Knocking Opportunity
Life is always offering us opportunities. Big opportunities like the great little house you always wanted goes on the market around the time you can afford a move. Or little ones like your boss needs to git rid of those 50-yd. line seats for the Florida game just as you walk by. That’s when a good opportunity is a great opportunity. But what can suck about a good opportunity is when it happens at the wrong time. What do you do when an opportunity comes at an inopportune moment?
One of the guys I work with had a family member pass away last week. That’s not the good opportunity I’m referring to. It’s rare for someone’s death to come at an opportune time. Except maybe if that someone is beating you with a baseball bat that that moment. In that case, I think we can agree that their demise was an opportunity for you.
Anyway, this guy is not a close friend, but is a co-worker, so I thought should go to the wake last night to pay my respects. I was sitting with a couple of other guys from work. We were kidding each other about how well we can clean up if you scrub the paint off us and put us in a tie. We were sitting in a row of chairs and I was just looking around the room. I was looking to see if I knew anyone else. Isn’t it funny how at funerals and memorials you always run into someone that you know that you didn’t know also knows the body. You know?
So I’m looking around and to my right, down the row, on the other side of a couple of people I catch eyes with another guy. I give him a polite nod, and he nods back. We’re Southerners. We’re nice people. So I turn back to my buds and we start up a chat again. As we’re talking I countinue to look around and when I turn to my right, there he is again. Looking at me. No. Flat out staring. You know how when someone catches you staring at them, you quickly look away trying to not look like you were doing exactly what you were doing. Not this guy. I looked at him, and he just looked harder. It was like a visual game of chicken and I lost. I was the one who quickly looked away.
I gave it a couple od seconds then looked his way again and he was still there. Like he was waiting for me to turn to him. I looked back to my left to see if he was trying to get the attention of someone past me. Nope. It was me. So, I thought to myself, I must know this guy. I gave him a quizzical look as if to say, “Sorry, I can’t place who you are.” And he just smiled. That gave me my answer. I definitely don’t know this guy. I would remember that smile. WOW. It made me nervous so I sat back in my chair so that the other couple blocked our view of each other.
So the next few minutes I listened to my buddies talk. Listened only enough to realize that they were talking. I have no idea what they were saying, because I was thinking about the dazzling smile. Pretending I was sitting uncomfortably I gave myself an excuse to shift my position and casually glance over to him. There was no need to shift, because just as I started my set-up, I looked right and he was leaning forward in his chair to look around the couple at me.
Right about that time, the people I was with got up to go through the receiving line, so I joined them. We were standing in a line that sort of went around the perimeter of the room. In other words, we could be seen from anywhere in the room. He could see me. And I could see him seeing me. This was really fucking with my mind. Was I getting cruised at funeral home? Do people really do that?
When we reached the head of the line, just before I was about to talk to the family, I looked again to see if he was watching. He was. But he was being more cool about it now. I knew he was watching and he knew he was watching, but I don’t think anyone else knew he was watching. I think even if others did see us exchanging glances they would think nothing of it. I mean, who cruises at a funeral home?
Then he stood up and headed for the exit. He looked good. Sturdy build. Nice butt. A goatee (who doesn’t have one anymore?). Very nice… Oh my God, I’m cruising at a funeral home! Just before he hit the lobby he looked back at me so that I would see him leave.
“Does he want me to follow him outside,” I wonder. I can’t do that. I’m in a funeral home. I can’t hook up with a guy at a funeral home. It’s not in my nature to hook up with guys I just met, in general. I have trouble talking to guys at a bar surrounded by house music and gyrating queens. I certainly can’t do it surrounded by mourners and “The Old Rugged Cross.” Besides, what if I had followed him out? What where we going to do? Go trade sloppy kisses and handjobs in the parking lot? Don’t come a-knockin’ if the hearse is a-rockin’. Here I was given the opportunity to get a nut and I did have the nuts take the opportunity.
Why couldn’t this happen when I’m out on the town instead of at an aquaintance’s family member’s viewing? Given the right opportunity, I could have turned that gorgeous smile into a cock-filled hungry grimace….Oh, who am I foolin’? Even when someone does pay attention, I usually get too nervous to respond and they just give up and move on.
I should learn. Opportunities are what you make of them. If you make the most of your opportunities, you can ultimately make opportunities your own. No matter how inopportune.
Even still… hooking up at a funeral? That’s a little fucked up.
May 17th, 2005 at 1:58 am
You been watching too much Will and Grace. A funeral is not a bad place to pick up someone. After all - it is a reminder of how fleeting life is, and how we should make the best of our opportunities. So people are a bit raw emotionally. I suppose the question is - why didn’t he come over and introduce himself to you?
May 17th, 2005 at 7:01 am
OOoooh Tony..BAH! I can’t believe you at least didn’t try and meet the guy. Even if you had gone outside, you didn’t have to do anything right then. You could have exchanged numbers or something. Meeting at a funeral? So what? People live and people die, that’s the way it goes. Grab a little happiness wherever you can, and following it wherever it leads you.
