CRYING NONWOLF

On a gray afternoon in late November, a man we'll call Chollie Wentworth was holding forth on one of his favorite topics— New York society. "These perennial bachelors?" he asked, ticking off the names of some well-known high rollers who have been part of the scene for years. "Frankly, my dear, they're just a bore."

Chollie tucked into his second Scotch. "There are a lot of reasons why a man might not get married," he said. "Some men never grow past sex; and for some people, marriage spoils sex. Then there's the difficult choice between a woman in her thirties who can bear you children, or a woman like Carol Petrie, who can organize your hfe.

"Mothers can also be a problem," Chollie continued. "Such is the case with X," he said, naming a multimillionaire financier who was now in his late fifties and had still not tied the knot. "He suffers from a permanent case of bimbo-itis. Still, if you're X, who are you going to bring home? Are you going to challenge your mother with a real standup woman who will disrupt the family?

"Even so," Cholhe said, leaning forward in his chair, "a lot of people are tired of these guys' commitment problems. If I were a single woman, I'd think, Why bother with these guys, when there are 296 million amusing gay men out there

who can fill a chair? I'd find a very amusing gay man who can be entertaining on a hundred topics to take me out. Why waste your time with X? Who wants to sit there and listen to him drone on about his business? To have to fawn all over him? He's old. He's too old to change. A man like X is not worth the effort. These men have cried nonwolf too many times.

"After all, it's women who decide if a man is desirable or undesirable. And if a man is never going to make the effort to get married, if he's never going to contribute. . well, I think women are fed up. And for good reason."

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1015