"Take off your sunglasses, Teenie." I thought I was getting away with it. I had to show behind the black shades that my eyes had eyeliner, eye shadow, mascara even, though it was only 8AM and I was in gym togs. My friend P.F. and I share a trainer. He is of course adorable. He is of course 12. At least to our 56 years he seems 12. So why am I applying mascara on a day off from work. And why does she come to the gym at 9AM with hair done and make-up applied. She assures me it is because of her appointments right after her one-on-one trainings with him.

It’s not him, we know that. It’s what he stands for – youth, possibilities, fitness (she is very fit; I am at ground zero according to "our" trainer). I have a husband, she has beaus (plural), we both have children – quite grown – and here we are caring what we look like when we go to work out.

And it’s not only us. Blue eyes, dark hair, a great 30 year old body has sent two of our friends wafting down the stairs after spin class. They were dazed and giddy like teenage girls. They are mothers of college kids and they were mumbling, "He’s here. He’s at the top of the stairs." The "he" they’d spoken of before, but I’d not glimpsed, was indeed at the top of the stairs gleefully looking at us like a high priest in Aztec time about to pick out which maiden to hurl into the volcano. I stared straight back at him and he never wavered in his twinkling blue eyes. He was cute, but not that great. What came over these two – perhaps loss of oxygen from spin class. They offered their own glib denials – "Not for me, for my daughter, for my daughter, for my daughter." Ha. Then again, I do have my make-up on.

By Tina