IN PRAISE OF MONOGAMY (YOU HEARD ME RIGHT!)

I've always been a one woman kinda guy. Well . . . not always. In my early thirties, I found myself in the throes of a premature midlife crisis. Feeling my best years were behind me (If only I knew then what I know now -- HA!), I lamented the loss of my youth.

For years I'd been in a committed relationship. While the bloom was most certainly off the rose, it was comfortable and satisfying to find myself with a woman who knew my many peccadilloes, idosyncrasies & character flaws, yet still chose to have sex with me. Yes. I was satisfied. No. More than satisfied. Content! Then I got the itch.

A Wall Street stockbroker, lunchtime found me prowling the streets of Lower Manhattan like a wolf. No matter where I looked, there they were: short & buxom; long & lean. Blonde, brunette & redhead. Irish, Hispanic & Asian . . . WOMEN!!! My God!! The streets of Manhattan were brimming with women; beautiful women -- young; not-so-young; somewhat older; older yet, but still pretty well preserved -- WOMEN!!!

Where had they all come from?? It was as if I'd been walking around wearing a pair of welder's goggles for the past ten years -- oblivious to the beauty which surrounded me. It didn't seem fair. How could any man, finding himself in a garden of such splendor, content himself with a single rose? Choose only one? Rubbish! Mother Nature didn't intend it to be so! What species, other than man, selected only a single mate for life? Well, lobsters. (Ever take a good look at a female lobster?) I'd been suckered. Swallowed an old puritan bill of goods hook, line & sinker. But no more! I'd cast off the yoke of monogamy; belly up to the feast. Absolutely. I'd read Henry Miller.

I lie awake at night grinning. Imagining the new life I was about to embark upon. A life free of constraints & inhibitions; of pure carnality & shameless debauchery -- a combination of the orgy scene from "Caligula," and an old Frank Sinatra flick. Before I knew it, I was juggling four women: my steady, a girl who worked in the HR department at my firm (talk about throwing caution to the wind), a female commodities trader, and a self-employed beautician who did bikini waxes out of her West Village loft. Quite an assortment.

I felt virile. Alive. Like a young Hugh Hefner. Then I discovered something curious -- something I'd forgotten in my ten years of monogamy. My new relationships weren't like my old, "comfortable" one. These new women were a different breed. Take sex for instance -- oh, they were up for the perfunctory grope & makeout sessions -- but as far as doin' the deed? . . . They wanted to take it "slow." No. These women wanted to "do things." Other things. They wanted to go to concerts & Broadway plays; feed the ducks in Central Park; make ceramics.

I hadn't bargained for this. One minute I was rollerblading in Battery Park with one; the next dodging rush hour traffic to get another to a gynecologist appointment; the next heading up state for an apple picking excursion with a third. It was maddening. Not only was I not getting any sex from these women, I was so worn out from the vortex of activity: ceramics; ice skating; glass blowing; fruit picking; line dancing; parasailing -- that I was too exhausted to have sex with the only women who was willing to indulge me in the first place: my steady. How I missed our old routine: we'd hit our favorite restaurant, then the sheets; afterward, each retiring to our own seperate side of the bed (me to watch TV; her to work on a crossword puzzle). It was bliss!

And so you live and learn: a good woman is hard to find. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The grass isn't always greener on the other side. And making your own pottery & glassware isn't all it's cracked up to be.