Once, being a never married, middle-aged male was considered a pretty good gig. Instead of becoming part of the food chain one unfurled the Jolly Roger. Instead of capitulating to the budding need for ritual one slipped a condom on the male/female war zones and ran with the wolves. There were the true romantic role models: the sophisticated Henry Higgins; the dashing James Bond; that all-time single good guy, Superman.

Lifelong bachelors were considered urbane, worldly, self-aware, blissfully free, with unlimited options. They were even objects of envy.

Good friends from San Francisco married this winter atop cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Handsome as matinee idols, the two’s endearing sense of promise relieved the landscape like a sunburst. Later, wandering through their reception I felt like the Last of the Mohicans.

It was startling how many urban friends were now married, even with children. Couples abounded, sticking to each other like Shell Pest Strips to flies. How’d I end up so old and with a major case of cultural arthritis?

Today, the thought of a never married, heterosexual man at age 45 produces a predictable reaction, at least one I overhear from time to time:

"There must be something wrong with him."

Perhaps exacerbated by a culture, in which various degrees of male bashing have flourished in the post-feminist era, the idea that a never-married man is somehow dysfunctional appears to have gained more than just a toehold. Is he a committed phobic? Is he emotionally stunted? Is he sexually immature? Is he a woman hater? Surely there must be something wrong with him.

Not at all: I just live at Lake Tahoe.

In a land where single men outnumber single women by seemingly insurmountable odds, the lovelorn cry of "Up here, there just aren’t as many women," echoes a sentiment universal among snow country bachelors.

"I was visiting friends in San Diego," muses Dave Wilderotter, 50+, a lifelong bachelor and 25+ year resident of Tahoe’s North Shore. "It was a Disneyland of women. Girls actually asked you out or bought you a drink. At Tahoe, I just don’t recall flocks of women, especially those who would take care of the man."

Wilderotter, popular owner of a chain of North Shore ski shops, admits that as friends started families he placed his energy towards his business which hindered other commitments. Yet his thoughts reverberate a taken-for- granted idea of just how lopsided the balance between the sexes is on the North Shore. When asked to estimate the ratio of men to women, Wilderotter guesses, "I’d say we outnumber them probably four to one."

He is, of couse, almost certainly right. But things might change, you never know.