A Tale of Two Women

I had to go show an office space my company owns to a prospective tenant this week. Immediately before I showed the space, I went to the office next door to talk to them about keys, janitorial service, etc.

The woman I talked to was named "Shasta". She was 28ish and drop dead gorgeous (if you are into a Barbie kind of good looks)--every one of her features was flawless. She had a picture of a 3 yr old boy on her desk. If the boy wasn't her son, he looked a heck of a lot like her. After talking to her for 10 minutes I got the strong feling she was single--I'm not quite sure why I got that impression so strongly, but the missing wedding ring was only a part of it.

20 minutes later Catherine, the prospective tenant, shows up. She's 55ish and scary looking. She was attractive from about 15 feet away, but when you got up close you could tell she'd had a lot of cosmetic surgery. She looked good if you were into a Michael Jackson/alien sort of look. She kept calling me "honey" and "sweetie" and touching me at every opportunity. I guarantee you that I could have asked this woman I had just met to have a drink with me later and ended up in bed with her. It was just tragic. Through her plastic shell she was exuding loneliness and brokenness and was looking for love in all the wrong places. I got out of there as quickly as I could.

It wasn't until I was driving home that I realized that Catherine and Shasta were the same woman. I would bet anything that the main thing separating them was thirty years. Shasta didn't flirt desperately, but that's because she could turn heads at the drop of a hat. Give her 30 more years of loneliness and she will probably call men "sweety" in a strained attempt to get whatever attention she can.

The American idols of sex and good looks are hell on women.