Push Up Love

by Gregory Zeorlin of The Sticky Philosopher

I scrutinized countless GQ magazines before I could publicly acknowledge having no place with the beautiful people.

I’ll never be a model for GQ, a fashionable men’s magazine. Lack of a square jaw disqualified me at birth. Even if I sought being on the magazine cover, my understated muscle groups would not pass with the image makers and beauty judges. It’s OK since I would not like shaving all the hair off my body just to appear on the cover.

My inadequacies become more clear as I page through old GQ issues in the waiting room at the tire store. Baldness and gray hair compound my low self-esteem moments. The Grecian Formula will not help. I’m lucky to have produced offspring considering all that goes against me. Thankfully the good genes hiding in me lined up with my wife’s to produce two fine progeny.

I scrutinized countless GQ magazines before I could publicly acknowledge having no place with the beautiful people. I’m such an outcast I don’t even buy low profile tires for my 14-year-old mini-van with 202,000 miles. And the television in the tire store waiting room continues to degrade me. Those old guys on TV get to hug young women with big Victoria’s Secret smiles.

What secret makes some mature men appealing to women young enough to be their daughters? Surely this is part of Darwin’s theory of natural attraction. The interest of a 20 to 30-year-old woman in her prime to a man 30 or 40 years older than her makes sense. Such couples have much in common physically, emotionally and intellectually. It’s similar to all the romantic relationships that develop between 20-year-old males and 65-year-old women. Obviously, I can’t comprehend the complexities of human nature.

It’s a mystery, how men in their 50’s, 60’s and beyond repeatedly marry younger women. Is this simply about financial security for a young woman in exchange for her Victoria’s Secret smile? Could a Viagra prescription, a subscription to GQ Magazine and ample equity insure a man is never too old for younger women? If so, his current woman could very well age right out their home. Fortunately Botox and breast implants buy a little more time for women. So will the older man eventually notice another younger dame to replace his replacement?

Don’t worry, a crass, plain-talking average male like me can’t know much about love. I only know what Oscar Hammerstein once told me, “There is nothin’ like a dame, nothin’ in the world, there is nothin’ you can name that is anythin’ like a dame!”