The Young Ones

I would stutter, slide away, say something crass or funny and push my, then considered, much more attractive friends in front of the crossfire.  Needless to say in my fifteen years of dating life, I am finding it hard to think of too many occassions where some man that I was either unrequitingly in love with or involving myself with in some way, shape or form was actually older than I was.  While some were close in age and maybe even one or two born in the years directly before me these are not the ones in my significant memory of the wants, needs and lusts of my love life.  This then bares the question what is it about the young ones that makes them so damn pretty?

Out Friday night for a wine (or few) with a friend, we ended our night with a cup of tea at 3 Monkeys.  I almost groan audibly at that statement.  At the age of 32 I am finishing my social outings with a cup of tea.  A night out with another single and I prefer a square of Turkish delight and a pot of Russian Caravan rather than a fourth tequila shot that would be sure to see my shoes off and my skirt missing.   But regardless that is what happened.  Seated in the corner with my back to the wall and view to the door, I consoled myself that at least I could see people come and go.  That I could sit and safely make judgements about others who ended their Friday’s at a rug beaten coffee shop in West end. 

Sitting and whiling away the last hour of my friday night we discussed the week, the upcoming events, personal dating tragedies and strategies for future dating catastrophes.  Mid sentence and half turn with the teaspoon in my tea cup my jaw must have physically dropped.  ‘Fuck me’ came out of my mouth in some version of a gutteral growl.  ‘Ah, what?’  My friend asked slightly concerned.  My reply wasn’t eloquent, thought out or probably even coherent.  ‘I said, fuck me did you see that?’ She spun quickly towards the door and followed with frantic cries of ‘What?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Who is it?’  Still in a state of stupor I couldn’t reply. I just nodded my head towards the offending entrant and muttered the simple word, ‘thighs.’

He was quite possibly one of the hottest men I’ve ever seen in the flesh.  Hollywood hot.  He had on a pressed linen suit in that natural colour that only people in Ralph Lauren ads seem to wear.  It was tight across his rear and when he put his hands in his pockets, the linen pulled tight across his thighs and again I was rendered stupid.  It wasn’t until we both snapped back to reality that we noticed we were probably staring, drooling or still stirring tea that had otherwise been stirred for the last four minutes.  When we both chanced a look at his face it was clear he was ticking a box on surveys that was different to ours.  He was young.  His face was still smooth without a single wrinkle and the firmness of his skin had never seen the paunch of a beginning beer gut or been blessed to come in contact with a stretch mark.

At no point in the next ten mintues of discussion about the power of that man’s/boy’s thighs was there any discussion about his brain, his intellect or his worldly experience.  What we saw was quite purely primal.  It was nothing but his thighs.  All the rest we had immediately deemed irrelevant.  I know this is judgemental and shallow.  I know it’s sexist and exploitative but it was about nothing more than that goose bumpy feeling you get in the middle, on the inside, way down low where there is absolutley no choice about your body’s response.  Here I was, 32, having a biological reaction to man probably ten years my junior.  

I was just looking.  I didn’t want to marry him, in fact I didn’t even want to talk to him.  I was more than happy just to appreciate the man’s visceral talents and move on with my life.  If only that’s where my responses to the juniors ended.  I am doing my best to work out if it’s my maturity level that is the problem or if it’s just the lure of wanting something that I probably shouldn’t have.  I tend to think it’s the latter.  

I always want what I can’t have and there is something purely pleasurable about the idea that I could corrupt a soul rather than nurture one.  That I could pluck the soul of one of these young men who have no idea what affect they have on a grown woman and use him like a dishrag.  Be more than those waif women who don’t even know how to use their own ‘dome’ and show them what can actually happen when things are done with a little bit of vigour and a whole lot of ‘who gives a shit.’  Well that’s how my internal monologue runs but true to form, my utterances at the younger more virile species of man still sound like the crass, uncouth jokes and interventions of my youngerself at the older more mature ones.  

I do often wonder when I will sort it out.  When the day will finally arrive that I can speak to a man that doesn’t end in cofound confusion or me throwing other women directly in the path of oncoming man traffic.  I do assure myself on regular occassions that it will happen of its own accord.  That one day I will just know what to say and the man in front will fall into the puddle of malleable sex that I so want him to be.  Either that or maybe one day some man will find my lack of prowess charming and delightful.  Until such time I am destined to lust after inappropriate men.  We may still both watch cartoons, laugh at crude stories and find practical fart jokes hilarious but apparently that does not give me social permission to undress them.  But who knows… if I can get it done in an unsocial setting, how will anyone ever know whose soul I have corrupted?  However analysing my strike rate, I think I might be destined for my vagina crush to stay just that.  A secret, distant crush.  It’s probably for the best.