reading is dead sexy

men who read are really sexy.

i was riding the bus this morning to work [shameful, i live only 1 mile from my building!] and spotted one of my favorite seattle sights:

a man reading.

i started to analyze - is this boy in front of me really sexy, or is it his book? i examined his face with my critical eye and decided he was not unattractive, but what really grabbed my attention was the pocket size Flannery O'Connor short stories [by a very notable publisher, i might add] in which he was engrossed...and the way he held and absorbed such a lovely piece of fiction. i stopped lusting after this 22 yr old and then sought to disprove my theory with more data...thereby imagining the men i know, dressing them up with a book (and a pipe, and crossed legs, and a watch-fobbed three-piece suit - okay i am thinking of val as doc holiday) and immediately thought of them as entirely sexy. (this was mildly disturbing).

there is something aloof and challenging in a man that is not distracted by my perfume or clicking heels...something beautiful about how the book grabs him from my womanly wiles. i am engrossed in him because he cares little about me.

is that fucked up?
(alas, i digress)

when i was a teenager fantasizing about how popular and sexy i was, i always imagined myself in a library, smartly dressed - showing a tantalizing but still subtle amount of leg, long hair in bun, glasses precariously teetering on my nose, and completely entertained by the big dusty book in front of me. everyone would be entraptured with how smart i was [because you can tell this by watching someone read] and i would own the universe of sexy.

i have grown out of this fantasy (somewhat. okay...fine, i admit to dreaming about the outfits i will wear as a bookstore owner), but my definition of sexy still remains:

smart

aloof

elegant

untouchable

disclaimer:
what you read in public makes/breaks this theory for me. if the youngling had been reading anything, well...let's just say..not of my taste, i would have foregone his sexiness and gone right back to working on mine...by opening my book.

my advise boys?
choose your books carefully. read in public. use it to pick up women.
after all, books are the new babies.

~mme. bookling