Trouble

We have had much activity of late in my little corner of the People's Republic of Hillcrest. The college boys that lived in the rent house two doors down from me have moved out. They were replaced by female counterparts of about the same age. I suspected that young women would be moving in as soon as the guys left. For about a week prior to the day I actually saw U-Hauls in the yard, I saw women who appeared to be about my age carrying in loads of stuff on almost a nightly basis. My suspicions were confirmed one day when I went around back to take out the trash and saw a tits high pile of boxes from stores like Tuesday Morning and Pier One stacked up behind the house.

Girls. No doubt.

Men and women move stuff differently. I didn't know that the guys were moving until about 10 of 'em showed up one Sunday afternoon armed with trucks, SUVs and coolers full of beer. The biggest item of furniture I saw hauled out was a big- screen plasma television.

Guys move stuff in. They move stuff out. They don't spend the week before hanging drapes, shooting measurements or comparing fabric swatches to the colors in the room. We move stuff in. We move stuff out. Point me to where the refrigerator will be.

One of my friends allowed as how I thrilled I must be to have a couple of cute girls living just a chip shot away from me. I pretty much am predisposed to view this as trouble. But not of the sexual foolishness variety. Even I am incapable of that level of hubris.

I tried to explain it once before to my friend J. I accompanied J to a wedding earlier this summer. After 20 years of dedicated service to the noble and useful profession of teaching, she decided to chuck it all to go to law school. As you might suspect, her classmates are all in their twenties. Anyway, at the reception, J introduced me to the bride and groom. The bride, as radiant a girl as I have ever seen, held my hand the whole time I stood there congratulating them and wishing them luck and all of that.

In the car afterwards J was smitten with the sentimental emotions that overcome women from time to time at these events.

"You could tell Mary-or whatever the hell her name was-really liked you." she said.

"How you figure?"

" You could tell by the way she held your hand the whole time she spoke to you. That was so sweet."

" Look" I said. " She could give a rip about me. She likes you. I have just reached a stage in my life where young women consider me to be completely harmless."

Here's another example. A couple of years ago I became friends with a young woman with whom I ran on a relay team for the first Little Rock Marathon. She was a second year med student at the time. She is a beautiful girl and an accomplished marathoner. However, like many highly intelligent people, she occasionally can not be trusted with a wet match, so absent-minded is she.

She called me late one night to tell me that she had locked herself out of her apartment. She asked me if I would come over and help her climb into the second floor window which was unlocked. This is how I would up with a 26 year old girl in a blue jean skirt hiked up to her hips with her piston-like legs wrapped around the back of my neck some 30 minutes later.

At this point, let me say that this wasn't nearly as much fun as one might think. Given the kind of luck I usually possess in all things, I just knew that the cops were going to show up at any time during this refenestration. That would have been some picture. Me with a girl on my shoulders and a beer on the hood of my car trying to bust into a private residence in the middle of the night. Bearing this in mind, it was with all due haste that I pushed her ass up through the window and threw her goddamn flip flops after her.

Clutching her flip flops to her breast she beamed down at me Juliet-like from her window.

" Thank yooooooou." she said. " I knew I could count on yooooou. You are so sweeeeet. " she cooooooooed.

Nah. Mainly I'm harmless. And she knew it.

Besides, I'm a guy. We move stuff in. We move stuff out. Plasma teevees, budding pediatricians, whatever. It's just stuff that's gotta be moved.

And so, these new neighbors will need something moved eventually or they will need someone tall to reach something high up ( I am exceedingly popular at Christmastime for this reason). And they will come to me.

They can't go to the grumpy gay couple to the North of them. Those guys don't talk to anybody. They can't go to the neighbor to the South of them because, even though she has a boyfriend that stays with her a lot of the time that might be of some use, he's a strange ranger. On the weekends, he occasionally wears leather pants and a cotton peasant blouse. It's like living next door to Mick Fleetwood.

But then again, who am I to talk? I just realized that I used the words "grumpy" and "gay" in the same sentence to describe someone. Maybe living next door to me is like living next door to Wally Hall.

My friend M lives in Jackson, Mississippi. She understands these things. And while I don't mean to suggest that I hear Edith Piaf in the background anytime she calls or sends e-mails, she has a certain world weary view of relations between men and women that informs her judgment in this regard.

" Oh yeah." she said the other day. " They will come. First you will be moving furniture. Then you will be hearing about their problems with their boyfriends. Trust me. Just make them produce a driver's license before you give them any alcohol." In that regard, I guess I had better brush up on my froofy drink recipes. From the looks of those two, I bet I won't serve 'em many boilermakers.

Like I said. Trouble. Just not the kind my buddy who obviously has spent way too much time watching porno on the Internet was contemplating.

They will come because at this stage of my life, young women find me to be completely harmless. That's kind of depressing. But it is what it is.