There’s a number of new condos being built downtown, and they’re all trying to pre-sell the units—one even offers “Hard Hat Tours.” It would be a wonderful idea if it weren’t for the undertone of “for prospective buyers only.” I’ve considered showing up for one anyhow, but the guilty consciousness of subterfuge would probably lead me to such an exhibition of blushing, stammering, nervous giggling, fidgeting and toe scuffing that the striking view of the Seattle skyline through a grey mist would be immediately followed by an impressive barred window seen through heavy sedation.
Ads for at least two of these buildings promise that, if you buy a condo, you will be turned into a beautiful, young, naked woman the instant the ink dries on the contract. I wonder if they have an exemption clause for handsome, successful, devout men—why bother otherwise? But then, these men, being exceptions, would be a minority, which isn’t a dramatically pleasing setup (well, the folks who wrote the bizarre closing scene for “The Gnomemobile”—in which hundreds of young women chase a terrified youth through a soap-sudsy forest—thought otherwise, but even as a child I felt that these writers had, like Homer, slept). The best is brought out of men when they have to compete for a girl to be fond of, and rather the reverse when there are a number of girls being fond of them.
So I gave up the idea of stopping by the convenient Pay Day Loans shop in order to immerse myself in this transcendent and prosperous luminosity. Not so my fellow bus-rider, who wished to “buy out his roommate” for next month’s rent, and who stepped off the bus bubbling “Money, money, money,” after a promising call to the usurers.
