Outgribe.com TraveloguesHouston, TX, Feb 2004On Sunday J and I went to lunch at the Black Labrador, a British pub. It's in a fairly cultured spot and has an authentic atmosphere, cozy inside with low ceilings and heavy wood tables, and with pleasant outside seating where dogs are allowed. The food was so authentically Britishly sucky. The only touch lacking was for the waitresses to have bad teeth. That was amazingly awful broccoli they had there. Hard to believe it was the same species as the yummy kind. It was a lovely day. Following lunch, we took a stroll around that nice inner-loop neighborhood. The University of St. Thomas is spread out along several blocks just about there, all housed in smallish residential-seeming buildings and not looking like a campus at all. Nor were any students in evidence, save one friendly fellow. While walking past the big Greek Orthodox church we saw two doves sitting in a tree. They took turns ruffling up their feathers and shaking their wings, and bobbing their heads up and down. One would shake, the other would look and maybe bob. Given the limited number of degrees of freedom their bodies had while seated on a branch, I'd say that was some fine moves. J tried the shaking; I dunno, maybe it's sexy; he'd have to try again later because I'd have to think about it. Then the girl was shaking, the boy was bobbing really hard, things were seemingly heating up, and next thing we know he jumps up on her. We're standing there looking up romantically and then this guy comes up and also stands and looks, a rather good-looking young man with narrow black-rimmed glasses and a black baseball cap. Well, we turn to go then. Obviously he figures the nicest way to resolve the situation is to make a friendly joke -- "Oh, so that's how it's done," he says. J is also a friendly social kind of guy when pressed. "They were courting before that; I guess it worked." They teach them to be friendly in church, I suppose. That afternoon we went to the art cinema to see a French menage-a-trois movie. As we were walking through the parking garage I saw the same perverted guy walking toward the theater! He walked a little ahead of us and made out like he didn't notice us. I was outraged. J said that it wasn't the same guy; that he just looked a lot like the same guy. But he had the same glasses and the same hat, and I don't know in what way he could have been different -- he was the same. J probably just tried to put the best and friendliest face on things -- also something they teach them at church, he had told me sometime. Please note that all material on this page is Copyright © 2005 by D. Aline Lurie. |