A simple gesture of Femininity

Going to a good friend's party, I had, as usual, I mistimed my departure and arrived unfashionably early to my hostess, who, delighted, greeted me, kissed me on either cheek and ran off again to get ready.

Having come straight from a day of rowing, sun, dehydration and post-award ceremony drinking, I was in my dirty training gear, and had only managed to purchase a six-pack of stella from the off-license down the road before arriving at her house. I probably smelled like the Thames, though thankfully my memory fails me. Knowing that the attendants were mostly students, I assumed that I wouldn't be too out of place and that excuses would easily be made, none would care.

I was wrong.

Not long after arriving, I was immediately contrasted against a couple. a boy and girl in their late twenties, who were dressed as though for a dinner party, brought with them a bottle of wine and even a bouquet of flowers. My feeling of awkwardness grew as they settled at the table with a bottle of red wine and I stood by the counter in my hoody, a lukewarm stella in one hand.

I began to make hasty excuses about coming straight from rowing, and my completely unplanned state of drunkenness, and my general lack of anything resembling class and sophistication, but I was distracted and noticed out of the corner of my eye my friend, the hostess, rummaging for a vase and clucking away with the female of the pair.

Deftly, she moved (no, perhaps hovered, or floated?) around the kitchen and placed a small glass vase next to the sink.

Next, she unfurled the bouquet and started picking up each flower in turn, holding it upside down against the vase and cutting each stem to suit; with movements as fluid and natural as an old tailor. Each flower was planted in the vase, arranged by colour and height, and then given a brisk tussle to bring out the petals before her hands deftly moved to the next. Purple flowers which had looked cheap and tacky in their cellophane wrapping suddenly looked exotic and regal; as the entire foliage finished and presented itself.

I grew quiet then, this simple gesture betraying a simple elegance and beauty I never knew her to possess. Standing there, arranging the flowers, an aura of femininity grew around her; something which I rarely see in women and behold in quiet awe when I do. Though she is not someone I'm attracted to per say, she looked positively beautiful at that moment, with the purple flowers contrasting with her freshly dyed crimson hair.

She was completely oblivious, and if anyone else noticed what I had just seen they didn't show it. I would have loved to tell her so, but I kept quiet and sipped my tin of stella, as a ragg'd and miserable pauper, in my ditch of classlessness and putrid social ineptitude.