Dear Woman Who Jogs on San Vicente

Dear Woman Who Jogs Every Afternoon on San Vicente in Brentwood:

For months now, without fail, whenever I'm on the stretch of San Vicente between Bundy and Ocean, there you are; weekends, weekdays, West LA-ocean effect-partial cloud-cover or shine.

Your sunglassed appearance is, frankly, a little freakish; your fried, bleached hair is gathered together and held in place by a mammoth black clip, the likes of which I couldn't fathom having affixed to my person while attempting to engage in any kind of exercise. Your wardrobe is a throwback to the 80s; your brightly colored, skin-tight shorts' rise a little too high, your pantyline disarmingly intimate for a family neighborhood. Rather then blending into the parade of runners moving up and down the grass boulevard divider, you choose to run on the street, your stride unlike any I've ever seen, your arms and legs unnaturally forced away from your body, look like they're working against physics. You move in an exaggerated, running goose-step, as if you're permanently attached to an invisible Nordic-Track, not unlike an aggressive robot with a yeast infection.

In my head, you're Cassandra, or Victoria or Tracy-Ann; but who are you, really? A Jane Fonda wannabe? A cast-off B-movie actress from back in the day? A once-promiscuous former Heidi Fleiss escort? All three? Or in the words of Dominick Dunne in Another City, Not My Own simply "One of those women who goes jogging on San Vicente?" Or are you just an aging trophy wife invested in in the late 1980s as Los Angeles crested its wave, heyday squarely in the rearview along with its days of evenly surfaced streets.

And though I wish you'd invest in some new workout gear, too familiar as I am with your dangerous flirtation with a camel toe situation, I admire your consistency; your tenacity in maintaining your health, your general level of fitness. Your body is thin and lithe, and while on a woman meandering up the front walk of 60 this isn't always a great look, your thighs are less flabby than that of the average woman of any age, your years of uniformly-paced NordicTracking back and forth from Brentwood to Santa Monica are certainly paying off.

Do you enjoy the running? Or is it a daily chore. a burdensome nuisance that you stick with for fear of total atrophy, both mental and physical? A safeguard from old age, a willful incubation from the cracked roads and cracked faces of your surroundings?

Perhaps, though, you're happy. Perhaps your husband, paunchy and bald, a lawyer or a retired agent, dressed in a faded Missoni sweater, takes you out for dinner on Saturday nights. Perhaps he's hung onto the SL he had in the 80s, and maybe, as you drive into Beverly Hills to Spago or The Polo Lounge for an overpriced steak, he puts the top down. Perhaps as you thunder down Sunset, he reaches his hand across the fussily teutonic center console and puts his hand on your thigh, feeling, beneath the layers of cellulite, the firm muscles in your legs that you've worked to cultivate, for an hour a day, for years. Perhaps he gives it a squeeze, and smiles at you. Perhaps that's a reason, among others, you never miss a day.

So, see you next Saturday, when we will invariably pass between 26th and 14th streets. And while I'm grateful to you for being so consistent a touchstone in my week, please, do a civic-minded favor, and treat yourself to some new shorts.

Best regards,
Dear Crabby