Disclaimer 1: It wasn’t really Christie Brinkley, with or without Billy Joel. The real Christie Brinkley is nearing 60, and wouldn’t have been in my local opera house in row 8 with a 12-year old young girl as a companion. She’d be in a New York or Los Angeles opera house, on opening night, with an entourage, a box seat, and whatever else American Goddesses are granted when they wish to see Giselle.
Disclaimer 2: It was my husband who was sitting directly behind this impossibly tall, impossibly blond vixen, not me. I got the semi-profile view and back view. It was my husband’s knee that one long, silken flaxen tendril of hair cascaded on to, not mine.
So here’s what happened. We were in row 9, in our dress-up finery, just having finished a high-end dinner out. We’re reading through the program, about all the new staging and choreography and mime based on uncovering initial notes from performances in the 1800’s. I’m feeling sophisticated and beautiful. My husband is looking handsome and contented. It’s a lovely twilight-like moment before the lights will dim and the orchestra will begin, an in-between space of awaiting something fine just behind the curtain’s horizon.
Then a woman and a young girl are seated in the row in front of us. “Christie” was six feet tall, wearing a strapless, skin-tight, gathered, belted, sand-colored dress that covered her ample breasts and even more rounded bottom, but not a millimeter more. Her long blond hair was a symphony of shine, light and lighter shades, silky, smooth, and falling down her backless back, over the back of her seat. An aura of willing sexuality was vibrating, pulsating, around her.
She wasn’t wispy-thin or pale, nor did she have a tall-girl’s shoulder stoop; she stood and sat to her full regal height. I wouldn’t have been able to see the stage over her head, but my husband is tall enough. Giselle on stage, Christie’s hair flowing over the seat in front of him. Even if Christie had obstructed his view, he wouldn’t have wanted to change seats – wouldn’t have interfered with his great good fortune to sit behind this kind of Penthouse beauty. And the memory she evoked of the beautiful blonds of his past. My husband, it turns out, has always been attracted to blond women. I’m his only brunette.
This woman was full-bodied and beautiful. Her legs were long, her thighs were generous. Her bottom was round and big. She was perhaps 5 or 10 pounds heavier than she needed to be, but 5 or 10 pounds on a 6-foot frame is really nothing, and it’s more likely that I envied her ability to have this largeness and still be compellingly seductive. Finding fault with her body is something only another woman would do, as I’ve no doubt there’s not a man on the planet, straight or gay, who’d find a single ounce to complain about. They’d just thank whatever deity they usually thank that makes creatures of magnificence and revel in whatever moments they were granted in her company.
Only later, after the lights went out and the performance began, did I notice that Christie wore one tiny braid – with a feather - and several large silver rings. She was so much younger than I’d initially thought – her full-bodied sensuality throwing me off the trail. The braid and feather soothed me, a bit, suggested that my sense of competition was misplaced. There’s such absurdity in my reaction, yet what middle-aged woman doesn’t realize that even in her moments of beauty, she will forever be surpassed by splendor far taller/younger/sexier than she could ever be?
It’s possible that this woman stole more attention from me than from my husband. It’s only after I saw her in the gift shop with her young companion – her younger sister perhaps? – that I fully realized her youth, and I was able to let go of my irrational thoughts about what her presence could do to my husband: whether my married life was in jeopardy because he’d realize he really didn’t want a 5 foot 4 inch brunette in her late forties when there were women like this so close all he has to do is reach his hand down to his knee and twirl her golden lock.
After the ballet, we managed to walk behind this woman all the way through the long corridors and lobby, out to the street. Walk behind her high-heeled sashay. We spent almost three hours seeing this woman from behind. And then she was gone, back to her life.
It’s the next morning, and I’m still happily married. My husband doesn’t want anyone other than me, and when he gives thanks to his version of a deity, I think I’m the one he’s thankful for. Not that he won’t enjoy the fantasy of big-breasted blonds who appear out of nowhere just to grace his day. If Jimmy Smits or Denzel Washington had sat down in front of us, I sure hope my husband would forgive me the fantasy-in-the-dark of what a night/life would be like to revel in their magnificence. Because I’m pretty sure I’d go there.
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