Unexpected Attention
at unexpected times
I grew up in a quiet cul-de-sac near a main route for trucks. Walking home from the school bus stop, truckies beeped their air horns at me. It happened every afternoon for years.
In my teens, I went to an orthodontist in the city. Afterwards, every builder, tradie, or every second guy on the street wolf-whistled me. Even though I wore a green school tunic that fell to my knees. I had a sore mouth from having my braces tightened, but all the attention perked up my mood. Men in singlets, work shorts and steel-capped boots always downed tools as I walked past. It was normal at the time. I presumed they did it for every young girl.
I kept my long hair until my mid-fifties. Walking in the same direction as the cars, I got beeped at a lot. I'd turn around, and the guys in the car would be about 17. It gave me a lift, confirming I must still look okay, at least from the back, even if it was completely sexist.
The funniest time was when I was power walking with my Mum. We were trying it and laughing, this new thing we saw at the Olympics that year. My mother had always been super slim with great legs.
One of those musical car horns beeped, making her jump.
I don't think the young male occupants expected a forty-five-year-old and a seventy-year-old woman to be power walking in short shorts and t-shirts. I told Mum it still happened to me sometimes, and she almost had heart failure. It’s not like either of us would have qualified as Cougars.
It goes to show you never can tell from the back.
I turned the big 60 months ago. I don't think I will ever have to worry about rude comments being yelled from open car windows, honking horns, or wolf whistles ever again.
I had more than enough of that surprise attention when I was young.
It was a double-edged sword anyway. I liked it; some part of me was flattered. I was never going to do anything about it, and rarely even smiled back.
The one time I considered jumping on board was in Interlaken, the most beautiful place in Switzerland. It was a fantastic, sunshiny day at the end of May. I wore a blue sundress. I was 23.
I was catching up, writing in my travel diary at a garden roundabout with seating all round. I’d already had a surprising marriage proposal from an Indian guy, when I had an indecent proposal from a super hot guy in a shiny new red Ferrari convertible.
He pulled up at the traffic lights and revved his motor hard.
I looked up as he stood up in his seat. I looked behind me to see who he meant, and there was no one else there. He began pointing at me, then back to himself.
Beckoning me with a cheeky smile, his hands were in prayer position, pleading with me to get in his machine. Begging, shouting out to me that I was a beautiful girl in Italian, Swiss, and what sounded like half English and French mixed. The traffic light went green. He stayed put while ten cars behind him got on their horns, demanding he move with shouts of abuse, and hands thrown in the air.
I was tempted and surprised. Still, I stayed put. I shook my head no, pen in my hand, but smiling wildly. He shrugged his shoulders, then sped off with that mighty engine revving before the lights changed again. The whole thing lasted three minutes max, and I was titillated.
He had a wide smile full of straight white teeth that would make any girl fall in love instantly. His deep, dark eyes were a little like George Clooney's. I have no doubt he was a player, a seducer who could get any woman he wanted. I knew that, but I was still curious.
I would have loved to go for a spin in that hot red hot rod.
All I had was a gold Daihatsu Charade hatchback that I picked up secondhand for $8000. My best friends referred to my car as a sewing machine on wheels.
I made the right decision, but will always wonder about Hot-Ferrari-Guy.
Later that day, I went to a jeweller’s determined to buy myself a Swiss watch. The guy behind the counter was a perfect Nordic Adonis with wavy white-blonde hair, flawless olive skin, and legs that went on forever.
He said I had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
I have grey-green eyes with gold striations around the pupils. I've always had long, curly lashes. They're my best feature, I guess.
The blonde said he was engaged, but then that he would break up with that girl if he could spend the rest of his life gazing into my eyes.
He had just fitted five different watches to my wrist, and removed them slowly, holding my hand with a warm reverence while he spoke. What he said scared me, and my heart fluttered like I was fifteen under his touch. I was all set to buy a $400 watch with small jewels in the band. But I chickened out. The way he stared at me up close made me feel too aroused, so I left.
The day was becoming too surreal.
I felt like the heroine in a movie from all that male attention, but it was all so superficial, so temporary. Still, two marriage proposals and one indecent proposal to “Get-in-my-new-Ferrari-convertible-and-drive-away-with-me-into-the-sunset” made me feel on top of the world.
I don't expect any more cat calls, and that's alright by me. I don't need them any more than I need another handbag that I never use.
That day at Interlaken, Switzerland was bedazzling enough for a lifetime.
I can't even figure out why it happened. I was never beautiful. I was short and a bit cute, that’s it. I got five pages written in my travel diary at the roundabout. I would have done twice that much, only I was interrupted by two men being men.
Three good-looking guys wanting something I wasn’t prepared to give them, but I know I was better off for all the surprise attention.
It was the late eighties. It wouldn’t happen in today’s dating culture, but it was startling, surprising, and delightfully tempting all the same.
Maybe every woman deserves to be swept off their feet by someone making them swoon with desire in a heated moment at least once.
One day where fabulous fairytale holiday memories are made for a lifetime.
A time when you feel too alive to stay still.
Thérèse, I thoroughly enjoyed this because you refuse to tidy the experience into the answer we are perhaps supposed to give. The attention was sexist, intrusive and sometimes startling—and you can still admit that occasionally it made you feel rather fabulous. That contradiction feels wonderfully human.
And then Switzerland enters the story and apparently decides subtlety is cancelled for the day. 😄 An Indian marriage proposal, an Adonis jeweller prepared to abandon his fiancée, and a gorgeous stranger in a red Ferrari holding up ten cars while attempting to persuade you to disappear into the sunset with him. I love that somewhere inside the sensible 23-year-old who stayed firmly on the roundabout there remains another version of you who occasionally wonders, What if I'd got into that ridiculous Ferrari?
But the line that gave the whole piece its deeper shape for me was: “I don't need them any more than I need another handbag.” There is quite a journey between the young woman discovering herself partly through the gaze of strangers and the sixty-year-old woman who can remember enjoying some of that attention without requiring it now. Perhaps growing older sometimes gives us the lovely privilege of keeping the memory of being desired while quietly relinquishing the need to be reassured by it.
I write at The Reflective State, where I am drawn to precisely these slightly mischievous memories that begin as anecdotes and unexpectedly reveal something about the person we became afterwards. Your Swiss afternoon certainly belongs in that category. If curiosity ever leads you my way, I'd love to know what you think.
This is such an incredible reply. I'm bowled over by it. My children and husband never quite believed it happened. It was all true. It's too strange for me to even make up. The day ended with fhe best and only cheese fondue I've ever eaten. While shopping for that special watch, I bought two much cheaper models from female shop owners who had plates of Miilka chocolate on their counters.
I will have to check out the Reflective State. You sound intriguing.
Thanks so much for telling me things about myself that I hadn't even realised.