Mistaken Identity

Perfectly natural perception. This is how it happens. Rehearsal is still going on and I'm upstairs, writing, in my office, and I want a cigaret. Roll one and go downstairs, through the crowd of kids and parents, out the back door, to the place where I've smoked a thousand cigarets. There are two young girls outside, I don't know them, even Pegi doesn't know all these kids, the ones that are in classes with her instructors. The girls are 10 or 12 years old. They're texting and laughing. I walk over to the corner of the building, near the alley, light my cigaret, and I'm just standing there, one foot against the wall, pondering a particular comma, in my black jeans and dark brown Carhartt jacket, with my Eyrie Vineyards' cap pulled down to ward off the chill. An SUV pulls into the alley from 6th street to collect one of the girls; two moms, several kids in the back, and the driver rolls down her window, to call over her daughter. As this space is constellated, she's only eight feet away from me, and the daughter asks which side, and I smile when I realize there's a seating protocol. This would leave one young girl outside and me, leaning against the side of the building, and the two moms in the SUV are very uncomfortable. I look enough like a pervert, if you watch TV, to make them uncomfortable, and they call out to the other girl, who's name I now know is Bailey, when is her mom coming, and she answers probably in the next ten minutes, and they look at me again. Banter doesn't work in this situation. I tell them I work here, but they don't know me. I tell them to send Bailey back inside, where there are many people, milling, to watch for her mom out the door. I can see how uncomfortable they are, but there's nothing I can do about it, nothing I can say. They're right, to be concerned, and I vow never to be caught in this situation again. I'll go smoke on the roof. Fuck a bunch of politically correct. I don't traffic in underage pudenda, I'm much more interested in soccer moms, their tight jeans and knee-high boots. It all comes down to ankles. What carries the load. Consider the lilies of the field.