THE LOOK ON HER FACE SAID IT ALL

So there's this bar-and-grill restaurant in my neighborhood that's a terrific place to hang out. Upscale modern decor, great friendly staff. A little on the pricey side, but happy hour is great, especially on Fridays. Lately I've been visiting a couple of times a month to hang out at the bar for a couple of hours, and munch on a $7 quesadilla, or a $12 burger if I'm really hungry. And I've definitely become all too fond of those $5 Friday Happy Hour Maitais, which are actually better than most of the ones I've had in Las Vegas.

The crowd is always lively and friendly and I usually end up having an interesting conversation with somebody. The other night was a particularly interesting case in point.

Now, I have to preface this story with a couple of points of digression. The lead bartender at "The Grill" is a guy who used to work in HR at a large company in California, and he has so much familiarity with the software I'm currently working with that it's downright scary. So of course he's naturally become a sounding board for my tales of horror and woe.

In addition, the bar is set up in the middle of the restaurant, with two counters facing toward each other, and with the well, where the bartenders work, in the middle. The counter on one side has high chairs, and the floor level at the counter on the other side is a couple of steps higher, so it has these two-seater settees that are clearly designed for couples. I always pull up to a spot on the "chair" side, usually right in the middle, where I get to see the flat panel TV and watch the bartenders mixing their custom cocktails.

On this particular evening, it was hard to not notice the couple sitting directly across from me. The guy was about my age, and except for the fact that he had hair, he wasn't really any better looking than I was, in fact he had what appeared to be acne scars. He wasn't exactly ugly, but definitely not handsome.

The woman with him seemed really beautiful, at least at first. I was trying not to look real hard because it would have been rude. But as I was flipping through my newspaper it became hard to not notice how hot she was, since they were sitting directly across from me.

I didn't even really have that good a view of her, since she was turned to her side facing the guy most of the time. And it wasn't until she looked away from him for a moment to get something in her purse that I realized that she wasn't actually that beautiful at all. She was really just an average looking 40-year-old woman. Not fat or ugly by any means, but not exactly TV Weather Girl material either.

Now it was right about this time that another 40-ish woman came in and took the chair right next to me. She appeared to be a little on the weighty side, but she was definitely well-groomed and looked like she had just gotten off work. So she orders a glass of wine and asks the bartender when the USC game is going to be on, and, as I'm usually wont to do when I'm hanging out at The Grill, I strike up a conversation with her. CBS was right in the middle of March Madness, so of course I had to ask Gary (our bartender dude), if UNLV was still in it and when they would be on, and this eventually launched my bar neighbor and I into a discussion about the remaining teams in the tournament, about which I actually knew or cared nothing. It was really just a vehicle for striking up a friendly conversation.

Turns out she went to USC, and our bartender Gary went to UCLA, so they were both keeping tabs on how well their teams were doing. Turned out she actually knew more about basketball and the NCAA than lots of guys I know. And of course she was really rooting for USC to win and UCLA to lose. As I began to converse with her, I got the clear impression that she was actually more masculine in temperament than a lot of guys I know.

But what really stood out about her was the expression on her face when she looked at me. Regardless of whether she or I was the person speaking, she consistently had this furrowed-brow, unsmiling, "who-the-hell-are-you-you-little-worm" expression which pretty much told the whole story of what was really going on with her.

And it wasn't like I was being rude or boorish either. In fact, I had my most open, friendly, engaging attitude, on full display, the entire time. But it was almost as if I had put her off by having the audacity to speak to her at all in the first place. She was literally looking at me as though I was an errant employee who had been called into her office for some kind of disciplinary action.

Which kind of brings us, in a roundabout way, back to the woman that was sitting across from us. Because it was at some point during the discussion with my neighbor that I began to realize what it was that was making that woman across from me appear so attractive: it was the unmistakable and conspicuously sexy way she was looking at the guy.

So there wasn't anything about her natural physical appearance that made her so attractive. It was that my-god-I-can't-wait-to-rip-your-clothes-off-and-suck-your-cock expression on her face that made her appear so hot that I literally couldn't take my eyes off her. And the contrast between that expression, and the expression my neighbor had on her face, could not have been more striking.

Now at a younger age, I might have taken an experience like this really personally and really hard. But the wisdom of advancing years has taught me that in this particular instance, the problem wasn't on my side. And it wasn't as if I was expecting her to look at me the way that other woman was looking at that other guy. After all, we had just met and I we didn't even know each other's names. But it certainly wouldn't have broken her face to crack a smile.

Although I did notice that her expression seemed to brighten considerably when was speaking to Gary, our bartender, with whom she seemed to have already established a general rapport, but who wasn't particularly better looking than I was, even though he was younger than both of us, and who was also conspicuously married, and who was, after all, not exactly a corporate manager, or a lawyer...or a database programmer...or anything like that...

But I eventually realized that there was probably another explanation for this woman's demeanor, which had almost nothing to do with me, and almost everything to do with her. She clearly wasn't married, in fact she probably didn't have a man in her life at all. After all, if she was attached, she certainly would have made a point of mentioning it in some way, as other women I've talked to at bars have done (and which I actually appreciate; in fact, some of the husbands and boyfriends I've met have turned out to be pretty decent people too...just one more reason why The Grill is such a great place to hang out).

And she obviously wasn't the single working mom type either, because single working moms aren't spending Happy Hour hanging out at the The Grill at 6:30 on a Friday night. And I don't think she was a lesbian either: her girlfriend never showed up, and her cell phone didn't ring once during the entire two hours, so she never called. And besides, if this lady was gay, she wouldn't have been hanging out at The Grill, she would have been across town at The Flame.

No, the most likely explanation was that this woman was the end product of 30 years of post-modern feminism, convinced that she really didn't need a man in her life to be successful and happy. She had the demeanor of a woman who'd never met a man who was quite good enough for her. It's the only theory that explains a 40-ish woman showing up by herself at a bar on a Friday, having just come from the office, with a disposition and temperament that was more masculine than lots of guys I know, and looking at a perfectly decent looking man, in her age range, sitting right next to her and talking to her in a friendly outgoing manner, as though he were something she had just stepped in.

If I'd ever met a woman who could have used a real good hard fucking, she was it. And if she'd given the slightest indication that she was interested in that at all, it could have been hers for the asking. I guess Mr. Perfect never came along to sweep her off her feet. Evidently she didn't get the memo that Prince Charming was gay. Too bad, her loss.

Hope she's happy with her cat collection.

And PS, USC lost and UCLA won. Probably spoiled her whole weekend.