Why is it whenever I travel with someone, people seem to assume there is something sexual going on?

Cases in point..

My aunt and I went to Disney World after I took the bar exam back in the late 80's. At the time, she was 45, I was 25. When we checked in, the smirking Hilton attendant said, "Oh, they've made a mistake and you have two fulls, let me just switch you to a king sized." After HE was corrected, the bellman who took us to our room gave me a wink nodding at her. (It was a not a pass; it was a "She looks like a live one!" wink.) Later that same trip, we befriended a doctor and his nurse gf over dinner at the German restaurant in Epcot. As we were walking out to find a spot to see the fireworks, he asked "How long have the two of you been together?" I replied, "She's my aunt." His response? "Yeah, right!"

A year later. After three trials in a row, I am told to go away by the firm for some R&R...so I got a last minute booking on the same aunt's cruise. We had different rooms, though we spent most of our time together. All of the snorkling staff on the boat, with whom we spent most of our excursion money, we later learned, were chattering about our May/September liaison.

January of 2001, on the trip ReverendMother wrote about so eloquently a while back...on the weekend she went to Barcelona, I went to Paris with 2 friends, a 40ish, straight male accountant/seminarian and a 21 year old female fellow student. We shared a two room 5th floor walk up suite in a small hotel. My smattering of French, and the staff's assumption I spoke none, allowed me to hear them speculate as to the sexual permutations of our chaste, and cheap, menage a trois.

Same trip, earlier in the trip, because of the odd number of guys and gals on the trip, RM, another young woman and I shared a room...I mean who's the safest roommate for young attractive women in a foreign land?---a 240 pound gay man of course. (Not that I'm suggesting either or both of them couldn't kick my ass any time they wanted or actually needed protecting.) Still, a couple of tongues wagged (RM, it was CH, BS, and SL) though no one actually suggested anything untoward had happened.

Same trip, Florence...I shared a room--but not a bed--with a married, rather conservative, but really nice guy. (I cleared it with his wife first.) He would go into the bathroom to change his shirt...to put on his pj's...practically to put on his shoes...I felt like I was sharing a room with Jane Hathaway.

Last year, my summer vacation. A dear friend and I traveled together to Vancouver. She is 61 (but looks mid-50's), I had just turned 40. At virtually every restaurant, at the hotel, and on the tour bus, folks we met assumed we were "together" romantically speaking.

I do not feel the need to post a photo here...but let's be honest, very, very few people would consider me particularly sexy.

Still, I am forced to confront the facts...Has some mysterious sexual magnetism escaped me? Do even straight men fear my irresistible allure? Why, oh why, am I cursed with the assumption I'm a sex god? And why does it only happen when I travel?

(sarcastic irony is now disengaged....we now return you to your regular programming)