I'm a real looker. And I'm smart. It probably makes me a bit of a snob, though I try to be nice. I may not stop traffic, but I'll slow it down.
I went to college and majored in Biology. Now, it doesn't take long in the halls of Biology to realize you're the best looking girl there. The Wicked Witch of the East would probably place in the top 5 in attractiveness. As for the guys, Quasimodo would place 6th in personality. This is commentary both on the relative attractiveness of Biology majors and the number of girls in the major. I didn't have much trouble from the guys, though. We all knew I was out of their league. Guys are great, but I was a serious student and went out only when I had the time--which was enough, I hasten to add. I knew what I wanted from a man, and no cheesy line was going to do it. I expected brains, class, a nice body and earning potential, and still I had my share of suitors. I must say I enjoyed my collegiate life. When I graduated with honors, I went to grad school in pursuit of a Master's degree.
After my first year in grad school, I went on a field study in the Arizona Desert. I was going to study a tortoise in the desert, formally called Gopherus Agassizi, not surprisingly referred to as the Desert Tortoise. I could bore you with the details, but I doubt you're reading this for a dissertation on the life of the Desert Tortoise. I was going to be holed up in a cabin in the desert in the middle of nowhere, 53.2 miles from the nearest town to be exact. Six weeks of uninterrupted study of the Aggies (as I like to call them to tease my brother, the A&M grad) in the heat of summer. I was actually excited. I also knew another biologist would be there, probably a guy, which could mean trouble. Hopefully he would at least have the personality of Quasimodo.
As (bad) luck would have it, it was a guy. His name was Eric. Luckily, he turned out to be really nice and reasonably good-looking to boot. I could tell he was shocked when he saw me. He studied ants. There's no money in ants. We got along pretty well, fairly professionally. We would ride out together just before dawn on horses. When it started getting hot, we would come back to the air conditioned cabin and wait for the cool of the evening. Then we would go out to do some more field study.
I really enjoyed running down Aggies and wiring them up. Pick one up, clean a spot on its shell, glue the wire on, put it back. The signals transmitted from the wires I had attached were tracked to record their movements. Those little buggers can roam far for something that moves so slowly. Eric was enjoying himself also, chasing ant hills.
Taking care of horses was also fun, something I had wanted to do since childhood. It got old after awhile, though. My horse was named Amber. We would go to town weekly to restock the food and for a change of scenery.
Around the second week it happened. That defining moment in a relationship. Eric and I were talking about boyfriends and girlfriends, and what we were looking for.
"Would I have a chance at a girl like you?" Eric asked.
I looked him in the eye, surprised he'd even ask.
"You wouldn't even get invited to the race," I replied.
He took it pretty well. I've found that brutal honesty is fairly effective in avoiding future problems. He actually seemed a bit relieved. After that we were more like brother and sister. One day he caught me singing into a kitchen spoon while dancing to "Tears of a Clown", and he just turned away laughing. We had gotten to know each other pretty well. Watching him cook, I mused that he would make some girl a really nice husband. He wasn't that much of reclamation project, after all.
We had plenty of time to kill while we weren't out in the field or writing our theses. With little to watch on TV (read: nothing but farm reports) we resorted to, I suppose, frontier amusements--I learned to knit, he learned to whittle. He worked on carving little chessmen with his big bowie knife. I'd tell him he could do better with a smaller knife.
"Any man can build a house with a hammer," he'd reply, "To build one with a saw takes real skill."
Quasimodo just moved up to 5th place. Nevertheless, I giggled when he said that. I seemed to do a lot of giggling around him. I knew he was sweet. I chided myself for starting to like him, since he was so not my type. I chalked it up to cabin fever. However, watching the sunrise every day with a happy entomologist grows on a girl.
I guess you had to be there.
Four weeks passed, and we went out in the morning as usual. Eric had just stopped and was staring at the ground about 100 feet behind me. I saw an Aggie on a small rise and dismounted. I walked over to the little dude with my kit and picked him up. To my shock, there was an Aphonopelma Chalcode (more commonly referred to as the Arizona Tarantula) underneath him, a behavior totally undocumented in the literature. I shrieked and jumped back, losing my balance and dropping the poor Aggie. Now, I had handled spiders and tarantulas in lab before, but seeing one so close to my hand so unexpectedly triggered a major 'get away' reflex. I fell over backward down the hill, my feet apart with my legs nearly straight. Instinctively, I bent forward. Falling in the desert is never a good idea. I landed hard on a little Mother-in-law's chair, a species of cactus (Echinocactus Grusonii if you really must know) that is full of sharp, yellow spines. They penetrated my jeans in a very delicate area, my butt and the rear of my crotch. I shrieked in pain and shock.
Eric covered the distance to me in about the time it took me to scream again. I reached out and he grabbed my hands. I pulled myself up on him and collapsed face-first in the dirt, ass in the air. The cactus came with me. Making matters worse, the movement between my skin and the jeans sheared off some needles in me. Eric quickly donned a glove and pried the bush off of me. I was crying in pain. Dozens of spines had broken off, many under my jeans. Eric didn't know how to proceed. I sat there on my knees, my head on the ground, and collected myself. Now that the shock of the whole incident had worn off, it really didn't hurt that bad. I could deal with the pain. I tried to straighten out, and squeaked. Every movement seemed to drive new spines into me. The ones that were in me were broken off in between my jeans and were resetting themselves with every movement. I was practically helpless. I looked over to see the Aggie wandering by, looking at me as if to say 'serves you right.'
"What the hell are you looking at?" I yelled at it. This was a disaster--I could see no other option but to cut my pants off. I shook my head at the prospect. I had to ask Eric, and I could feel the butterflies start at the prospect of verbalizing it to him. What a predicament. I took a deep breath.
"Take my jeans off," I begged, and the pit in my stomach felt like someone punched me.
Eric paused.
"That's not exactly the context I had hoped to hear you say that," he deadpanned.
