I never thought of myself as having a great behind. I mean, I always knew I had a nice body…but, as a woman who recalls having once layered 8 pair of cotton underwear under her jeans (at age 13) before going to dinner at some friend of the family’s house because they had a cute son her age and she wanted her derriere to appear, more, well…prevalent…let’s just say that I never thought of my ass as my greatest asset.

So imagine my surprise when I began dating again after Drew died only to have men making proclamations left and right about what a “great ass” I had.

I knew Drew liked my behind. But I am not even certain that HE ever told me I had a great ass. Maybe he did, maybe I just didn’t really give it much credence since he was my husband and he was supposed to think I was wonderfully perfect in all ways.

So here I was, with men drooling all over me and my great behind. At first, I didn’t really believe it. But when I started hearing it not only from dates number 1, 2 and 3…but also from dates number 4,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11, I began to think “Huh. Maybe I really DO have a great ass!” I mean, what could make a 40 something year old woman happier than to find out the ass she thought was just passable for her first 4 decades was now something to be coveted…something men were dreaming about when they climbed into bed at night?

I soon came to the conclusion that my ass wasn’t all that spectacular. It was the jeans. Or the way my ass fit into the particular jeans I had inadvertently purchased. When I realized this, I began wearing the same pair of jeans on each and every first date, just to test my theory. I had a kind of first date uniform. To keep the testing ground consistent. I mean, I wanted to be comparing apples to apples, so to speak. The “great ass jeans”, a thin cashmere sweater, silver earrings and upswept hair. That was my first date uniform. Upswept hair because I suddenly also had every man telling me what a beautiful neck I had. I had previously always disliked my neck. Now I was appreciating both my ass and my neck more and more every day.

So I did what any woman would have done. I went out and bought 7 more pair of the exact same jeans, just in case they were discontinued at any point down the road. I wore those jeans constantly. I wore them until they all were full of tears and holes and until the belt loops were all in varying degrees of disintegration from being twisted around men’s fingers while they pushed me up against car doors and restaurant walls and kissed me goodnight. Those were some jeans. Now I only have one pair left, and they are too ragged to wear out of the house. I am going to keep them and frame them and display them on my bedroom wall when I get too old to remember how to have sex.

In the meantime, I have come to the conclusion that, although I exercise and use the elliptical torture machine faithfully and walk and do all of that good butt-shaping stuff….I still do not have a truly great ass. I think that what I am blessed with is precisely the right amount of material in that area, and when it is squeezed into the right pair of pants, well, it gives the illusion of being nearly perfect. The problem is, eventually, you have to get naked.

Which brings me to my next topic…

SEX. (and let’s be real here…you’ll probably have to wait for the book for that one).