Gambas

Esas piernas, dignas de un arácnido, que nunca acaban de plegarse de tan largas.

Rosa Montero

Those legs, worthy of an aracnid, which never manage to unfold for being so long.

It is difficult in this 21st century and with its MeToo Movement to discuss (as a man) what a woman may look like to me (a man).

In one of my first shows many years ago which I shared with two other photographers (one was a woman) they featured female nudes that showed parts but no face. My nudes showed the faces. I remember that someone left a note that said, ”Thank you for the faces.”

In a trip to my native Buenos Aires some ten years ago (I have returned twice since) I told my nephew Georgito O’Reilly, a loving father who happens to play killer rugby and in his youth was a member of Argentina’s Pumas that I could not understand those toothpaste posters in the streets that featured beautiful Argentine women in bikinis. Ten years ago I was already part of that Canadian mentality in which men learn about feminism and steer away from calling women ladies or girls.

It was 50 years ago that I complained to my new Canadian wife, Rosemary, that I did not like how she fried eggs, sewed buttons or hemmed my jeans. Those who may be reading this would suspect that I learned to cook eggs, sew buttons and hem jeans, pronto.

My nephew could not understand my criticism of the toothpaste ads. His comment to me was something to do with me being gay.

Now that I have cleared the air, I cannot refrain from stating here that not only am I a neck man (in reference to the opposite sex) but also a leg man.

My admiration for female legs began with my admiring my mother’s. In those days when you went to airports and passengers deplaned on the tarmac (and particularly on the side not facing the airport window), I could always tell which one was my mother. She had splendid legs. I must add here that I inherited her legs and also a pair of lovely feet. My 75 year-old feet look decades younger.

In 1968 while teaching English in Mexico City I spotted a woman (from the back) leaving the school. She had long and straight blonde hair. She was slim and she was wearing a micro-mini skirt. Her legs were from here to there. That was Rosemary Healey whom I shortly married.

I am a leg man. Since then I can cite the legs of jazz dancer Viktoria Langton, Tarren Rae and that of Nena K.

The two latter women caused me to almost have an early meeting with death.

Of T I wrote here how the de Havilland Beaver I was on almost crashed into Cold Harbour.

Of Nena K I can state that while driving down West 16^th Avenue I spotted a woman with long and shapely legs, wearing a tight black dress with slits on the side. What made me swerve the car (not paying attention to the road) was more than the legs and the package accompanying it. What made me swerve is that the woman whom I saw from the rear was someone I knew well. I learned to dance the tango with that apparition of beauty.