Johnny America

 

Mandy’s Legs

by

Mandy’s skirts were al­ways too short. That’s a strange opin­ion for a red-blood­ed chap to have, I know, but she was a short, squat la­dy and her legs were just too thick and bul­bous­ly mus­cu­lar for such a re­veal­ing hem­line. Such an ex­panse of un­ap­peal­ing calf, knee, and thigh pro­voked no ad­mi­ra­tion, lust, or en­vy; just slight­ly pained glances from the men in the of­fice and cat­ty asides from the women. But Mandy was obliv­i­ous to the fact that her legs were of lit­tle artis­tic mer­it and she flaunt­ed them in all weath­ers, ex­posed for all to admire.

In her de­fense, there was no trace of cel­lulite or oth­er flab­by wob­bli­ness on Mandy’s legs, which was a mat­ter of great pride for her. Her legs were well-main­tained — smooth and tan and taut­ly mus­cled — but ap­peared to be so un­nat­u­ral­ly firm and sol­id that they seemed not so much flesh and mus­cle as sol­id tim­ber, fash­ioned by a sculp­tor’s hand. Though not a mas­ter sculp­tor, not an ex­pe­ri­enced artist; a mas­ter’s young ap­pren­tice, per­haps, or an el­der­ly la­dy who took an evening class. Or imag­ine if you were to hand a suit­ably-sized block of sea­soned oak to a com­plete novice and say, “Here mate, carve me a pair of shape­ly fe­male legs, would you?”  — the re­sult, from any rea­son­ably tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­ual giv­ing it this task his best shot, af­ter he’d rubbed his works down with 320-grit sand­pa­per and var­nished them to his sat­is­fac­tion with a dark teak wood­stain, would be some­thing akin to Mandy’s legs.

But Mandy knew noth­ing of such aes­thet­ic con­sid­er­a­tions. She had long ago de­cid­ed her legs were her best fea­ture and she want­ed the whole world to know about it, hence the mi­ni-skirts, the high heels, and the fre­quent cross­ings and un­cross­ing of her chunky pins, which she car­ried out with a gra­tu­itous and un­seem­ly aban­don. But that’s an­oth­er story.

Filed under Fiction on September 20th, 2004

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Jonathan Holley wrote:

Thanks for this, David.

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