Two weeks.
I figure that the single men of Ocean City have about two
more weeks to get their “game faces” on for the summer.
As businesses await the arrival of the “summer help” and
the palm trees are planted so as to make restaurants with a coastal (highway)
view look more tropical, the local Lotharios of Ocean City are preparing to
have yet another feast or famine summer feeding season.
According to my single sources, the ratio of available men
to women in this town makes Ocean City seem a bit like “Boys Town”, if you know
what I mean. Perhaps it goes back to the assumption that most men would rather
be committed to an institution than commit to the institution of marriage.
Maybe as one of my sources cited “the good ones are all taken, and what am I to
do but go for the fresh meat that comes into town each summer.”
Fresh meat. I always found it interesting when men
referred to chasing women as if the women were pieces of meat that they would
chew up and spit out once they caught them. Obviously, this comparison holds up
and is the reason why the “men are like dogs” analogies are about as prevalent
as wife beaters and “jorts” (jean shorts) at a NASCAR race.
Men don’t exactly age well, especially when you live like
we do here on this peninsula. It’s bad enough that the winter months have
gotten us to levels of whiteness that is far beyond pastey, we also have to
work out those winter warmers that we have been sipping on and get rid of our
gizzard necks, and our bowl-full-of-jelly stomachs.
And that would actually require working out, which as I’ve
stated before, I refuse to do because I hate the sub-culture of health clubs.
It’s a scary world of spandex and guys that still wear Drakkar talking about
Lat Pull Downs and saying things like “Howmuchyabench?”
I’ll take the gizzard neck everyday of the week and twice
on Sunday.
With all that being said, the “Small Town Playboy” is a
dying breed in some ways, but here, where the summer never ends, they seem to
thrive. Each May, flocks of women that are either here to make some money or
that are on vacation come to Ocean City to forget about their lives and meet a
sweet talking fella with a good tan that will “make ‘em feel purty” in ways
that the guy in cubicle 14 or the frat boy at the Delta house can’t do.
It’s that type of relationship that is just merely “fill
in the blank.”
The Small Town Playboys know the right things to say, and
they can wow the ladies when they take them to the spot where everybody knows
their name. The “newbies” don’t know any better, and would they care if they
did? For many of the Russians that come to town, a small town playboy can be a
high roller even if he is a line cook with the current rate of conversion for
Rubles to the American dollar. The same old methods work because it’s always a
new subject.
Honestly, this happens every summer and the story stays
the same despite the fact that most of the time the players change. Yet, as
stated above, there are many in this area that haven’t given up their “STP”
status even though the normal window for such shenanigans has long since
closed.
Granted, I’m not trying to judge anyone for being married
or not being married cause lord knows that has it’s pros and cons, I’m simply
trying to understand a dynamic that seems to be very popular around here, and
this is an area where relationships are quite off the cuff to say the least.
For instance, some of the people that are married in this
area have an interesting dichotomy in their family structure. Some include:
opposite schedules, always together, never together, faithful and happy, not
even close to faithful and happy, convenience arrangements, ones that keep
going due to lack of prenup, first marriages, fourth marriages, married without
getting married marriages, and one of my favorites, married to their work
marriages.
Are the aging STP’s of this area just living in the
moment, are they flat out “commitment-a-phobes” or have they just found a way
to fill their instinctive notion to “hunt for fresh meat” without having to
deal with all the potential hardships that come with it?
Perhaps the idea that there will be a new batch of
visitors coming next week keeps the Small Town Playboy thinking that his queen
might be around the corner. Does that reap large amounts of regret later as the
“girl of the week” goes home or is it such a spontaneous lifestyle that it’s a
“out of sight out of mind” thing that is blacked out from memory like your high
school prom?
Remember Woody Allen’s movie back in 1965 called “What’s
New Pussycat?” Peter O’Toole was the cinematic Lothario who had long womanized
but was trying to stay faithful to his fiancé, but to his chagrin, all the
beautiful that Woody Allen cast in the movie, seemed to just fall madly in love
with him.
The movie ended when his fiancé and all the other
“pussycats” that were obsessed with him all showed up at the Chateau Chantelle
on the same weekend.
For the small town playboy of Ocean City, the summer
months are a free for all of sorts, but the winter months can be the Chateau
Chantelle for some local Lotharios.
No one wants to end up the creepy guy in the bar, hitting
on the young girls with his old moves. And if it is in fact true that if we as
men are just going to get fatter and balder, perhaps the question is not if we
can keep our cool like Peter O’Toole?
Maybe its do we want to end up fat and happy or fat and
alone?
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