on hypnotherapy and hot grocery store mamas (and why you MUST get a sheer tunic)

Last week, after my first hypnotherapy session, I went grocery shopping.

In the store, I suspected that the young guy smiling at me - he was maybe eighteen or nineteen years old – was a kid I baby-sat when I was a teenager.

I was just a few blocks from where I grew up so it was within the neighbourhood of possibility.

He smiled at me in the produce section. He blocked my cart  in the cereal aisle and held my gaze. He stared at me as I checked expiration dates on milk.

Obviously, we knew each other. I just couldn’t figure out how.

In the frozen foods aisle, he walked up to me and handed me a piece of paper and smiled.

I said “Do we know each other?”

He said, “Not yet,” and turned and walked away.

On the back of a receipt was a phone number, presumably his.

What just happened here? I asked, looking around for an answer or an opinion.

(If any occasion demands an audible conversation-with-self in a public place, this was definitely it.)

When I was at the cashier, he was in line at the till beside me. He smiled at me some more while his mom paid for his groceries.

What is happening here???

This time I exclaimed it silently because other people were around and that sort of thing violates unspoken queue rules. So does hitting on  a woman old enough to be your (scandalously young) mother while your real mom buys your groceries.

He checked me out in the parking lot, too.

I was so disconcerted that while driving home I had to pull over and call  my friend Heather.

I told her the story. She was shocked, too.

Heather’s a good friend. She doesn’t fluff up my ego. We both know I’ll be thirty-seven next week and my stomach has seen flatter days.

We tried to understand. She wanted to know what I was wearing.

“Jeans and ballet flats. Full mama regalia. My hair looks good, though.”

“What shirt are you wearing? Are your ta-tas out?”

I paused. This is basically a trick question. “Well, it doesn’t really matter what shirt I’m wearing. My breasts always obvious.”

“It matters. Are we talking turtle neck or v-neck?”

with-this-ring“I’m wearing a sheer tunic but it is not provocative. It’s hot without being hoochie. I’ve got a tank underneath.”

We struggled to understand a little bit more. Maybe the older woman wasn’t his mom. Maybe it was his sugar-momma. Or maybe it was his mom, but she won’t let him stay out past midnight so he’s looking for a sugar-mama. Maybe he just saw the movie Mrs. Robinson.

“Heather, of course he hasn’t seen Mrs. Robinson. He’s too young. I haven’t even seen Mrs. Robinson. Dustin Hoffman is a grandfather. That’s how old that movie is.”

We gave up trying to understand this boy’s MILF issues (it is cool when a grown-ass man like John Devore appreciates mamas but weird when a kid who still lives with his mom is hot for another mom) and talked about my hypnotherapy, instead.

It was wonderful.

Once, when I was outlining my challenges, my new projects, all the things I was excited about, and wondering aloud what my next great adventure would be, a friend said: “How about being still?”

I was almost as surprised by this question as I was when an eighteen year old boy gave me his number in Extra Foods.

I struggle with still. I can’t get there. My mind is always on and I have insomnia on a regular basis. Yoga, meditation, massage – nothing works.

In hynotherapy, I thought I might get still. I thought I’d relax into myself and find calm.

I relaxed. I surrendered. I went there. And when I got there, I felt my entire being vibrate. My body was still, but my energy was humming. And in that second, I realized: still is not my home. Buzz is where I live.

It was such a relief. I don’t have to fight who I am. I vibrate at a high frequency. Still is not for me.

So we talked about that and how I’m not going to feel guilty any more that I’m not zen.

Because I’m not zen, dammit.

I told her how being hypnotized felt like a lucid dream. You know when you wake up from a dream that is so good, you go back to it, but you’re liminal – both sleeping and awake and guiding the dream? Hypnosis is like that. Or like the flow when I’m writing. Or like sex. Hot sex is a trance, too.

And then we hung up, but not before wondering some more about this confused eighteen-year-old’s definition of “age-appropriate love interest”.

Heather clearly kept thinking about it because she called me later that night, all a-fluster.

“Ok. Don’t be offended, but you know the movie Shallow Hal? Where Jack Black is hypnotized so that he can only see people for who they really are? And that’s why he saw fat Gwyneth Paltrow as thin?”

I was a bit panicked by the “don’t be offended” and “Shallow Hal” reference. Shallow Hal is an extended, vicious fat joke disguised as beauty-comes-from-inside message. Was my friend going to tell me that this eighteen year old had magical Jack Black/Shallow Hal powers and therefore could beyond my fat ass to my inner beauty? Because my outer beauty is so…lacking?

THIS WAS NOT PROMISING.  But then she redeemed herself.

“Maybe that’s what your hypnotist did for you. She turned YOU into Shallow Hal. Now when you look at a middle-aged man, you see him as he really is: eighteen, horny and fervently proud of his almost-there mustache.”

And that’s how hypnotherapy turned me into an all-seeing, all-knowing zen master guru. I now only see you as you TRULY are.

Or maybe that sheer tunic looked hawt on me.

No maybe about it. 

————–

PS Why yes, gentle reader, I DID collect a couple of my very favorite sheer and/or floaty tunics for you…you can check them out here.

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