You spend twenty years in a marriage, and you get used to a certain level of… service. Whoopie three, four times a day. Your body gets programmed. When that gets cut off, the energy doesn’t just evaporate. It needs an outlet.
So what does a man like me do? I build a rotation. A schedule. A quiet, efficient, and completely necessary little system. I’ve got my Tuesday appointment, my Wednesday commitment, my Friday friend. I’m still getting laid three, four times a week. It’s just with various people. I’m cycling the inventory.
And here’s the joke. Here’s the beautiful, ugly irony that the universe loves to throw in your face. This system, this beautiful, steady flow of sex, it completely kills the goddamn chase.
I go on a date—like this Thursday night, with a smart, beautiful, fifty-year-old woman, energized, intelligent, full head of hair. She’s got all the surface-level components. And I’m sitting there, looking at her, and I realize: I have zero game. I have no drive. I have no hunger. Why? Because I’m already fed. I’ve already gotten my whoopie four times this week. My appetite is satisfied. So I sit there, thinking, Why should I make an effort? What’s the point of this theater?
That’s the first half of the joke. The second half is her.
She’s divorced, she’s single, she’s been out of the game for fourteen years. And she’s giving me a pat hug goodbye. A gentle, polite, and completely passionless dismissal. She’s giving me the “nice talk,” the long conversation about her feelings, her past, her intellectual pursuits, all while offering the physical reward of… a high-five.
And you think, Christ. Look at me. I’m 6’4″, full set of hair, gold card, broad shoulders, probably the most interesting damn thing she’s talked to all week. And she’s giving me a pat hug.
Why?
Because she’s doing the exact same goddamn thing I am. She’s on rotation.
She’s not sitting at home, sexually starved for five months, waiting for a man to buy her goddamn dinner. She’s getting laid somewhere else. She has her own secondary partner. She has her own James on speed dial.
She’s getting the free sex with the “Side Meat”—the guy who comes over, doesn’t ask for dinner, doesn’t expect courtship, doesn’t require a story—and she’s saving the dating ritual for the guys she wants to impress. She wants you, the nice-looking guy with the gold card, to buy the goddamn steak, to pay for the wine, to put in the effort, even though her body isn’t hungry. She’s already been “plucked,” probably on Wednesday night, by a guy who drove a beat-up Ford and didn’t even remember her middle name.
And that’s the whole beautiful, ugly, and completely honest state of modern dating. Everyone is a player. Everyone has a sideline. They’re all running a beautiful, efficient, and completely necessary little black-market economy of sex and attention.
And the irony? I’m not mad at her. I’m thankful. Because I know that I’m always going to be somebody’s “James.” I’m always going to be the “side meat” guy, the one who gets the free sex and avoids the ten-thousand-dollar expense of buying a woman dinner three times before she even lets you hold her hand.
I’d rather be the solution to her problem than the sucker who pays for the goddamn privilege. And I’ll always be thankful that I’ve been in the position to be the one who benefits from the goddamn broken system.
