I know what I’d rather have

This week we have learned from new research conducted by the University of Rochester that males are hard-wired to prefer sex to food. According to a piece on the website of The Independent, assistant professor David Portman of the team carrying out research into a sample of a species of microscopic roundworms called C.elegans said that the results “… adds to a growing body of evidence that sex-specific regulation of gene expression may play an important role in neural plasticity and, consequently, influence differences in behaviours – and in disease susceptibility – between the sexes.”

See here for a link to said article – THE INDEPENDENT

My instinctive response to such media reports is always sceptical.

Looking at the issue from the viewpoint of someone who is marginally past the first flush of youth – using my breadth of experience and knowledge gained from fifty years of studying, and trying to live harmoniously with, the female of the species – I have found it best to adopt a slightly different approach.

Taking account of the ‘contrary’ nature of the average female’s mind and thought processes, for the past fifteen years I have deliberately set out to eat and drink well (I shall not here use the phrase ‘to excess’) – that is, instead of putting myself through successive excruciating dietary and exercise regimes in a potentially losing battle to retain what figure and fitness I can – in a desperate effort to attract feminine attention and interest.

I put down my considerable success in this regard to the fact that – almost counter-intuitively – women tend to be intrigued to the point of obsession by the fact that any heterosexual male with a pulse would rather be at a trough than in their particular sack.

The effect over the past decade when – offered sexual favours – I have politely declined and asked whether instead I could possibly have an iced bun and cup of tea with two sugars has often needed to be seen to be believed. I can think of at least two occasions when I have been physically assaulted (and/or trussed up with duct tape in an office chair) and unceremoniously ravished without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

What worries me slightly in all this is the confusion it breeds as to what ‘floats the average woman’s boat’ in terms of male attractiveness.

Take George Clooney. I can see that, in a sort of Cary Grant/ Clark Gable sort of way he presents as handsome man possessed of a certain charisma of the masculine variety.

However, for the life of me, I just cannot understand what has been prompting tens of female media columnists these past few weeks to throw their inhibitions to the wind and tell the world that he would cause them to leave their husbands and/or partners in an instant, given half the opportunity.

Still, I guess that ultimately in human relationships, as with so much of life, at the end of the day, we tend to stick with what works for us.

Come and get me, ladies …