“You’re sexy” she said to me, and for the life of me I just couldn’t understand what that meant. What makes a man sexy? It could be so many different things.
Recently I’ve discovered that I enjoy the idea of looking at an attractive man, and what stands out to me is a well dressed man. There is a certain fashion trend that I find amusing, the hidden patterned sock. Not very many men can actually wear patterned socks and look attractive. It seems to me that it has more to do with attitude than any particular color or pattern. A confident man, with a little sense of style and accomplishment, can easily make the quietly seductive patterned sock sexy. Incidentally, I wear black socks, but that’s a different story.
So I asked her, what is it that you find sexy? “Well, I like tall men, which you are.” That was easy to understand. “What else?” I probed. “I like your hands.” She said, and that made me smile. Then, the most important thing of all…
“You had bandaids, and carrying bandaids is sexy.” I was speechless. Earlier in the evening she had cut her foot, and on a whim she said, “I wish I had a bandaid.”
“I have bandaids.” I replied, and I took out a tiny zip lock back from my luggage that contained an assortment of about 15 different bandaids. I sat on the bed with her. “Here, let me show you. This is a big one, and this one is waterproof. I think there might be a Star Wars one in there too.” She picked two.
“Why do you have bandaids?” She inquired.
“I always travel with bandaids.” It was a simple thing.
How was I to know that carrying bandaids could make a man sexy? And that’s when it occurred to me. Attitude has a lot to do with being sexy. I could wear the same outfit one day and be a normal Joe, but be a well dressed man another day simply because I carry myself differently on the inside, and that is reflected somehow on the outside. But there are other things that make a man sexy, and I think being able to care for someone, to make them feel safe and special, makes a man sexy in a very different way, a personal way. It’s kind of a secret, that nobody would understand except us.
The next morning, I cut my palm and I wore one of my waterproof bandaids on the flight home. When you have something on your palm, or on your foot, you notice it a lot. Every time I closed my fingers I thought about the bandaid on her foot. I suppose, in a way, that felt sexy. But mostly, I just felt like a good person.
A couple days later, I told her about my coworker who cut herself and I gave her a bandaid out of my car when we went to lunch. “She’ll never forget it.” She said, which I laughed at. I think she was talking about herself.
Little things can mean a lot. Little things can make you sexy, even if nobody sees them. Maybe they make you sexy exactly because nobody else sees them, kind of like patterned socks.