May 17th, 2005 at 7:34 am
Well, you could kill someone and hope he’d be back for the wake…
…
i know !! it’s not funny ! sorryyyyy :p
May 17th, 2005 at 7:49 am
You did the right thing. A funeral is not the place to get your nut
May 17th, 2005 at 11:47 am
I actually agree with Melissa. I would have at least gotten his digits and possibly hooked up at a later date. Life is short, and opportunity seldom knocks twice. He might have been Mr. Right, but now you’ll never know. Maybe you’ll see him again, though.
May 17th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Hi Tony! I hope you’re having a super sunny day! I loved that story so much that I’m going to finish it for you. Here goes:
Outside the church, the warm May sunshine lightly caressed the smooth, handsome features of Caleb Josiah Ewell. Although it was not hot out, Caleb’s handsome brow was beading with sweat. He stared with intensity at the doors of the small chapel, waiting. Determined. He’d selected his needful fancy, and all would be well, now. Yes, it would all be alright, now. He smiled his 1000 watt smile at himself. She’d be SO HAPPY!
But where was he? Why had the young man Caleb so desperately needed not followed him out of the chapel? Small beads of sweat began trickling down his cheek. Almost inaudible, as a ghost of a whisper, he began chanting to himself under his breath,”Momma, momma, momma. Ooooh momma momma. He said over and over, sing-song to himself, almost as if to sooth his passion. “Momma’s got a good boy, a good, good, good boy for momma.”
He shifted his weight from one well muscled leg to another as he stared like a hungry wolf at the vacant portico of the chapel. If he could bore a hole through the wood of the chapel door with his eyes, he most surely would have.
Just then, the rustle of a nearby bush caught Caleb’s intense attention. Spinning furiously in the direction of the sound, he caught sight of a small kitten playing blissfully with a butterfly. Momma hates kittens, thought Caleb, his unique mind uncontrollably swelling into rage. But the kitten, unfortunately, would have to wait. Caleb returned his attention to the chapel door. after all, Momma had LOTS of kittens, didnt she?
“Momma, momma, momma.”
Looking up at the burnished silvery blue of the afternoon, he saw the crescent moon, hovering in the sky like a dagger. The Moon. His impatient mistress. He absently placed his hand in his trouser pockets and let his fingers caress the smooth, cool nickel plating of the handcuffs concealed there. His patience was ebbing, like the sands from an hourglass of doom.
He then noticed, in the park across the street, a handsome young man sunning himself on the park lawn, evidently enjoying his lunch hour. Yes indeed, a VERY handsome man.
He appeared to be asleep.
Would momma like him, perhaps?
“Yes, Caleb, she would indeed.” he thought to himself.
Loosening his tie, he smoothed his hand over his head, collected himself, and walked across the street.
May 17th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
You have my condolences. (Ah, for the death too.)
May 17th, 2005 at 4:43 pm
Where doesn’t matter. But respect does come into play here. I would have tried to exchange hello’s and numbers. That way you could always get together in a much more relaxed setting.
I don’t really do funerals. After this story, I may just start.
May 17th, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Did I miss something in the story ending Big18Gunz wrote? I don’t quite get it. Not that it wasn’t interesting…but I was a pinch creeped out. I even read it twice, thinking I missed something.
May 17th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Wait a minute… you mean to tell me that after all of that you didn’t follow him outside? Are you insane? OK, granted it was at a funeral which is a little creepy, but hell.. at least get the man’s phone number and ask him out for a drink or something =) NEVER give up an opportunity for fun or more when you’re completely single =)
BTW, I found a pic of you floating around on the web… yum… =)
May 18th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
Melissa, it was supposed to be humorously creepy. read it again with the “psycho” music playing. I was just kidding with ol Tony there. -r.c.
May 19th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Phew! I was a little scared that I’d stepped into some very creepy hornets nest. I re-read it with psycho music in my head…oh yes very effective. =)~
May 19th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
I’m not sure that it matters where you meet someone so much as how you meet them. Given the circumstances I think I would have reacted exactly the same way that you did. It’s nice to find yourself being ogled by a cute guy. In retrospect, it sounds like his behavior was a little arrogant. As though he were so confident in his charms that he was certain you’d be flattered rather than annoyed by behavior that even a 5 year-old can recognize as rude. Well, except when the 5 year-old is admiring your muscles in a bank. At least HE spoke to you!
Did anyone know this guy? Maybe he wanders from one funeral to the next looking for emotionally vulnerable cock? Who knows, maybe there’s a method to his madness? No cover charge, no beer-bucks required, and the lighting is sufficient that there shouldn’t be any nasty surprises when you leave the building. Hmm?
May 19th, 2005 at 5:55 pm
Ah Tony, seems to me that you missed out! A blowjob would have been the perfect way to cheer you up after such an event.
May 20th, 2005 at 12:40 am
What better place than at a funeral to recognize that you need to “seize the day” before it seizes you.
May 21st, 2005 at 12:40 am
Hi from Italy. All ok?
May 25th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
I empathize with you, Tony, almost too much. Being the kind of person who can spend a couple hours in a bar and never speak to another person other than the bartender to order a drink, I completely understand how things turned out for you as they did. In your place, I expect it would have turned out exactly the same.