Exotic ... or Erotic?

Yesterday, I accompanied friends to the mall, and among the group was a German/Turkish teenager finishing up a year of study here in Michigan.  She and I were both commenting on the hot young guy who waited on us in Lululemon, the yoga clothing retailer, and I made the comment about "how Italian, how hot, how ... exotic" he looked.  (I also then went on to mention that although he was really good-looking, there would be no way he could talk me into a matching yoga-shirt-and-shorts combination at $138.00.  That's a pair of shoes, for Pete's sake.  Or at least five or six pairs of primo underwear.  Two or three if you're buying them off strippers, as I am wont to do.)  I then went on to wax philosophic about how boring it can sometimes be to be American.  "For the most part," I was complaining, "we can't compare with the French, or the Turks, or the Italians, or the Greeks ... it's not fair.  There's nothing exotic about us.  There's nothing ... mysterious, nothing than just simmers.  Being American in America is just ... just ... blah."

She applied her German heritage full-on to consider my comment analytically and then replied, "Well, I can understand that.  America is the 'melting pot,' isn't it?  You're everybody.  Everybody is you."

BAM.  It hit me.  She was absolutely, positively right.  This was the reason behind the reason Americans find foreigners so interesting: it's because we're somehow tapping into the exotic.  When confronted with a good-looking guy at home who lives down the street, having him parade in front of me in a pair of boxer briefs is erotic as hell.  But, take the same boxer briefs, same time of day, entirely identical circumstances, and make the guy Norwegian, and you get erotic and exotic.

Out of the mouths of babes, right?  BAM.

I talk to Tom (and other people, too) about how much I enjoyed living in Europe, and given the mess the United States is in politically right now, how much I would like a one-way, first-class ticket to Copenhagen, or Budapest, or Turin, or anywhere on the continent.  You know, the fantasy of opening that little used bookstore on the shores of the Adriatic (exotic), and becoming the eccentric American in the village full of buff vineyard workers (erotic).  Unfortunately, that's about as close to reality as I can get.  Want to or not, I'm in no position to move to Europe and go off on some wild adventure that involves a list of members of the United Nations and every brand of underwear on the planet.  (My therapist would suggest to my that I actually am in the position to do so, but I would have to "re-frame" - her term, not mine - my priorities.)

You see, it's because I have responsibilities.  (Not exotic or erotic.)  I bitch constantly about having said responsibilities instead of choices (which can be exotic and/or erotic), and it sticks in my craw that there are individuals who can slough their responsibilities so easily without worrying about the aftermath.  It's something I wish I could do, but I can't, because I have a conscience.  (Two, actually.  Tom is always on stand-by to reel me back in to a little place he likes to call "reality.")  To simply pick up and leave my house, my dog, my partner, my Visa bill, my mother (which admittedly, would be easy), and the one hundred other irons I have in the fire is just not feasible.  It's because I'm old.  It's because I'm responsible.  It's because I'm a nice guy.

Crap.

I guess my days of living in Corsica, being majordomo to a young French businessman will have to wait.  Still, though, it's nice to know that I've established the keystone to my logic.  My fascination with the male body is an eroticism that I enjoy.  So is my underwear fetish.  What makes it exotic is how the people I interact with (American or not) run with that information.  Most of them know nothing about it, which if you think about it, makes people watching a much more interesting activity.

Our Supreme Court decided yesterday that the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) was unconstitutional.  (Duh.)  Sure enough, all of the couples on the television, splashed over the news, were holding hands, kissing, crying, thanking everyone and everything for acknowledging them.  It was a like gay Woodstock, except people weren't walking around naked high on acid.  For me, it was enlightening and empowering: lots of pretty men to look at.  Some exotic, some erotic.  Some of both.  I don't usually do my people watching on television, since it's usually not happening in real time.  But when I was at the mall yesterday, I started doing more intense people watching following my epiphany.  Nobody was talking about DOMA being put down.  Nobody was worried about the excessive heat outside.  People were wearing as little as possible and enjoying the air conditioning.  I was enjoying the multitude of tank tops on muscular guys and specimens such as Mr. Lululemon.

I related to Tom everything that had happened, including my new definition of "exotic."  And although I now have clarity, I may be poisoned against my own kind.  Now instead of just looking at guys, or watching guys dance in their shorts, or looking at pictures of guys (dancing) in their shorts, I'm going to be thinking, "Nice underwear.  Wonder if he's Russian?"

Not everyone or everything is erotic to everyone else, but is everyone exotic to everyone else?  Are we so embedded into our own lives and experiences that magic moments pass us by every day and we don't realize it?  Have we become conditioned to automatically reject what is in front of us because it's so commonplace, in favor of something that's always new and exciting?  I think we have, and I think I especially will need to start tempering my attitudes a little bit.  I mean, after all, there are good looking guys here in Michigan (hello, Mr. Lululemon); I just have to find what makes them exotic in addition to imagining the characteristics that would define as erotic.