Me, Myself, and I

In my single days, I paid a lot of attention to what my clothes said about me. My mother and father had drilled into me what boys thought of girls who dressed like harlots, so I wore jackets over my low-cut shirts and heavy black stockings with my flirty babydoll dresses. I liked to imagine that my look said something like, “You can look, but if you come near me, I will totally blow my rape whistle.”

Once I met my husband, though, I gratefully relaxed my standards. Finally, I could leave the jackets and opaque stockings at home when the two of us went out on the town, because I was with someone, a muscular someone who’d knocked heads together more than once back in the day, and looked sort of like he might just do it again if given the opportunity. Even now, two babies and seven years down the road, I eagerly anticipate our date nights (the ones on which we opt for a bar instead of a bookstore, anyway) as a chance to put on some Paris Hilton-approved little black dress and play the party girl, if only for a few hours.

But occasionally, I’m thrown for a loop.

Last week, we were out on one such date night when we met a man my husband vaguely knew from some news story or other. The guy joined us at the bar and, after introducing himself to me, quickly launched into the long and incredibly dull story of his life. He was good about eye contact, gazing both at my husband and at me as he spoke, but there was a third party he regularly addressed in his unending soliloquy, one that threw me slightly off guard …

My boobs.

Never before had my boobs been so included in any public conversation. The girls were made privy to the details of this man’s sordid divorce, they played captive audience to his tale of going from rags to riches, and they were even given the news of his plans to buy a downtown high-rise. Meanwhile, I sat, stone-faced and still as a Kitchen-Aid on a bachelor’s countertop, not wanting to encourage the dude with a smile or any jiggling that might make a long story even longer.