Rhymes with Whips

We had tickets Friday night to see The Internationalist at Studio Theatre, so b&c drove down to Bethesda, we took the Metro to Dupont Circle, and we walked to the theatre. Friday was a gorgeous evening, cool and clear, and everywhere I looked there were men with prominent nipples. Now, it is true that I am something of a nipple gourmand, so I'm perhaps more likely than the average man to notice nipples. But that particular bias is constant, so I'm pretty sure there were more and perkier than usual nipples on display Friday evening.


It may have been the weather, of course. A warm day giving way to a cool evening is a recipe for a lot of guys wearing one layer less than they might have, and a cool and damp early spring puts many men, I presume, in the mood to shuck clothing at the earliest opportunity. And cool weather, of course, has a salutary effect on the nips. Whatever the reason, Dupont Circle and P Street (admittedly, both fertile ground for the display of the nipple) were awash in men who were nearly popping through their shirts.


I also noticed that the t-shirts and polos and whatevers that were so clingy on the pecs largely floated gracefully away from the abdomen. Normally, I would attribute this to the typical cut of a shirt, but among the DC proud nipple crowd, I'm pretty sure that if you got it, you flaunt it, so I'm guessing that a lot of these guys aren't quite into their summer abs yet. Not that I care about abs when there are perky nipples to be seen.


Our level of enjoyment with Studio Theatre has risen dramatically ever since we gave up eating at Logan Tavern (ick) and embraced Bua, the Thai restaurant with cute Thai waiters (who, alas, all wear two layers of shirts, so as to deny me the outline of their nipples) a few blocks farther west on P Street. Last night, I had the house special shrimp salad (delicious!) and the Penang Gai (delicious!). It being a cool but not cold night, they had the deck open, so we ate out there. I had a view of two Asian guys, probably in their thirties, who were looking at each other as if they were on a first date. A good first date. I was somewhat taken with their smiles, so it was a while before I noticed that neither of them was dressed for a date. So perhaps they were two IT nerds buddies just out for dinner. I like to think that they were two IT nerd buddies out on a successful first date, but the universe is rarely so generous.


We stopped at Starbucks for coffee, and one of the plush chairs there was occupied by a young(ish) man with a shaved head who had his laptop open to the craigslist m4m personals. He was also working his cellphone, and he was only a few doors down from Halo, so I can't help but think that he managed to get lucky one way or another before the night was through.


The Internationalist was terrific. It's a very funny play, and it was very well performed, and the mail lead, Tyler Pierce, has an amazingly tight, well-defined body, which, alas, was almost always fully clothed. I didn't care for the ending (which, I admit, I had hoped would include full nudity on Mr. Pierce's part), but it was a very funny and thoughtful piece of work.


As we walked back towards the Metro, we passed by Whole Foods, where two men were sitting at opposite sides of a sidewalk table having an animated, but not terribly loud, discussion. I only had a few moments to observe them as we walked by, but I am pretty sure that they are two guys who have been dating for a little while and are now, a day later, either no longer dating or fast approaching no longer dating after another night or two of acceptable but not outstanding sex. It was obvious from their tones and body language that each of them cared more about winning the argument than about a mutually favorable resolution. In another week, one of them will be talking about having broken up, and the other will be saying that they were never serious enough for it to be considered breaking up. In a sense, they'll both be right, but the latter point of view will be more right.


Back at Dupont Circle, we waited ten minutes for a train, which, when it arrived was crowded with either the early or late (but not the main) wave of people leaving the Nats game. As I stood, I couldn't help noticing that nipples were not much in evidence, but that a lot of the guys had really nice lips. I'm not even talking about Black or Hispanic or Asian guys -- whom you expect to have really nice lips -- but ordinary run-of-the-mill white guys. The country may be going to hell in a handbasket, but somebody's doing something right.


There were two guys standing on the train who later rushed to get a seat together, and they both had really nice lips, though they didn't gratify me by kissing each other. I'm not sure they were dating, though. They might have just been friends, and at least one of them was almost certainly on some sort of substance less legal than, say, alcohol.


Which is not to say that evidence of alcohol consumption was not bountiful. People were coming from a baseball game, after all. There was a whole gang of fratboy or pseudo-fratboy types who got off the subway with us at Bethesda, and one of them was so drunk that he stood backwards on the escalator and resisted all entreaties from his friends to beware the escalator's terminus. Fortunately, one of his compatriots, a particularly full-lipped (but black, so it's not like he was trying as hard) and tall young man, essentially carried his drunken friend off the escalator. Whereupon said drunken man (who had nice lips, but no ass whatsoever) insisted on hugging his friend no fewer than four times for "saving my life!"


I love the scent of barely concealed homoeroticism in the evening.