Every few weeks I get together with a few of my boisterous, out-of-control friends and take the mini-van to a local pizza joint where we can OD on Coke Zero and ogle the far-too-young and tasty serving wenches as they lean purposely over the table to deliver a Green Goddess side-salad and accidentally clench their butt cheeks in an enticing way.
But the truth be known, the young women serving the tables are doing nothing extraordinary and their shorts are no more revealing that my shorts … they just reveal something I vaguely remember lusting after in my salad days. They are not advertising their bodies; I am just a cliché: the quintessential dirty old man.
Still, one of the old codgers at the table turns to watch our server walk away and announces for all to hear: “What a nice ass!”
Now our server could have returned and slapped this old galoot hard enough to shake his dentures out of alignment, or she could have bent forward touching the floor and winked at theguy between her legs for all to see … but being a woman who is probably inured to the stupidity of male hominoids, she just continued walking and put in our dinner order before returning with the frosty colas.
Being old and held blameless for our outburst of impending senility, we all walked out of the pizza palace with basil between our teeth, anchovies on our breath, dry Depends, and clear consciences. But later that evening I was watching an adult scene on the cable (it was a movie on HBO) and as the woman’s robe dropped to the floor, all I could think of was, “Nice Ass.”
Later, sitting at my desk, the last vestiges of critical thinking made me pause mid-strum on my ukulele and consider, what constitutes a nice ass? Is it the shape or the size or the jiggle or the tan or the lack of pimples or colorful tattoos … big and round and soft and cushy or firm and curvy without blemish or tattoo?
Despite my always being aware of sexism and how the lesser sex is always trying to maintain their dominance over women, I do remember all that biology they taught us in school: secondary sexual characteristics and exotic mating dances in the animal kingdom. I realize the argument is that as humans we have evolved beyond the other animals and no longer require the effects of bright feathers, turquoise bums, irresistible pheromones, or a fancy nest in the nearest bush, and where we live, men and women are equals.
That, of course, is just a fantasy: men and women may be equals but they are not the same (otherwise they would share pregnancy). So there definitely are certain biological differences between men and women, and as far as emphasizing secondary sexual characteristics, it’s true that few women today insert large plates under their lips or thrust evil looking bones through their noses, but some do; moreover, women wear cosmetics, perfumes, padding, revealing clothing, high heels, jewelry, tattoos, and whatever else they can put into use to … well, to do what?
I wonder what the women reading this weblog think when they hear someone, even a smelly old person with red white and blue suspenders and an I Like Ike button, compliment their ass? Should the male admirer not notice or not say anything?
About forty years ago I stood on a street corner in Newark, New Jersey, and waited for the light to change alongside a very nice looking woman in a see-through blouse. Hey, I looked … and she in a very surly manner demanded to know what I was looking at. Now this greatly disturbed my Vulcan sensibilities and I responded in firm but unquestionable logic that if she was wearing a see-through blouse, she was expecting me to look and I didn’t want to insult her by not looking.
I still believe this: we all do things that are expected to elicit a response and we should be honest enough to acknowledge that fact. The woman on the corner may have truly been embarrassed, but it wasn’t because I was admiring her breasts, it was because she was too vain not to wear that blouse and at the same time too shy to actually wear it.
I have to admit that, with only a few drops of lusting hormones left in my body, I occasionally fix my attention on a female secondary sexual characteristic (or two) but when all those youthful hormones have stopped boiling and been put to rest, even the best ass in the world is no match for a nice smile, expressive eyes, and the strength of confidence a real woman enjoys.
Then again …
A Celebration of Reading 