adjustment

It's fucking hot here. Very uncomfortably hot.

It was too hot in my office to work today and too noisy to move my set up into the air conditioned living room. The maximum volume on the computer is barely enough to get those little bits of speech I need to hear, and when there's an old air conditioner chugging away in the room, it's hopeless. So I decided I'd venture out and run several air conditioned errands. Pretty much up to this week, since the surgery I was having too many bouts of bad pain to go much of anywhere on my own, so this was the first time I was out and about by myself. It felt nice, emotionally.

Physically, it was not so great. My car's air conditioning is going. Or rather the whole temperature thing is a problem for my car, running the a.c. only makes it more likely to overheat. With the window down, I was able to get some air which was slightly cooler than an oven blast in my face. Still, I mostly enjoyed being out doing things for myself by myself for the first time in a month, even with the heat. It wasn't until I was at the fabric store that I started to lose my steam.

The fabric store had not been as air conditioned as I had hoped. I was hoping for arctic blast level chill. What I got instead was the slightly cool but still muggy feeling of standing in the shade at a park. Additionally, by the time I got to the fabric store, I was experiencing some feminine discomfort.

This is obviously the appropriate name for it, right? It's like "feminine products" or "feminine hygiene", or "feminine napkins". The last term calls to mind images of lace and gingham, possibly a nice crisp linen folded into a fan and placed in a glass on a table with tea cups. There might be a small vase of violets, possibly cucumber sandwiches, a bowl of berries, and the faint sounds of chamber music.

There would not be anything like the warm, wrinkled wad of cotton which was working its way onto my mind as I waited for the lady at the fabric store to cut me a 2 and 1/2 yard swath of cream colored vinyl.

"Ooops, this one's just about 2 yards..." she said after unrolling the cream colored vinyl off its cardboard spool.

Shit.

She waited while I trotted back to the bargain fabric table and searched for a roll that looked like it had more material on it. Passing over the ample bolts of superman blue and black leather-like textured vinyl, I grabbed a bolt of smooth pink and marched back to the measuring table.

"This one's 2 yards and 2 inches...will that work?" she asked with genuine sweetness, which is the only reason I didn't erupt into a stream of frustrated swears.
"That's like 74 inches, right? No. Hang on there was another one."

At this point, I was genuinely in serious feminine discomfort but god damn it I had errands and I was going to get them done.

I hunched down to get the last roll of not hideously colored vinyl from the discount table. Bending and hustling back and forth from the measuring table to where the fabric rolls sat was making me more warm. The white leather-like textured vinyl stuck to my arms as I threw the massive roll down in front of her. I apologized, feigning something like weakness of arms to excuse my abrupt motion and the thud the vinyl made as it hit the table.

"So...what are you making?" she asked pleasantly as I stood there wondering if there was any way I could possibly sneak a subtle adjustment in before I had to start screaming and jumping up and down.
"Oh, uh, well it's for my air conditioner. It's a curtain, to put over the doorway."
She looked confused and was still measuring, so I continued.
"It's so the cat can get in and out of the room with the air conditioner. I can't shut the door on him, but I don't want to air condition the whole apartment."

In the car, I managed to subtly adjust the dreaded feminine device into a less intimate position. Carefully, quite furtively, achieving something not very effective but at least different. No matter, one more quick stop at the 7-11 and I was home.

At the 7-11 I parked in the shade of a white van in front of the store. There was a man sweating in front of the open hood of the white van. He stood looking hot and frustrated on the walkway. He was staring quite intensely at whatever it is people stare at when their hood is up. He did not look up as I approached. I noticed he had one arm behind his back and when I got around him, I saw he had this arm stuck way down the back of his shorts, up to about his elbow. The arm was rotated such that the interior aspect of his forearm and hand had to be in contact with his ass. The motions of the part of his arm which was not submerged in khaki made it clear that his hand and forearm were seriously working down there.

Sweet jesus.

This man seemed completely oblivious to the context of his hand in pants behavior. I wondered if he was doing it unconsciously, if there was in fact even anything he needed to adjust or if having his hand halfway up his ass was simply his prefered stance when looking under the hood of this or any vehicle.

Since then, I've been considering how much of the behaviorial contrast, my reluctance to adjust despite a discomfort which approached pain versus this guy's shameless store front ass-mining expedition, is gender based.

If women were allowed to walk around shirtless in the sweltering heat, or to generally care less about the view their bodies inflict on others, I suspect there would be some who would not hesitate to reach down and assertively adjust what needs adjusting - pad, thong, whatever. Would I be one of them? I'm kind of prissy, so I doubt it. It annoys me though, that I can't know whether my being at least in some ways very much a linens, violets, and berries kind of person is a product of years of social conditioning or some property I would possess regardless of that.