Enjoying bottoms

I just had to swiftly tell you about something that happened the other Morning.
Arriving at Paddington Station I stood to join the queue to get off the train and noticed two ladies in the seats on either side, waiting.
The lady on the left got eye contact with me first and did the eyebrow wiggle. Quite rightly she had elected not to try and actually start a conversation with me and saying “excuse me” or “can I get out please” counts as practically a full blown relationship in British commuting. The eyebrow wiggle was more than sufficient to relay her desire to step out in front of me.
I wasn’t in too big a rush, and I felt like being a gentleman (also she had nice eyebrows) so I beckoned her out with a warm and hearty wave of my hand.
Before this lady had time to move forward more than a pace I noticed the other lady frantically wiggling her brows at me too and had in fact moved on to stage two, and was nodding her head in the direction of the exit at the same time. Clearly she was in a rush.
I felt it would raise too many questions and discomfort about the grooming of her facial hair if I blocked her, and so I gave her my now customary flourish to beckon her out.
This was a mistake.
Genuinely without meaning it, my beckoning wave finished by me patting the first lady on her bum.
I patted a stranger’s arse on the train!
Thank God it was a lady or I could have been in a lot of trouble.
As I realised I’d done this I burst out laughing. What else could I do? I wasn’t sure she had noticed so I didn’t now want to tap her on the shoulder and point it out, maybe I should have patted the other cheek and then complimented her firmness. Perhaps if I’d said her gluteus maximus was bearing up well, she would have thought I was a doctor and relaxed a little.
Laughing did not help.
The point of realisation and bursting out laughing coincided precisely with the 2nd lady stepping out towards me. She immediately threw me a look of horror and demanded to know (her voice was not one of concern) if I was “alright”. She gingerly stepped out in front of me but kept turning and frowning at me accusingly.
My head immediately tried to work out why she was so sore, and threw two options straight back at me.
Option 1: She had seen the pat and then watched as I congratulated my lecherous achievement with a heartily smug laugh. Knowing that I’d then also asked her to come and stand before me and be judged, would explain her demeanour; especially when she then went without. You can imagine a particularly self conscious woman being gutted to discover that her backside was not nice enough to felt up by some fat perv on the train, she would be looking down at the woman in front to try and work out what was so special about hers!
Option 2: Even worse. I decided that in fact the more likely option (knowing my history at putting my foot in my mouth) was that in fact what I had not seen was her robotic hand. Or some massive facial disfigurement or dramatic eyebrow tic. I just knew that she would have a conjoined twin stuck to the side of her that I had not yet seen. From her point of view as soon as she had stepped out towards me I had started laughing. AT HER! I was clearly, blatantly mocking her mastectomy scars. My imagination can be quite cruel to me sometimes.
Of course, thinking that I’d managed to commit every social faux pas in the book, just made me crease up laughing. I couldn’t stop. I had tears coming down my cheeks as the queue desperately tried to open the doors and get away from me. I had a major attack of the giggles, made more intense by the absolute farcical innocence of the moment. I’d genuinely been trying to be nice.



I am rubbish.