Assisted Swinging

The Sad Plight of the Aging Man-Whore

Reading today's Times, I came across this great quote in a review of the new CBS "sex vs. marriage" sitcom The Rules of Engagement, which - as anyone who watched the countless ads on last night's Super Bowl telecast knows - stars my ultra-glib celebrity lookalike David Spade (SNL, Just Shoot Me) as a self-centered womanizer whose mantra is "I do what I want, I date who I want and I sleep with whoever will let me" (making Spade more or less a blond version of Two and a Half Men's bad boy Charlie Sheen). Um, stop me if you've seen this stereotype before.

Anyway, here's the great verbiage from Alessandra Stanley's Times review:

Mr. Spade, who is no longer boyishly slim...is wisely set up as more of a cautionary tale than a role model...As men get older, their efforts to seduce sexy young women look seedy and sad - prompted less by an elan vital than Viagra.

Marriage may seem like just another form of assisted living, but there is even less to be said for assisted swinging.

So word up to all you cocktail cowboys out there. There comes a time when yesterday's charming cad becomes just another liver-spotted lech embarrassing himself at the bar. Don't get me wrong. Though I just turned 50 myself (and am on the verge of, like Mr. Spade, losing my boyishly slim physique to the vestiges of beer, chips and dip), I still am enslaved to the hormonal-biological imperatives that make me obey my Genetic Code and notice young nubiles (it's hard-wired into men's DNA to always seek out mating partners, dating back billions of years to the pre-Geico Cavemen). It's OK to acknowledge our primal urges. It's just that as you age, you should try to age gracefully and not succumb to acting on these uncontrollable urges. Unless you have money, like Donald Trump, or are Benny Hill, chasing the ego-affirming trophy tramps comes off not so much as "seedy and sad" as pathetic and perverse.