Why all married women deserve some flattery

I don’t know about you, but I go on vacation with a to-do list, and, in St. Kitts, my list included the following:

#1. Have sex every day.

#2. Buff my feet every day with one of this cheese grater looking instruments so I’m no longer embarrassed to wear sandals or allow people to see my bare feet.

#3. Wear a bikini for the first time since motherhood.

#4. Walk on the beach every morning. (That’s the topic of today’s blog).

#5. Read 4 books. Get a gold star if I read 5.

#6. Sleep a lot, nap a lot, relax a lot, and thoroughly enjoy myself a lot so I can return home rested and raring to go, with a greater connection to my husband.

Let’s talk about item #4. I know, you’re reading this and you’re muttering, “Hey, you said that today’s blog would be about why all married women need someone other than their husband to proposition them!” It is about that. Be patient. I’m getting there.

So, on Day #1, I woke at 7:30 a.m. I’m a morning person. This is sleeping in for me. Mr. Strong and Silent was snoring away. He had at least 2 more hours of sleeping in him, so I decided to tackle Goal #4 right away. I got up, got dressed, and headed to the beach for a walk.

I walked about 100 yards before I realized it was much hotter than I’d expected. I was the only person on the beach, so I took off my shirt, revealing the cami underneath. Although I was technically walking around in an undergarment, the thing kind of looks like a tank top. It could qualify as an official outer garment in a pinch, though, truth be told, the thing is somewhat see-through. If someone was standing somewhat close to me, that someone would have a good idea as it to the size and shape of my areola. But I was alone. I had the beach to myself. It didn’t matter. I could have been naked and no one would have been the wiser.

Or so I thought.

After walking for about 15 minutes, I noticed a man in the distance. He was standing on the edge of the water and he was wearing what appeared to be a European style bathing suit. He waded into the water until he was about waist deep. I felt his eyes on me. I thought, “Well of course he’s looking at me. I’m the only moving target on the beach at the moment. What else does he have to look at?” By now, I’d forgotten all about my top, by the way.

I got closer. He was splashing water onto his chest—which happened to be very well defined and completely free of hair. His face was radiant, too. His arms were taught with muscle. He looked like some sort of sexy love muffin from a porn flick, not that I would know about that sort of thing. He kept splashing water onto his chest, as if he were taking a bath in the ocean. He was preening.

“Is he trying to get my attention?” I wondered.

“No, that’s just silly,” I told myself. I walked by.

I reached the end of the beach and turned around. There he was again. Now he was standing by the water’s edge. I would have to walk past him to get to my hotel.

“Okay,” I told myself, “I can do this. He’s a porn star, not a serial killer.”

I approached. He looked up. He stared at me, and I mean stared, as if I were a contestant on American Idol and he were one of the judges. I looked at my feet.

As I walked by, he said something, but the wind was blowing and he had a Caribbean accent. It sounded like, “Yabba yabba yabba yabba, eh?”

I stopped. I turned to face him. I cupped my hand to my ear and said, “What?”

Again, I heard, “Yabba yabba yabba yabba, eh?”

Again, I said, “What?”

He walked toward me, and, as he did so, I allowed my eyes to give him an up and down, and, it was during this up and down that I realized he was not wearing a European style bathing suit. He was in tightie whities, except they were tightie blackies. I also suddenly realized that I, too, was technically dressed in my underwear.

Why hadn’t I just said, “Yes, Good Day,” or “Yah, Mon,” and kept on walking? Did I really and truly need to know what, “Yabba yabba yabba yabba, eh?” was supposed to mean?

He was about a foot away from me. He had a great view of my areola. He said, “The water is quite refreshing, eh? Would you like to go for a swim?”

I assumed he knew all about the wet T-shirt contests that are so popular at beach resorts in the States. I figured he was quite excited by the prospect of having his own personal show. I was also imagining the boom chicka boom music that would play in the background for the porn flick titled, “Married Woman on Second Honeymoon Does Caribbean Native While Husband Sleeps.” Or perhaps, more succinctly, “White Woman Does Rastafarian.” (Not that I would know anything about what porn music sounds like or about good titles for porn flicks.)

“I’m sorry, “ I said, “I’m just walking. No water for me.”

“No swim? It’s soooo nice. Are you sure?”

I thought, “I’m definitely sure,” but I just said, “Good Day,” and walked away.

Well, more accurately, I danced away. I sauntered away. I pranced away.

“He was hitting on me!” I told myself.

“Oh you’re crazy. You’re 38. No he wasn’t,” I said.

“Yes, he was!”

“Well it’s only because you were half naked,” I told myself.

“So what?” I shot back.

“Should I tell my husband?” I wondered.

“Oh, yeah,” I thought.

Now, this wasn’t the first time in recent memory that a man other than my husband had propositioned me. Not long ago at a local bar—the place where I first met my husband in fact—a very drunk man told me that he thought I was brilliant, in his words, “You keep saying everything I’m thinking before I think it.” A week later I went back to the same bar and the bartender told me, “You know, you could have easily gone home with that guy last week.” I said, “I know, but you know I never would have, right?” He said, “Uh, yeah.”

Many months before that, I was walking on a sidewalk in New York City when a man said something to me that I couldn’t quite make out. (This people talking to me and me not being able to figure out what they are saying happens to me quite a bit. This is despite the fact that my ear, nose and throat doctor thinks I have bionic hearing.) I turned and said, “What?” He said something again. I still couldn’t hear him, but now that I was facing him I could see that he was rather odd looking. He was about a foot and a half taller than me and about 100 or so pounds heavier. He had a big barrel chest and a huge tuft of blond chest hair spilling out of the top of his shirt. He was also wearing some sort of large, round, golf medallion.

He walked closer and said, “I couldn’t help but notice that you’re a very beautiful woman. Then you ran your fingers through your hair, and I just thought how beautiful you are. Are you Greek?”

“No.”

“Italian?”

“No.”

“Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to have a beer with me?” Something about him made me think he was the type of person who would slip me a roofie, toss me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, lug me back to his apartment, cut me up into little pieces, and feed me to his pet boa constrictor. Why did he care about my ethnicity anyway? Was he an Aryan who was trying to exterminate all of the Earth’s brown and olive people?

“I’m very flattered,” I told him. “I’m also married.”

And truth be told, I was flattered. I am extremely flattered every single time a man looks my way, smiles in my direction, or talks to me. This is the case even though I wouldn’t be caught dead in bed with most of these men–even if I were single. And that’s true for my Kittian porn God, too. I wouldn’t have gone swimming with him even if I wasn’t married and on my second honeymoon. What can I say? Men with huge well-defined pecs have never turned me on.

Yet, I loved that he wanted to go swimming with me so he could get a better look at my areola. I just loved it. I did.

Could the interplay between men doing the propositioning and woman doing the blushing be genetic? Is my reaction to it somewhat out of my control? After all, I’m a self-help veteran. I know all about finding my self-esteem from the inside. I’m all for not needing others to validate my worth. I’m a strong believer in feeling good about things that actually matter, such as my family, my career, and my friends. Still, I have to say, it feels phenomenal when a man is interested in me just because he likes the way I look. Call me shallow. Call me vain, but when a man – any man– hits on me, you know what I call myself? Happy.

And so, very happily, I marched back to my hotel room and told my husband, “You’ll never believe what happened to me on the beach this morning.”

You want to know what he said?

“Wow, that would make a great blog.”