I was saying nothing of the kind. What I was saying is that “Homer” here is playing with ambiguity of the word μίσγεσθαι. I gave two possible interprations for this:
- more likely, Nausicaa just means “to be in contact with”, but unfortunately chooses a word that has another meaning as well. A predominantly male audience might find this funny.
- another possibility, which I admit might be far-fetched: Nausicaa is playing around with the double entendre on purpose. The idea is not that she wishes to have sex before her wedding (where ever did you get that…?), but to use “accidental” talk about sex as a flirting tactic, to raise Odysseus’ interest and to give him indirect indications that she just might find him eligible to marry her. Again, the idea would be that a predominantly male audience would find her coy smiles and sexual innuendos funny. But this is probably too complicated, and Nausicaa is not a grown up experienced woman like Calypso; hence I think 1) is more likely.
I find Wilson’s “got too intimate” better than many other renditions. But why are you saying that she “deliciously fudges the issue”, if you don’t think there’s any issue at all (“I don’t find it plausible that anyone reading 288 could take it in a sexual way”)? It seems to me that she has found that there’s some ambiguity here, not completely different from what I have found, that needs to brought out.