ROLL WITH THE CHANGES

Walking back to my car, I see the side profile of the man parked in the car next to me and think to myself, oh, he's a hottie. Then he gets out, and I sneak a look over my shoulder, and realize...it's a teenage boy.
Eww! Now I am totally grossed out. Teenage boys have no appeal for me, which is good, really, being as that I am a middle-aged woman (aren't I now? I find that I am referring to myself as such now, and it feels really weird. When do we become middle-aged anyway these days? Since I am approaching the age that Christ was when he was crucified, I feel really I should abandon any notions that I am still a "young woman").
Anyway, I am watching him walk into the store and trying to remember what it is I used to find so attractive about teenage boys when I was their age. Once I hit puberty, I was about as boy-crazy as they come. My junior high journal has a new male name doodled in it for every week, and my daily entries are all about boys, so-n-so is so fine, etc. They were all fine, which seems now like such a lame way to say someone is attractive.
Watching this guy here, the first thing I noticed was that his face was still catching up to him. Razor stubble, like he was attempting to shave with no real need, acne, just this oily unevenness and social awkwardness, was my first tip. His body had no real substance to it, just a light mess of musculature and bone. Then there was that ass, and that is what had me shaking my head and wondering what in the world was I thinking, half a lifetime ago.
I remember one night at scout camp (I know, you guys - my friends - here it comes, a camp story - I know you all think it is really funny to make fun of me for being the "one time at scout camp" girl, like the band camp girl on American Pie, but if you just spent one summer, just one, at one of these places, you could understand how three entire summers, plus change, could make such impressions on me), how my tent-mate and I were sitting outside on a muggy night, talking about boys. She asks me what kind of an ass do I think looks best on a guy, what's my favorite ass-type. I think for a little while, and then my boyfriend of a million years saunters by, same ass he's had since high school, since being a teenage boy, and I point and say, "that one". Oh sure, he was six foot tall and maybe a buck thirty soaking wet, but I still liked the way his ass didn't fill his jeans, how it left that little gap at the bottom.
The bottom-gap, dead give away to teeenage boy butt. This guy I am watching at the neighborhood Citgo has the bottom-gap, and I am remembering this conversation, and how she looked at me with surprise. She was older than me, maybe twenty three to my twenty, and maybe she had already gone through the transformation, when we as women stop lusting after boys and start wanting to make it with real men.
I don't know really when it happened with me. It's not like I just woke up one day and said, "Hey, now I like em with a little more meat on their bones". There was just a time I remember thinking teenage boys were fine, and there is now, where I wonder how I ever felt that way. Now they seem scrawny and a little unsure, and I am sure I would never want that anymore. Which is a good thing, since they are illegal anyway. Just know you will never see my face on the news arrested for indecency with a minor.
But I wonder how that happens, and why. I am not sure from a biological perspective why it would makes sense for women to change their taste as they age. Although grown men seem more virile than those boys, from the number of teenage pregnancies out in the world, it is probably not true physiologically. I am curious, though, about the process itself. When and how do we, as women, start preferring bigger dudes?
I have heard it true that people's taste buds change over time, and from observed experience, it is true that our food preferences do change over time to reflect that. That probably has some basis in nature but I am not sure exactly what it is. From an evolutionary standpoint, I think it probably increases our biological fitness to have these taste changes occur. Age differences and sexual preferences, to me, have more to do with cultural standards than actual biological fitness.
From my individual perspective, I know the change was not sudden. At some point, I just noticed that my eye was much more drawn to men who were thicker, stronger, more well developed, and who filled out their jeans to a larger extent. I started preferring intense passion and sexual proficiency, more than the sweet fumblings of inexperienced boys. Even though I can say on one hand that the failure of my long term relationship with my high school sweetheart had much to do with his accident (see post entitled "Washers"), I cannot deny that my preference changes had almost just as much to do with it, and my love for him wasn't enough to transcend my desire for larger, more powerful, more intense men. It couldn't transcend the change in my tastes. Blame it on the changes, the distance, or his issues, I couldn't stop cheating on him and eventually was drawn to an older, larger man who was able to meet my sexual preferences and provide for my emotional needs as well.
However, there were incompatible belief systems, which is why when I moved away from him and met a man who had the same values and life beliefs plus the physical build and intensity I had begun to prefer, I just had to marry him. I am much more capable of monogamy with this type of physicality.
Thoe boy turned to walk through the doors, and I saw that it was his profile that first had attracted me, and someday, when he grew into those jeans and his face caught up with him, he was going to be a very attractive man. Girls will probably be falling all over him.
Then I took my middle aged self back home to my fajita grilling big ole dude and our two littler dudes, wondering about girls and boys, and how we get from there to here.