I am inactively husband hunting. I know that’s a oxymoron and I am even more impressed by you if you knew it was as well, however that is what I am doing. I enjoy the hunt. The stalking, the chase, the looking and the making up stories, it’s fun and it’s safe. There is no danger of me getting hurt and there is absolutley no chance of any kind of relationship evolution. But that is where it stops. I suppose it’s not really hunting, it’s more watching from the back of the truck. You see I lack skills in the second phase of the hunt. My approach is about as honed as a three legged elephant trying to approach a meerkat. Quietly.
Unlike other areas of my self awareness, I know this about myself. I know that my approach lacks subtlety and I know that when I do approach its more labrador than any other kind of animal that’s been used in a sexy analogy. It’s not that people don’t love labradors, they do, but nobody wants to do anything but pat them on the head and leave their lovable, goofiness to someone else. It also works the other way. You see I can’t tell when I am being hunted either. In fact, if I’m honest, I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve realised it’s happened and even then it got to a point of blatant obviousness that even a blind and deaf woman couldn’t miss.
In my twenties, getting laid wasn’t easy. Getting laid has never been easy for me. In my twenties I got drunk a lot and hoped that someone with a penis would just so happen to fall my way. And even then I was so bad at the hunt that it took one to be taken out of it’s fabric house and waved in front of me before I realised that ‘Oh, you want to use that with me!’ would wash across my face in a wave of incredulity and disbelief. In my thirties it’s just gotten worse. I get less drunk less often so the chances of such realisations have been greatly diminished.
I no longer go out at weekends with my single friends, drinking and dancing, with the thin veiled illusion that we were just out for each other and having a good time. I go out on the weekend for dinner, wine and a cab home before midnight because I’m too old and tired and lacking the right wardrobe to do the former. And here’s a surprise, there aren’t any men willing to open the doors to their downstairs fabric houses sitting in tables adjacent to mine at any of the Brisbane restaurants I’ve been frequenting. So here’s the dilemma. I either have to learn how to hunt and be hunted or find some twenty year old friends who can give me a makeover. (They would film the makeover you know and turn it into my very own makeover montage complete with a soundtrack from an obscure band I didn’t know)
Up until now I’ve been enjoying phase one of the hunt from the truck. Today I found five candidates, took sneaky photos of them, invented lives for them and posted them on my facebook page. Their captions were not based in reality and I have no idea if number two sings country songs in his spare time but in my not so subtle approach, it’s best to stick to the skills I actually have; fiction. This brings us to number five. He was cute, alone and inappropriately dressed for the setting. He was the only real contender of the day as he lacked a front face mullet, flannelette, a full back mullet and neck rolls. He was age appropriate and it seemed, from my seat on the grandstand, normalish. As I studied him and worked out if I was ever really going to stand up and talk to him (the answer is probably not), my first instinct was not one of crazy hot lust. The poor man had shorts and thongs on and all I could think about was finding him a pair of socks.
A loved one on fb even went as far as to ask if I had a new euphamism for ‘I want jump on you’ and thought socks was my new key word. While it’s not, I couldn’t help but think how much easier my 20s would have been and the rest of my 30s would be if I could just give a man I thought I’d like to have sex with, a pair of socks. All of that awkwardness and does he/doesn’t he would just disappear. What if I didn’t have to do all that and all I had to do was hand someone I think I would like to see nude a pair of socks? I would carry around three or four pairs in my bag at any one time and go handing them out willy nilly in daily interactions. It would give the term bus slut a whole new meaning and one I wouldn’t be ashamed of carrying.
If my life really was the African savannah, I wouldn’t be an elephant or a meerkat. Or any other animal that’s capable of feeding and foraging for itself. I’d be Pumba. The warthog. Everybody loves him but nobody wants to stand down wind. But if Pumba and I both carried around pairs of socks to give to the other animals we liked the look of, I can’t help but think both of our beds would have seen more action. So that’s it. I’m too old to learn to hunt (my eyesight is failing and I’d miss the target), I’m too slow to be hunted (I’d invite the hunter out for a cup of tea or a wine and then hook him up with the cute girl at the table next to us) and I don’t know any twenty year olds I haven’t taught. So I’m going with socks. I’m going to carry them and think about handing them out. And then one day, when I find someone looking cold, I’ll be able to give them some (… and hopefully get some). Easy.
life in big frilly knickers 