Where have all the gentlemen gone?

There was a hit song in the ’70s, `Where have all the flowers gone, long time past summertime’. Last night, I went to an exclusive "All Single Girls" dinner at the apartment of a close girlfriend. We covered a lot of ground conversation-wise but the main grouse was the paucity of decent eligible men, not just in the city but in the country. We were flummoxed by the fact that none of us, and we were five in all, knew even one eligible man we could introduce to the other. What was the minimum expectation we had of our dream, or ideal, man? Intellectually and physically compatible and someone you can respect — not a tall order by any standard you would agree. Yet, unlike the Southern belle of yore, none of us had a gentleman caller — I must admit having read recently that the male child partiality had skewed the statistics to favour a woman, in a nine females to ten male ratio, in India. Jolly good, was my mental response, imagining the dawn of a new era where nubile, young nymphets could have a virtual`Swayamvara’, with a few to spare for the `young at heart’, not-so young ones. But the conversation at dinner had me floored. They all enquired about the single’s party I allegedly held at home as reported by a fellow scribe. I told them that it had to remain a figment of the imagination as the single women crossed 50 of the `creme de la creme’ — the single men barely made 10, since less than a handful, it rang the curtain down on that one! When our charming hostess recounted a close encounter of the third kind with a male acquaintance who challenged her singledom with the question: `So what do you do for sex?’ We gasped in mock shock, horror and genuine disdain. She decided to just ignore the question when pat came the next: `Do you use an electronic gizmo?’ The question had us all fall off our chairs in unison — talk of umbrage, we went `rigor mortis’ in embarrassment and rage — how could one of `us’ be spoken to thus, by one of `them’. Talk about the theory that men come from Mars and women from Venus,there was a lot of truth to that one. We decided, then and there, that one should never let the first question fly by so lightly — instead we should put it down softly but firmly. "It’s too personal, excuse me", and traipse off.

Thereafter we dwelt at length on President Clinton and his peccadillos — except for me, all the other girls forgave him his infidelities. I only held out on Monica being `too young’ and pudgy, that he could have chosen better with lovelies that included half of Washington, all of Hollywood and New York thrown in for fun. Note no moral high ground here just a moan on the actual choice. Then we all had a good "meow" about jolly hockey stick, Hillary.The crowning glory was when we got around to the late Princess of Wales — everyone thought her beautiful but manipulative and pitied `poor Charles’. She deserved everything she got. `Live by the paparazzi, die by them’, was the general opinion. When I dared to come to the princess’ defence by saying a woman cannot be judged by `GoodWife-Bad Wife’ standards as `one man’s food would make another’s poison’ but should be judged by how good a mother she was, I was pooh-poohed into silence.THE evening ended with everyone nostalgically wishing a man into their lives but countering it with they are all mama’s boys. No wonder the men have it so easy. When a group of independently wealthy, attractive, communicative, intelligent, strong, single women are willing to forgive `Bill’ and `Charles’, their little strayings and indiscretions, to blame it all on the spouse — what chance does anyone else have? The men have us eating out of their palms and know it Hallelujah! They are the stronger sex and that’s the way we want it! — UT, ST, RB and JA thank you for helping to clarify what I’ve known all along: We can live with them, we just can’t live without them. That’s for certain — gentlemen callers please write Post Box …. HASTA LA VISTA!