of who she is and what she wants to accomplish in life.  So now she only reads in the privacy of her home, or on airplane flights rather than watching a mindless movie, or perhaps a vacation to a secluded place such Point Lobos State Nature reserve near Monterey, where the secluded little ocean coves, surrounded by cliffs and jagged rock, provided her the inspiration to write the first ten chapters of her new novel.

© 2021  SRCarson Publications