Au bain When time is out of joint BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

I recently started dating a younger man — even though my mother thinks I need someone who’s 40 (but not 44). However, my friends tell me I still look 23, not to mention that I’m stunted enough from the failures of my past relationships to have no idea how old I am, but I’m fearful that I may still be the emotional equivalent of a Duran Duran–listening 12-year-old. Plus, I still sleep with my soft gray bunny, who looks like the Velveteen Rabbit, which my friend Anna has pointed out as evidence of my immaturity.

It’s not like he’s jail-bait younger, but young enough to still think " classic " European motorcycles are really cool (cooler than Harleys . . . and the difference is?), and he’s only now growing out of his first wave of post-adolescent vegetarianism (thanks to me). The occasional " like " peppers his sentences, and he says " daaawg " on the phone to his best friend.

I think " daaawg " may be a term of endearment, but my cat, Ellison, and I aren’t really sure.

I have vacillated for a while now between wanting — in my dream world full of copious men, from which I could choose willy-nilly like I was shopping with Platinum at Wallis Girls — younger men, whom I imagined to be untouched and full of hope and challenge (unlike the slightly droopy men I’ve recently dated in their early-to-mid-late thirties, who seem to have failed enough times in relationships that they are gun-shy and difficult), and older men, for whom I’m suddenly fair game now that I am the big three-oh, just old enough so that they don’t feel like we’re some postcard from the Dads and Daughters Internet site, but evidently still young enough to make them feel like studs.

This fall, I was asked out by a 48-year-old divorced guy with a teenage daughter. Mostly we talked on the phone because I just couldn’t get over the physical fact of age when we met face to face for a tepid coffee at the Crooked Mile, and truth be told, the idea of a teenage daughter, having been one myself, terrified me.

Then, once, he called me from the bathtub. I was eating a steak sandwich with horseradish and tomato. I had just returned from NYC the night before and I was ravenously hungry and all emotionally jacked up from flitting from scene to scene like some jet-set Hilton. I could hear the water swishing to which I asked a shy " What’s that noise? " , in between chewy mouthfuls of millet focaccia.

" I’m in the tub! " he announced gleefully, but I think he meant it to sound sultry.

Maybe I’m just sexist. And, yes, maybe I have to go do extra time with my therapist on this one. But I seem to have no problem with my girlfriends calling me from the tub, on the toilet, while plucking their eyebrows, or in between yanks while getting their bikini lines waxed. But guys? My ex-boyfriend used to (and still does on occasion) call me while sitting on the can. I think he does this because he takes forever (I mean, who wouldn’t want a diversion while hanging out in the bathroom for 45 minutes?) — but I’m not sure that I should feel flattered by this because most likely any therapist would say this is evidence of the esteem he held me in. I also had an English boyfriend who would eat Saltines while taking a dump because he was " bored. "

As I chewed the slightly tough steak I had care-packed all the way home from my favorite tapas (whenever I say that word my mother exclaims " Caitlin, you didn’t go to a topless bar? " ) restaurant, I imagined wet body hair and other unmentionables floating in warm murky water without bubbles, and I thought, " I’m not so sure I really like that image. "

I recently became re-obsessed with Chekhov. He’s perfect for dark nights when everything is already winter bleak — so why not make it bleaker? My mother slept over recently and as I was lying on the couch we were discussing his story " Gooseberries " through the doorway from the living room to my bedroom where she cuddled on my bed. In summation, I told her that I don’t think I like stories about Russian men bathing and she told me I was too puritanical and should get over it.

So I’ve refined my statement to this: I don’t like guys who are self-satisfied enough to brag about being bath-takers like they are so, so, SO in touch with their feminine sides and are arrogant enough to think that we women really want to imagine them in the tub.

But my younger man can take a bath any day he wants and I’ll still think he’s hot, as long as he doesn’t shove it in my face. And this, of course, is the fickle nature of the laws of attraction, which are still mysterious enough to keep me guessing and wondering and totally surprised that on this fine day this one perfect person appeared out of nowhere and happened to be the wrong age by everyone’s standards and yet so much wiser than I might ever have desired in a companion of any age at any time and therefore time is all out of joint and ceases to really matter anyway.

Caitlin Shetterly can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com