I had a horrible nightmare last night. I dreamt that I was single.

Most guys my age, if they’re married (especially if they have children) will on occasion fantasize about being single. Similar to our fantasies of playing for the Steelers, hitting the lottery or having full and total control of the remote, this single guy fantasy is just that – a fantasy. The reality of the situation is that most of us are very happy with our lives and wouldn’t change a thing.

That doesn’t stop us from fantasizing.

Women have similar fantasies. They’d like us to be single as well. If just for a day or two. To get us the hell away from them. The fact is that everybody fantasizes about how things would be if their lives had taken a different path.

The ability to fantasize is what separates us from dogs. That and the fact that we don’t eat our own poop.

If you are one of the many who have fantasies about a single life in which you get nothing but sex, sex, sex, with younger and younger partners until your entire existence is one big long scene from a porn movie, I’d like to gently shake you now. It’s time to wake up. 

If the commercials on TV and in print are any indicator, life as a middle-aged single man would not be very good.

Sorry to be a fantasy buzz-kill.

Oh sure. There would be a lot more televised sports and a lot less holding the purse. But if all we married, settled guys really took a look around, we’d realize that sex, the reason we’re on the planet in the first place, would not be easy as a forty-something single guy.

The other night, as I was sitting, watching TV, a commercial aired in which a guy about my age, but better looking, was working out on a stair climber at the gym. “Boy,” I thought to myself, “I’ve got to get back to the gym. I need to get back to that routine I had where I walked for an hour and got nowhere.” While this guy in the commercial was walking but getting nowhere, a young girl walked behind him. He smiled, she smiled, and the announcer said, “With all your wrinkles, she’s probably wondering if you’re late for your Bingo game, Grandpa.”

My what?

My wrinkles?

What followed was a sales pitch for skin crème for men. Sometime in the last two decades, while I was aging, the makeup industry ran out of crap to fool middle-aged women into buying. Did they panic? No. They just turned their gun sights at middle-aged men.

“Are you taking care of your skin?” the announcer asked. “Does your skin make you look older than you are? Are age spots, smile lines and wrinkles coming between you and success?”

Success?

What the hell does that mean?

The ad went on to pitch me on buying some goop to rub onto my face in hopes that young girls at the gym will be fooled into thinking I’m not an old pervert and will, they all but guarantee, sleep with me. Well, I’ll be sleeping. They’ll be wide awake. They’re younger. They don’t require as much sleep. The point is, that without slathering my face with this ointment, I’ll be wrinkled and immediately recognizable for what I am – A MAN.

Not only does age bring with it spots, smile lines and wrinkles, but it has also brought me a certain wisdom that tells me that if having those imperfections of the skin stops anyone from wanting to get closer, perhaps “success” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In short, if I have to wear makeup to be a stud, I think I’ll stay here on the couch.

Sorry, coeds, but I just don’t have the energy it takes to keep up with you. Oh, I’m fine as far as “success” stamina goes. I just don’t have the energy to visit the makeup mirror four times a day to check my base coat.

If you’re my age and you’re currently wearing anti-aging crème, makeup or Preparation-H under your eyes to hide those bags (and you know who you are), I hope for your sake it makes you feel better about yourself. I wish you nothing but success.

And if you’re done with that crème, could you pass it my way? I’ve got a little fantasy I’m working up and I’d like to get rid of some wrinkles.