thirst trap
my husband plays tennis with a 10
Well…when you predict a fight at Thanksgiving, you get a fight at Thanksgiving.
Picture me walking home from a too-late buffet dinner, carrying baby Bruce in the rain, wrecking my suede sandals and ruining my new dress. Picture my husband, Christopher, standing in line for “pasta night,” waving as I leave, trying to get food into our other, hungry kids. Remember, also, that the minefields of abandonment have their own, mysterious logic.
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I decide to repair things with manipulative retaliation. We’re at his parents’ place in Florida, and I book us two spots at “Live Ball” a tennis drill I’ve never heard of. We’ll get some QT and I’ll whip his ass because I play several times a week and he plays twice a year. Win, win.
Before I go on, some background on the culture of tennis: women like me—competitive, ambitious and terrified of aging into irrelevance—love tennis. I love the way it makes my legs and lungs strong and the way it gives me a sense of potency even if the skin under my lycra is simultaneously saggy and expanding. Because on court, I’m seventeen again. The hours pass in an instant. The horizons of women's USTA yawn as wide as my delusions.
We arrive. I make sure we’re paired so I can prance and preen. But Live Ball is fast and discombobulating: I play poorly; Christopher plays extremely well. “Come over to this court,” the pro tells him between games. A cold wind blows. My un-shaven leg hairs stand straight up and down.
I clock his new partner. Her hair tumbles down her back long, wispy and gold. Her lacy, white skirt leaves only her upper-butt to my imagination. Her outfit reminds me of baby bloomers, but unbuttoned. She’s the only female on a court of serious athletes: young men who slide and grunt and hit forehands so hard their arms whip over their heads. She takes advantage of those heavy balls with a perky volley that never misses. Let’s call her Lizzy.
Lizzy is a ten.1
Christopher pitches forward into a jog that communicates I’m virile! I’m game! I stare, arms akimbo, mouth agape. I wasn’t a tennis player in my youth, but if I had been, I’d’ve worn a whole skirt. And the men (and their wives) would have looked at me, too, because…we’re all drawn to what’s shiny and new.
I’m partnered with Lizzy’s dad. He tells me she’s a senior in high school, debating whether to play in college. He’s got a giant smile and it’s clear Lizzy’s his pride and joy. The two of us keep turning back to the Olympians. Dad beams while we wait for our turn. I stalk the fence, miserly and invisible.
Looking in the bathroom mirror at Live Ball’s merciful end, I realize… invisibility would’ve been a gift. My visor gouged the middle of my forehead and the deep line casts my whole face in shadow. How could a person look so hideously drab? Is it my greasy, dark rots? Or maybe it’s my freckles, which were once gamine, but have recently merged into a few melasmatic splotches. Twenty years of unprotected sunshine have left me perplexingly… grey. I didn’t realize how old I looked until I saw Lizzy, that gleaming reminder of what I once kinda was.
We get on our bikes and start home. Christopher tells me Lizzy has “a great backhand.” I dart my shadowy eye-sockets at him and he shuts right up.
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The next day, Christopher suggests a walk on the beach. His parents graciously babysit. He holds my hand until he can’t. I wear a straw hat larger than an umbrella, which I panic-bought after tennis. The hat tries to leap off with every gust, so I walk with my hands pressed on my head. I wear Japanese painter pants that balloon over my crotch and make my butt appear concave.
The wind means we have the beach to ourselves, though on our return, my eye zooms in on a gilded crescent. As we approach, I see Lizzy, perched on the middle rung of the empty lifeguard chair, arching her back and poking her little breasts at the sea while her mother takes pictures. She doesn’t notice us as she hops down to assess and re-direct her mother’s photography. As we pass, she climbs back up the chair and her teal thong disappears into flesh no human being could ignore.
Onward we trudge.
“You know, I was thinking, the next time we come here we should maybe get a babysitter,” Christopher says after a single minute. I think to myself I so love this man, let me run a teeny tiny test.
