Bill the Thrill

Okay ladies, it's time to come clean on what exactly it is heterosexual, middle-class women want in a man, though I'm going to ask that we leave aside your top-ten wish lists for male physical endowment. Because let's face it, we men are born with the equipment we have, from flowing hair to wide shoulders to other things that are flowing and wide, and unless we possess the credit line and surgical team of Donald Trump, there is very little we can do about it save for a few extra push-ups and a dedication to the consumption of all things bran.

But it's the things we can change that have me a little confused, at least since Bill Clinton stormed into Toronto like a high-dollar stud making his rounds at the local horse farm, with every mare, nag, and a few well-heeled candidates for the glue factory waiting twelve hours or more to kiss and squeal over Arkansas' most notorious stallion.

It's a perplexing thing in this brave new era of the emasculated male, that while we are supposed to be honest, faithful, and just a touch submissive in an endearing, sensitive sort of way, a one man adultery machine with more legal battles and scandals behind him than a randy Enron executive on a Viagra binge seems to be the hottest, sexiest thing ever to hit this city.

The man out drew Tom Jones, for God's sake, and if it wasn't for the platoon of steely eyed secret service frisking everyone in sight, he probably would have been pelted with twice as many panties.

It started the night before, with housewives, grandmothers, giggling college girls, and a few women who looked to be battled-hardened veterans of the women's liberation wars, all lining up hours in advance, Bill Clinton's My Life in hand, hoping for a chance to spend five seconds with the world's most famous philander. It was a book signing on concert scale proportions, replete with sniffer dogs, circling helicopters, a bevy of reporters and a late morning auction of wrist bands that commanded three hundred dollars and up.

Only in Canada, you say? Hardly.

The man who has not so much written a memoir as a hundred-pound doorstop that will have readers bulking up like weight lifters by the second chapter, has been turning women into puddles of pubescent ardor across America. He is to literature what Britney Spears is to music, with the same confounding legion of fans, groupies, handlers, and bodyguards; a parade of style smothering substance that might make Paris Hilton blush.

If it were a case of eagerness for a past president, loved by many if nothing else for not having a last name that rhymes with "tush," to come back and save the world, I might understand. Hell, I'd kiss the man if he'd dispose of George Junior as effectively as he did Senior. But as much as I'd like to think people have suddenly become interested in politics and the statesmen that affect their lives, a small sampling of the political knowledge held by members of the long line of "Bill's Boy Toys" that wrapped its way around three city blocks last week would suggest otherwise. These people wouldn't know the Senate from Seattle and seem to be under the general impression that the last federal election was a neat new reality show that could have done with better casting.

Now, before you say it, this isn't sour grapes, as much as I do envy the man's hair and general ability to make anything from perjury to misplacing a Cohiba sound like a simple case of leaving the toilet seat up. It's just that having seen an entire generation of men become pussy-whipped for the greater good of humanity, it's a little galling to not only see women fawn over a liar and womanizer with the ethical instincts of a komodo dragon in heat (and in some cases actually cite those qualities as the very reason for their lust), but see it being treated as if it were a quaint little phenomenon akin to the hula hoop.

But the precedent is set, ladies, and men are nothing if not impressionable. So if your guy starts taking to this little trend with the same zeal as that bygone craze, don't get mad when you catch him coming through the door at three in the morning with a hickey the size of a turnip.

He's just trying to please.