I’m wondering if anyone has any information / observations / ideas to help me put this kind of event into a useful model.
First, a qualification – I realize that there is no way to be certain that events of this class are nothing more than coincidence, and I accept the possibility this is just a result of my over-active (paranoid) imagining.*
Now that the weather is colder here in Chicago, each week I ride a bus from Union Station to my lodging about five miles north. The route passes all along the Michigan Avenue shopping district and through Lincoln Park along the lakefront. On this particular route, a significant number of the riders are well-heeled, well-styled ladies bringing their finds from Neiman Marcus etc. home to the condo with lake view.
I was in the middle of a “sensory expansion” exercise – pushing my peripheral vision, attending to background sound, and letting my feeling awareness occupy the entire volume of the inside of the bus. (Hey, it’s not a cosmological meditation, but it’s enough that I like the shift in consciousness.) At that point, a posse of four or five women sat down nearby, and I shifted my attention to one of them – painted her visually from head to toe, then leisurely back up from toe to head. It was a flirtatious gesture – not quite as “wanton” as undressing her with my eyes, but sensual.
At which point, apropos of nothing, one of her comrades says “He has a good eye.”
Now, I had been listening to the background sound on the bus (which I don’t normally attend to) and as far as I can tell, her friend’s comment was either a non-sequitur, or, it was a comment d’innuendo which I wasn’t supposed to realize was referring to me.
I made it a point not to let the comment distract me from finishing my eye flirtation, but I ended noticing that the lady I’d been looking at was looking at her friend, and her friend was looking at both her and I.
So, do you have experience with women (all women, or just groups of friends with history?) do this kind of thing in flirting situations? I’m not aware of guys doing this kind of social narration (e.g., “And then he turned the headlights on” as a way of noticing that a girl has bent forward showing some cleavage.)
I do realize that there is some chance this was pure coincidence, but it happens often enough that I don’t think so.
Or, of course, I could just be delusional 