My Secret Sorrow

You really know how to hurt a (straight) guy Mona. In pointing out that I can never “have a taste of the cake”, you have touched upon my secret sorrow, but of course I forgive you. To be honest, I happily grooved on I Spy for decades without a clue that I was, like, missing something. It never occurred to me that the sharply chiseled pectorals of Culp or Cosby would arouse the prurient interest of anyone (female, male, gay, straight, animal, vegetable or mineral). I see now that it was a colossal failure of my imagination. Just one of my many blind spots.

I didn’t perceive Robert Culp as the type to raise the temperature of women, at least relative to some of his acting contemporaries. He seemed too much his own man, too cerebral and unique, appealing to a select group of men and women with taste and discernment (like me, to pick a random example). While I didn’t lie awake at night stressing out over it, I guessed it was his lack of raw sex appeal that kept him out of the upper echelon of his profession, though he has certainly done very well for himself, given his “handicap”.

But then I started poking around this forum and began to hear faint but unmistakable rhythmic heavy breathing coming from all directions. My first reaction was, “what the hell is that?!” Then I began to grasp its meaning, understand, and finally embrace it, even though I will forever be on the outside looking in. And there you have my sorrow.

However, there are compensations. There are always compensations. I can happily call up images of bathing suit clad guest stars like Diana Hyland, Sarah Marshall, Vivienne Ventura, Diana Muldaur and others (I’ll stop before I have to start breathing into a paper bag), and feel better about myself. Tragically, none of them ever appeared “shirtless” but, as we know, life is not fair.

Jimmy