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Interior Life of an Estate Agent - part 23

Hot Bodies

The heat is intense today. My car is blue with a black interior and the sun on the metal is fierce and punishing. Even with the window open there is no relief. The sunroof has to stay closed because the ferocity of the burning sun is beyond bearing.

I’m showing a friendly, chatty elderly couple round a bungalow in suburban bungalow-land where there is no sound but the churning of some piece of workman’s equipment nearby. I stay with the plot all round the house, answering questions, being helpful, making suggestions, until we come to the front bedroom and I turn to admire the view.

Across the road are two workmen on the flat roof of a garage. One of them is facing us, wearing a baseball cap and bent slightly forward. All I can see is his perfect flat stomach; so flat that, as he bends, there are neat creases in the brown skin, as neat as pencil lines. He has not an ounce of fat covering his slim, naked upper body and trickles of sweat make tracks through the dirt on their way down to the waistband of his jeans. He stoops and straightens, rolling out pieces of asphalt, while next to him a vat of thick, black tar bubbles in the blistering heat. As he stands up and turns away he displays his divinely triangular shape, his broad shoulders tapering to tiny hips.

The couple are speaking to me. I am somewhere else completely. I have to return to the room, to my job, to the reality that across the road is an uneducated piece of meat labouring away over a stinking vat of tar and some nasty, scratchy asphalt.

But, nevertheless, all Cornish boys seem to be made in triangles; they’re really cute. The danger in these momentary distractions comes when I’m driving, each time I pass semi-clothed young men on beachside roads as they’re pulling their wetsuits on or off, standing butt naked and unconcerned beside their cars.

They’re doing all women a favour. A girlfriend and I look forward to the day we can join all those other elderly ladies sitting dreamily on the beaches, looking innocent, when really they’re admiring the form.

Lads, you are delightful; if you’ve got it, flaunt it. It’s only harmless window shopping after all.
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