It started with the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, and now it's progressed to this:

    Sex is slipping in the polls.

    Consider:

    First of all it seems to me people act more sexy on a street (re fashion) nowdays than they do in bedrooms. There's a large disconnect between sexual averages in advertising and media, the twice-a-week reality of suburban married life and the hits-and-Mrs. aspects of the dating scene.

    Secondly, it seems as if sex is now as much about technique and follow-the-number motions in various e-zones as anything else. The best evidence that sex now borders on just being another form of aerobics is the term used -- nobody talks about lovemaking anymore. It's either having the s-word, or in the more casual college scene, "hooking up."

    Thirdly, and though I have no scientific evidence to support this at all, it seems to me there's a lot more lesbians than there were 25 years ago. This strikes me as a markedly profound societal change; taboos loosened, the sexual marketplace opened up -- and men lost market share.

    Finally, I'm intrigued by the rise of the super-Hollywood single mom, and the technological advances that have reduced men from fathers to sperm donors. Since true futurists have to imagine the unimaginable, I predict that by the time the next millenium rolls around, cloning will have made men extinct.

    If you consider the idea of men, the current war-like oppressor class, moving to endangered species status as extremely farfetched, consider this. At the turn of the last millenium, entire hemispheres didn't even know other hemispheres existed and entire cultures (Native Americans, for instance) hadn't even invented the wheel.

    ***

    Considering that women are the superior sex, considering there are feminist professors out there who wouldn't even let me in their class, and considering women can sleep with anybody but men can only sleep with women who let them, it's probably folly for me to suggest a hierarchy of intimacy, but alleged folly was my PhD.

    Kissing. The first clue is the rule about not kissing hookers. Kissing keys the feelings, and feelings mark the difference between lovemaking and aerobics. In the dating world, what a stupid ritual the goodbye kiss. Kissing is all about hellos.

    Snuggles. Women can openly discuss the need to be held. This same sentiment makes men big babies with a return-to-mother hangup. And you're surprised sex is dropping in the polls?

    The big nasty You knew what that expression means. Now think about what that says.

   ***

    If you believe the saying "once bitten, twice shy," G.L. Marshall stands 10x shy for the decade.