The Boy Who Loved Pretty Women
Was He Born That Way, or Brainwashed by a Sexist, Patriarchal Society?
Ok. You got me. I’m a hound dog.
Yes, my lovely women colleagues. I did ask you to lunch because I find you attractive. And yes. You did observe me losing eye contact with you because some other beautiful creature walking down the aisle of the company cafeteria caught my attention.
And yes. It has always been thus. For as long as I can remember.
Maybe not as far back as kindergarten, when my first teacher, Mrs. Glacken, was an old hag. Nor in first grade, when Miss Rupertsberger was a quintessential 1950s spinster school marm who always scolded me for looking at the clock to see how much time was left before the bell rang to end the day.
But in second grade, when miss Claypool strode into the room, all 5-foot-10-inches of her, towering above 6 feet tall in her high heels, her soft, shoulder-length brown hair framing big, dark eyes, prominent check bones, a perfect nose and full lips — well, you get the picture. Seven-year-old me was smitten.
Meaning what, exactly? I ask myself today. I was 7 years old, for Pete’s sake. I wouldn’t know what to do with her if I had her. I’d be like the dog who caught the car.
Toxic Pre-Pubescent Masculinity, Perhaps? And maybe that was the problem. I developed a terrible tendency to act out against my babysitters and pretty teachers, perhaps because something I didn’t yet understand caused me to desire them without knowing what it was I wanted.
Once I pulled my pocket knife out on a cute teenage girl my parents hired to babysit for me. All I remember is that she was pretty, and when she started to boss me around, I pulled my knife on her. I never intended to hurt her. Wouldn’t dare. And I guess she knew that, because she didn’t tell my parents. I really dodged a bullet that time.
But not the next. Miss Flicker, my fifth-grade teacher, was in her early- to mid-20s and blessed with striking blonde hair, a cover girl’s face and a perfectly proportioned body, all packaged in a feisty, assertive personality that banged all my little boy’s buttons like mallets on a timpani. She used to have to pass our house on her drive home from school in the afternoon. So one day I waited for her, picked up a fistful of gravel from our driveway and pretended to throw it at her windshield as her car was approaching.
She slammed on the brakes, barely averting veering off the road and crashing into a mail box. Then, she gathered herself, pulled into our driveway, grabbed me by the collar and dragged me to our front door, pounding on it until my mother answered. I don’t recall what the punishment was, but it was no picnic. Probably my father’s belt, which was the disciplinary instrument of choice for serious misdemeanors back then.
Honing My Charm The combination of that thrashing, and the fact that I didn’t have any other hot teachers for the next few years, enabled me to stay out of trouble while my lived experience caught up to my CisHet proclivities. Along the way, I began to develop an intense appreciation for girls my own age: the way they looked, the way they carried themselves, the thrill I got from getting their attention, getting them to take an interest in me, to talk to me, to smile at me. I pursued charming them like an athlete pursues excellence in his sport.
The first crush I ever had was when I was still a little boy. When I beheld the sight of Arlene Shanko, whom I recall looking like a miniature Goldie Hawn in her prime, I felt my first inkling of romance.
Only a couple of years after that, I remember serenading Martha LaPorta with “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” by The Shirelles, right at her little desk in elementary school. One evening, at the first school dance I ever went to, she taught me how to put my left arm around her shoulder and my right lightly around her waist as we shuffled around the floor of the school gym.
I didn’t have my first real girlfriend, though, until my senior year of high school. And what a rare beauty she was. Silky long brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. An awesomely beautiful face. Being with her put me in ecstasy: walking down the street, having her sit close to me in the front seat of my parents’ car on our first dates, holding each other tight on the couch at her house as the clocked ticked toward 2 a.m. and my mother called to find out where I was. I was in heaven.
She was my first love. And when she ended it, it nearly broke me. But not this boy’s love of pretty girls and attractive women, which seems immutable. Just the other day, I almost bumped into a guy in the subway station when my attention was diverted by a poster for the upcoming ABC series “The Company You Keep.” It featured the show’s co-stars, Milo Ventimiglia of “This Is Us” fame, and the gorgeous Korean actress Catherine Haena Kim of “Ballers” and “FBI.” Here, this is Catherine. See for yourself.
Punishing the Innocent Now I’m an older man, happily married to a lovely woman. My contentment is complete. Yet as I watch the news reports of our 39th president, Jimmy Carter, opting for hospice care in the final days of his distinguished life, I think of that infamous line of his in a 1976 interview in Playboy magazine: “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust,” Carter confessed. “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Jimmy Carter! the gentle soul, the faithful husband to Rosalynn, whom I doubt even the most ardent feminist #MeTo advocate of today would ever accuse of anything approximating “toxic masculinity.” Yet even he acknowledged a weakness for women, and although he didn’t specify, I suspect he was talking about good-looking ones. It infuriates me that men are shamed and made to feel guilty for appreciating female beauty, either because of old time religion, as in Jimmy Carter’s case, or because of the public pressure that these current #MeToo times heap on up guys like me, accusing us of objectifying women by over-emphasizing their looks. I believe there’s a significant difference between looking and appreciating, within the limits of polite behavior, and discriminating in employment opportunity or any other evaluation of merit on the basis of looks. Assaulting and abusing women the way Harvey Weinstein and his ilk have done is absolutely criminal, and it’s a good thing that justice has caught up with them. So where does this leave this unabashed hound dog? Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I agree, and that’s why I’m diving deep into my own life and mind to question the origin and longevity of my seemingly autonomic tendency to constantly scan the streets, parks, shops, subways, airports and other public spaces of the world for glimpses of feminine beauty of any age, ethnicity or nationality. I have come to firmly believe it’s a matter of nature, more so than nurture, although the relentless parade of beautiful women dangled before our eyes by the media-Hollywood-music-entertainment-and-advertising-industrial complex does a lot to fan the flames. So, Now What? At the ripe old age of 71, in spite of the bad rap men like me get, I intend to keep looking, without shame, albeit with an ever-heightened sense of decorum and an ever-more-strict time limit for lingering glances.
And, in deference to Socrates, I plan to examine this issue from the female point of view. In 1990 I saw a French film directed by Luc Bresson called “La Femme Nikita” about a sexy young female street criminal whose only way to avoid prison is to agree to be trained as a top secret assassin. In a scene that I’ve never forgotten, Jean Moreau, as the spy mentor to Nikita, played by Anne Parrilaud, tells her gamine trainee, “There are only two things that are infinite: femininity and the means to take advantage of it.” I’ve decided that in the coming weeks I’m going to contact a selection of beautiful girls and women from my past, and hopefully some with more current perspectives, and ask them what they have to say on the subject. I promise to keep an open mind. And either way, you’ll be the first to know what I find out. So stay tuned for Part 2 of this story.