Gerald and I are leaning on my beat-up Chevvy talking the usual thing most people talk about when relaxed and enjoying the cooling evening sucking a bottle of Mountain Spring Guaranteed Pure Aqua. The conversation is babes.
"Tom, what do you look for in a babe?" he asks.
Personal questions always rattle me, compelling me to lie. But this here is different as Gerald is a great buddy. So I palm my stubble and as the three-day growth on my chin drives into the skin of my hand, stimulating blood flow, I'm prompted to answer profoundly:
"Gerald, first I check that she'd really there."
"Huh?"
"That's she'd not just the mirage come to tease a horny old guy like me."
Gerald takes another swig of water, thinking about that. He's not bothered to stimulate the blood flow to get his 42-old-mind into rapid response mode. But we have all day, as it's just on dusk.
"Go on."
My brain is two year's older than Gerald's and as I began masturbating two years later than he did. The result of that delay in wanking means I've got a brain equivalent to his: 42 years old.
Out here where the life passes slowly and the most exciting thing of the week is a provocative drifting rain cloud, a guy gets ample time to work out such things logically. Now, where was I? Oh, right!
"Well, Gerald, a priority is good feet, otherwise she might not manage to walk within my range of vision in order to win my assessment.
"Knees are important, too. They must be knobbly to keep her thighs apart permanently.
"I look to see if the thighs are free of warts, pimples and other guy's teeth marks. These days with babes usually only doing what they like doing best, which is talking, thighs arrive in pretty good shape."
Gerald looks up for a rain cloud but the cussed things are so difficult to see in the dark.
"Yeah, so it's thighs, is it?"
"No, be patient buddy. Babes have many other attributes to consider, too many really. Let's go up top to hair.
"Babes worthy of catching your eye must have hair. If they don't, then I turn away. That's fair enough, isn't it?"
Gerald said he was right with me on that one. Chicks need to have hair, plenty of it including down below and under their arms.