Ode to Hirsute Pursuits

We all had them.

C'mon. Get happy and admit it.

Childhood crushes. Hearts and flowers and names written in girlish hand intertwined on notebook covers. Innocent yet oh-so-serious.

Slightly older boys who we saw on TV or heard on the radio. Boys who we stared at dreamily on an album cover or on the pages of a magazine. Boys who we "kissed" in the hidden safety of our bedrooms, smushing our untarnished lips into our pillows which served as surrogates for the objects of our affection.

David Cassidy.

Shawn Cassidy.

Bobby Sherman (whose 45 single I procured from the back of a box of cereal).

Donny Osmond. Oh, how I loved Donny. You do know he sang "Puppy Love" just for me, don't you?

Those boys were safe. Non-threatening. Cuddly, even.

And then, one fine day, our tastes changed. We grew up. My, did we grow up.

Personally speaking, I went from this...


...to this
...in the blink of an eye.

Oh. Yeah.

What was the changing point that sent me from youthful affection to adolescent yearning?

I discovered chest hair.

Loved it. Still love it today -- even more now than I did then, if that's possible.

It all started with Andy Gibb. I was so entranced by the chest hair that it took me a while to even acknowledge anything going on below the torso (and there obviously was a lot going on there...)

Moved on to Harrison Ford.
Who, in addition to the requisite chest stuff, wore some mighty tight pants in his Han Solo days (never ever gave Mark Hamill a second look after Harrison swaggered onto the screen in the first Star Wars/Number IV/whatever the hell number was released in 1977.)

After Harrison, I discovered my two most enduring objects of lust -- the ones that would carry me through high school and into college.

I give you Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame pitcher and Jockey Underwear model Jim Palmer:


Didn't get enough? Here's another view:

The large poster is an exact duplicate of one that hung over my desk in my high school yearbook office. For all four years I was on staff. Still not sure how I got away with that -- the fact that the yearbook advisors were both women might have had something to do with it.

Jim Palmer was my total idea of The Sex as a teenager. Because of that hairy chest. So masculine. Alpha male. Sexy.

Lest you think though that I was a one-lust-object kinda girl, let me allay your fears... I also had hormonal yearnings well into my college years for this...

Please excuse me -- I'm overwhelmed and entranced by His Hirsute Self, Mr. Tom Selleck and need to take just a moment.

OK -- I'm back. Is that a chest or what? Seriously.


Damn. Damn. Hot damn.


Now I had friends who were more appreciative of this look. And I can totally understand that.

That's one hell of an inverted triangle. And six pack. Dude's totally ready for action.





And old Mitch over there on the left isn't so bad himself. It was all I could do, though, not to drop this photo into my editing software to draw in some chest hair on his torso -- just to see what it might look like. But I showed some restraint. For the moment, anyway.




However, as I've so happily illustrated, it was all about the chest hair for me. My one real physical weakness when it comes to men -- that and a nice tight tuchus. Usually I'm more cerebral when it comes to my attraction to the opposite sex -- but I have made allowances for a hairy chest before... albeit only brief ones -- monosyllabic pillow talk can only hold my attention for so long.

So there you are. My hot button, so to speak. Feel free to share yours, if you're so inclined. There's lots of room down here in the shallow end of the pool. BYOB, though. Unless you want to drink Grey Goose with me.

Feel free to insert your own "jane, you ignorant slut" comment here.