“Oh yeah, like who?”
“I don’t know, I wonder if Lizzy would do it.”
“You think I would let that thirst trap into my house?” I snap, wrestling my sombrero against a fresh gust.
“What’s a thirst trap?” he asks. (Christopher doesn’t ‘do’ social media.)
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” I huff. “She’s making one now!”
“But the neighbors love their attractive au pair. They say the kids really listen to her.” Well well well, he sure has mapped this out.
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Christopher—who’s better at marriage repair than I am—suggests we go to lunch before we leave for the airport. Once again, his parents watch the kids. Lucky us, Lizzy and her mother have gotten hungry, too. She’s put her bloomers back on and as they leave the restaurant, Lizzy walks by our table, bounce, bounce, bounce. I watch Christopher, whose raw athleticism is now directed at keeping his eyes on his plate.
Lizzy’s mom follows and I see the woman, somehow, for the first time.
She’s got the same color hair as Lizzy, but it’s shoulder-length, with no more shine. Her face is craggy and tan. I hadn’t looked at her before, because evolution designed my eyes to go straight to her daughter, but I see now—she’s beautiful. And not in a way that strives or competes: her skin isn’t frozen or filled. She wears comfortable, attractive clothes. She’s in a different era of womanhood, and she’s not pretending otherwise. Lizzy is beautiful; her mother is dignified.
I grow up in about ten seconds, realizing the permission this woman has given me. It’s okay that my face has creases and sun spots. It’s okay that my gaze—like everyone’s—goes to what’s pert and shiny. It’s how we’re made. I want to have the confidence to celebrate a younger woman’s beauty—I can feel threatened or I can feel generous and delighted. There’s only one type of woman I want to age into here (though I’ll always find the bikini selfie lamely transparent).
How lucky am I to have been like Lizzy once? As lucky as her mother, I’m sure. And Lizzy, if she’s as blessed as the two of us, will someday reach the age of very loose pants.
And when that day dawns… she can babysit.
PS: I’m trying to get Christopher to write his version of this for next week. 🤞
This entire essay is spent objectifying Lizzy because, unfortunately, I did not have a chance to speak with her. If I had, I’m certain I couldn’t have written a word about her beautiful behind because she’d have blown me away with her depth, grace and intellect. So please know that I’m aware of my reductive exaggeration and also…that’s the point.
This was such a wild read because I find you so stunning and unique. There is just something about you that turns your head, so the idea that anyone would sway you away from that is shocking to me.
(I also find toddlers and 17-year-olds--and every age in between--to be all the same in terms of seeing them as babies. Newly arrived blobs in need of nurturing, direction, and self-discovery.)
Of course this is easy for me to say because I'm on the outside looking in. I know the view can be very different from the inside. I know we can be our harshest critics and I in no way want to dismiss your feelings--I get it...AND fuck all of that. Fuck society saying that women have an expiration date, fuck believing that everyone is attracted to shiny and new (they are not), and most of all fuck that dark part of ourselves that attempts to convince us that we are anything less than the beautiful forces of nature that we are.
It's also cultural. In my culture we revere age and wisdom and accept the awkwardness of youth with lightness and grace. It was always the maturity and wisdom of women that had lived lives full of experience that drew me in and held my gaze/heart. Rarely did shiny and new intrigue me.
I say we all band together and make this aging thing as wonderful and fun as possible because the current American society has a tendency to want to take a big fat patriarchal dookie on an experience that is full of magic and power. ❤️🔥💥
ooo Isabel, this one resonated so strongly with me, a 73yo grandmother! I know how beautiful you are because I’ve seen your photo (and seen you in your video post). I have similar feelings of admiration (although not jealousy) when I look at the perfect faces of my 12 and 14yo granddaughters. And when I look at the faces and figures of my two daughters in their 40s. They are all so beautiful. I’m still learning how to admire “old age” beauty; it’s definitely a thing too, although not a “thirst trap.”