THE SEXIEST MAN ALIVE

My Saturday morning friends and I were discussing our fantasy men. One thinks of George Clooney when she makes love (yawn), the other says Hugh Jackman is the sexiest man alive and so forth (more yawns). Then there is Greece's homegrown hunk, Sakis Rouvas. Jesus Christ suggests another enthusiastically getting a bit too carried away. I cringe.

Talking about men’s buns and imagining details about their genitalia is generally not my cup of tea and my thoughts begin to slowly drift into my steamy cappuccino. “Come on,” they encourage me. “There must be some man who totally turns you on.”

“I’m not the type who would stir the dusty waters of my misty marriage by having an affair or even conjuring a fantasy third person to toy with,” I say. “But if I were to be unfaithful - even mentally so - then it would have to be with someone worthwhile. Someone like, someone like…”

They stare expectantly as I accidentally blow smoke in their faces while contemplating (oops!). “It would have to be Jostein Gaarder! For him I just may sell out on my morals and values,” I conclude only to be met with blank stares. “You know…the Norwegian…” I add helpfully. Still blank stares. “Author of ‘Sophie’s World’, ‘Castle in the Pyrenees’...”

I can sense that the conversation is about to turn. The other three get fidgety. But we have just spent 20 minutes analyzing Brad Pitt's torso and I want my value’s worth. So I continue, “In fact, why say I would have sex with him when I probably already have if you consider all the times I’ve taken him to bed and had his thoughts permeate into the secret corners of my mind and soul. And all this, in the scandalous presence of my husband.”

Wild burst of laughter follows. But I am not joking.

The conversation moves on and I am left behind with dangerous thoughts about this sexy, deeply philosophical Norwegian author who is obscure to my fair weather friends. I remember moments we have shared in the garden…“Although you may not stumble across a Martian in the garden, you might stumble across yourself,” he writes. “The day that happens, you’ll probably also scream a little. And that’ll be perfectly all right, because it’s not every day you realize you’re a living planet dweller on a little island in the universe.” Or the other thing I read that made me almost cry – “How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.” And that’s just the tip of this Norwegian iceberg…

How could you not fantasize about a man who thinks such things? A man who jolts your awareness of your own existence and wraps you in the warmth of his congenial writing style, his intellect, his sense of being and interest in our world and who we are!

Imagine what such a man could do in bed…

PS Looking at Jostein Gaarder in this picture I have to admit that he does look a little like a Nordic version of my dark hunk of a Greek husband. They even think alike, only Gaarder does his thinking in a less fiery, more philosophical, Norwegian kind of way. These similarities are a good thing, right?