Redefining "Sexy" One Man at a Time

nobody@vox.com(Patricia Volonakis Davis) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:49:07 -0700

My last post was directed to younger women. This one is for woman who are no longer so young. But it’s not for every older woman. It’s not for those who are divorced or single and very contentedly plan to stay that way. Kudos to those women who are happy in their single state. You know who you are and you rock, girls.

No, this post is for the over-forty, single woman who says that she wants to get married, or have a partner, but, “there are no nice men out there my age.”

To those women, I say, “You’re right.”

That is, if your definition of ‘nice,’ is, “looks like George Clooney, with a body like Brad Pitt, a sense of humour like Chris Rock, the money of Warren Buffet, the gentility of a Welsh prince, the intelligence of Stephen Hawkins and the fashion sense of Michael Kors. In that case, then, you are indeed right - there are no ‘nice’ men out there your age. In fact, by that standard, there are no men any age with any chance of pleasing you.

What’s going on? I’ve been running into forty to sixty-year-old females who are acting like little girls. They will reject a perfectly wonderful man because he’s bald, or short, or has an odd laugh. One intelligent woman I know even dismissed a man who was interested in her, only because she didn’t like the shirt he was wearing!

And here’s another rather drastic example. I recently met an attractive, 56-year-old woman, beautifully groomed and in great shape. But one thing that struck me as at odds with her obviously devoted beauty regimen was that she had a perpetual look of displeasure, because of two very deep grooves that started at either side of her nose and ran right down to her chin. Lines on a 56-year-old face are normal, but these frown lines were so entrenched, they’d had to be decades in the making. My supposition turned out to be accurate, when one of the first things she said to me was, “I’ve been married thirty-three years and I’ve hated every day of it. I just can’t stand my husband.”

She went on, “But, I can’t get a divorce. There are lots of reasons to stay married.”

That might be true, but she never explained what those reasons were. And she never explained why she couldn’t stand her husband. But later in the conversation I picked up some clues, when I happened to mention that my husband likes to eat peanut butter and graham crackers for lunch, every day.

“Every day?” she asked, already frowning. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Not at all,” I said, “I just buy very big jars of peanut butter and very large boxes of graham crackers.”

I thought she’d laugh, but instead, she frowned some more and those lines on her face got as deep as the Straits of Corinth. “How do you put up with that?” she asked, seriously. “That would really annoy me.”

Then I understood. This woman had spent the last thirty years trying to make her husband over into something he hadn’t been when she’d chosen him. So, naturally she was miserable. And I bet her husband’s life was no picnic, either.

In that one conversation, I learned everything I needed to know about her idea of marriage.

And sadly, she’s not the only one. Many women are expecting some idealised, stylised, made-up version of man to show up at their doors and be a reflection of the make-believe that they’ve been carrying around since they first saw Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty when they were children. And that’s why they’re sad and/or lonely. That man they’re waiting for was invented by romance novelists and Hollywood. The Johnny Depp they’re dreaming of is a phantasm who doesn’t exist.

That’s why, with all due respect, I simply have to say, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty, because you’re missing something very big.”

Johnny Depp might be a perfectly fine human being, for all we’ll ever know, but when he’s working, he’s put together by make-up artists, a team of hair dressers and costume experts. His every move is choreographed by professionals and his every sentence is memorised from a script. If his leading lady is taller than he, they stand him on a box and the camera hides the fact that she’s crouching as she says her lines to him, while desperately trying to ignore the smell of onions on his breath from the sandwich he had at dinner break.

And yet, a real, live, breathing human male hasn’t got a chance against him with a woman who compares him to her sexual fantasies of chocolate-eating Irish gypsies, blind murderers in Mexico and pirates with bad teeth.

But a fantasy can’t hold you at night, talk over breakfast with you in the morning and grow old with you. A fantasy doesn’t listen when you talk about your dreams, your mother, your fears. A fantasy doesn’t trust you with his utmost vulnerabilities, see you as the most beautiful woman in the world.

My husband, the graham-cracker-eater, is not perfect, but he’s perfect for me. He tells me he has wrinkles, but I just can’t see them. I’m too focused on his gorgeous eyes. They reflect his joy of his everyday life with me, our children, his work, his hobbies. They glisten with compassion over the terrible things we read in the news. And at night, when we’re together, they shine like a boy’s, a boy who is unwrapping a gift he’s been waiting for all his life. With no offence to Johnny, because I love his movies, too, but I just don’t think he could pull that off every night in my bed, script or no script. Because Johnny is not in love with me, but my husband is.

Honestly? You know what I really wanted to say to Ms. Furrow-Face when she was so patently annoyed by peanut butter?

I wanted to ask her, “When was the last time you and you husband gave or received oral sex to each other and really relished it? Not just because you were horny, but because you were doing it with the one person in the world who makes you feel that nothing could possibly be better than this?”

But sadly, she’ll never feel that. Instead, she’ll spend the next thirty-three years forcing her poor sap of a mate to have a varying lunch menu every day of the week, because that’s what she thinks he should want.

Gosh, I sure hope she enjoys those lunches. And I guess, I’ll just enjoy the screaming orgasms my husband happily provides me at least four times a week. I hope those last another thirty years, too. But when they stop and it’s time for my life to end, I really, truly hope I die in his arms, with our children around me.

Knowing that he’d be there for me, till the very last, well, that’s what’s sexy to me.

Ladies who are looking for love, please listen to me - sexy, nice men are everywhere. They’re short, they’re bald, they’re old, they’re young, they’re fat, they’re skinny, they’re smart and not-so-smart, well-dressed and badly-dressed, straight and gay. They’re construction workers or business men. They’re even posting on VOX.

To illustrate, I will outline a partial list of men here, in alphabetical order, who, if I were not already in love, or if I were younger, or older, or living in their country, or if they weren’t already attached to some other lucky (and very smart) woman, I’d make a beeline for. And no matter what shirt he’s wearing, or what he eats for lunch, I’d find him sooo attractive, just because he’s HIM:

1. Ancora Impara
2. Baria
3. BlackJavaBean
4. Crowseer
5. Himanshu Gupta
6. IlliasK
7. Jack Yan
8. Jayd
9. Kirk
10. Paxton
11. Petermcc
12. Phillhellene
13. R.G. Ryan
14. Snowy
15. Steve Betz
16. Toe-Knee

Why did I pick these sixteen men? Not because they’re pirates on a dead man’s ship. Just read their blogs and their comments on other people’s blogs, and you’ll know why. They’re compassionate, passionate, family-loving, smart, sincere, insightful. They say kind things, have a world outlook, are productive human beings and caring friends. In short, “SEX BOMBS,” every last one. And there’s more where they came from, if we only look away from our movie screens and novels and out in to the real world.

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DISCLAIMER: Don’t get upset because I’m directing this post to only my sex. I know there are foolish men out there, too, who make the same mistakes when they’re looking for a woman to love. In fact, I divorced one of them.

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