Je Ne Sais Quoi

by Michelle Carlton

I love men. There’s just something about them as a population that drives me crazy. Every once in a while, I’ll see a man do something, say something, or act a certain way, and I fall in love with the Y chromosome all over again.

One of the perks of having a serious boyfriend was being able to see all the wonderful ‘man’ things on a regular basis. From the sexy things, like watching him putting on a tie (oh yeah, it gets to me), to the sweet things, like him coming up from behind and wrapping me in his arms—they all just killed me. Even some seemingly boring things had me smitten. Shaving, for instance—don’t ask me why, but I swear I could watch that man shave every day and never get bored.

Now that I’m single, I have to take what I can get. Long gone are the intimate days of tie-watching, but I still come across the beloved guy-traits sometimes. Just the sight of a group of men walking down the street in suits catches my breath. Or seeing a guy being sweet with his girl over dinner—a forehead kiss or shoulder squeeze will do it to me every time. This isn’t to say I’ll swoon over just any man. If I’m attracted to a guy, it’s because of qualities that are unique to him, not because he happens to be wearing a suit. But there are still those general qualities that I love about men as a whole.

I sometimes wonder if everyone feels this way about their gender of preference, or if it’s just me. Do men love watching a woman put on a dress or do her hair in the morning? They might, although it could be for different reasons (if she’s putting on a dress, that means she must not have been wearing the dress earlier).

Since I already have a good idea of what women like, I decided to ask my guy friends to pinpoint that certain je ne sais quoi that makes their hearts skip a beat. I started with my friend John, who said he loves it when a woman’s hair is wet (and he swears it’s not a sexual thing). “It implies a certain comfort level between you two that’s fun to have,” he said. Other traits on John’s list: girls who have a stuffed animal on their beds, girls who wear baseball caps, and watching a woman cook.