I’m in an airport right now watching Tiger Woods recite a scripted, stilted apology to the world on CNN.

Apparently, he is sorry for “being selfish.” I guess “being selfish” is shorthand for “banging a boatload of bitches.” He looks pallid, almost wan, like he’s been taking Michael Jackson black-be-gone pills. His mom is sitting there, arms staunchly folded, looking sternly Phillipino.

Among other things, he says that he had felt entitled, after working so hard in life, to give in to all the “temptation” around him.

By a strange bit of serendipity, I am eating an Apple, bite marks skirting around the edge of the sticker….

Tiger keeps reading as if an automaton, apologizing to the golf community, the children of the world, unborn fetuses, and everyone else whose world view has been totally subverted by the sloppy swinging of Woods’ wood.

Now Wolf and the Situation Room are having a ‘Brady Bunch’-style panel of talking heads discussing the whys and the whatnots. Pat “O’Let’s Get Crazy” Brian is one of the “experts,” which is hilarious and depressing.

The panel is discussing the sincerity of the apology and whether or not Tiger has changed. I, for one, truly believe that Tiger has changed. As a matter of fact, I would bet my life that Tiger Woods will NEVER, EVER cheat on his wife with a Chili’s waitress again.

He will probably upgrade to an Applebee’s hostess.

I mean, he is DEFINITELY going to cheat again. Let’s face it, the course of the history of politics, art, and war has been chartered by powerful men sticking their peepees — or attempting to stick their peepees — into forbidden fruit.

So, to understand Tiger and his skank-fetish, it might help to look at some of the causes of male infidelity in general…..

There is a universe of notions about ‘Why men cheat.‘

Inside this giant circle are the different permutations of cheater. There are theories on ‘Why married men cheat,’ with more specific explanations of ‘Why wealthy, successful married men cheat’ and ‘Why black men cheat,’ AND, in a tiny subset of venn diagram, there exists ‘Why the fuck did Tiger Woods cheat on his hot supermodel wife with a bunch of dumb white trash?!’

Does Tiger’s lonely sliver hold the key to all the outlying circles of the kingdom of infidelity? Why did this man, who has everything, bone a Chili’s waitress in the back of a Buick? And then sundry sluts everywhere else? Is there a hole this golfer won’t play? When he gave in to “temptation,” did he eat too much of the Apple from the Tree of Knowledge and now nothing can sate his appetite?

In the ongoing maelstrom, the women wonder ‘Why the fuck did he cheat?,‘ while most men only think ‘Why the fuck did he get married?’

The reason the Tiger drama has struck such a chord with America is because it taps into every woman’s fear that her man may, in fact, be a cheater.

So… Is he?

Well, the good news is that men don’t always cheat. The bad news is that men almost always want to cheat.

However, the problem with all these easy statements — including the nauseatingly popular “Men are as available as their options!” axiom — is that they don’t offer the reason why.

So, if we accept that all men do, indeed, WANT to cheat, we can start to hone in on the genesis of why.

For some cheaters, maybe the ‘why’ seems obvious.

Like one-balled wonder Lance Armstrong: “I have one testicle so I’ll show you a man!”

Typical Hollywood actor: “My mom was a drunk and I fear abandonment so let me spork you… and you… and you!”

Tiger Woods: “I was an OCD golfer in high school and longingly short-stroked to tit-laden blondes who thought I was nerdish and blackish.”

But, alas, these could just be excuses. Maybe Lance would have been a prick with three balls. Plus, Hitler allegedly had one ball and he exterminated the Jews — he didn’t hump Hollywood starlets. Clearly, these reasons are anecdotal. Something MORE must be at the cheating core of the mass of men, right?

Is it, as some “Iron John” followers believe, that modern men are so removed from their macho saber-tooth-hunting ways that plowing women is the only way, in today’s world, to assert masculinity? These neo-masculinists believe that the urge is curbed by doing manly man shit, but it seems that men with six-packs who go on warrior weekends and build stone houses are still mostly assholes. Ernest Hemmingway tough-guy’ed his turkey neck into most any supple “v” that was willing.

So, are men just psychologically damaged by the pressures of society? Well sure, the neural highway connecting a man’s cerebellum to his celery stick is full of fucked-up potholes, detours, and Mexicans on the off ramp selling oranges, but, again, these explanations becomes way too varied and anecdotal. The reason for rampant male infidelity throughout the history of the world MUST be more systemic, right?

Ok, let’s start at the beginning. Adam and Eve.

Adam was a man. He lived in paradise. He was safe. Completely. With a push, Eve introduced him into the “world” which is harsh and violent and begins and ends in suffering. She betrayed him. As a former mayor of D.C. might say, “The bitch set him up!”

Of course, there was no actual Adam and Eve. It’s a myth. But the true meaning of the ‘Garden of Eden’ is rarely expanded upon.

The real metaphor of Genesis, at once obvious and obscure, is childbirth.

The ‘Garden of Eden‘ is the womb. ‘Eve‘ is mother.

After nine months in a womb of Eden, a woman betrays man by pushing him out into mortality. Harsh lights, cold steel, shrill screams. His connection to God, his paradise, is lost with the snip of a cord.

This woman is now a con artist, holding him and saying, ‘This whole umbilical thing was a set-up. It was always meant to end. You’re on your own now! So go to that Tree, take that Apple, and cut your teeth on it, boy.’

Birth. The first and ultimate betrayal by a woman.

We never forget it and, because of that, we never, ever, fully trust. And we silly men can never understand the fathomless, unconditional love of birthing another person. Of creating life. We can only understand protecting it for reasons that we don’t fully comprehend. So we are left with that paradoxical, initial trauma of birth. And then a life of vigilance and being hard, and fighting wars, and defending what is ours.

Yet underneath that armor, we have a vague memory. It is antithetical to this truculent existence. It is our alpha and omega. Inside of a woman. It is the lure of the womb, the Garden of Eden. Mysterious, unseen, calling to us like Sirens from salty cliffs.

And once we arrive, the deceptive opiates of our orgasm create, however briefly, a snapshot of amniotic oblivion. The unbearable lightness of being. For a moment, we are engulfed and surrounded in safe and unconditional love. The flatlined thoughts and the pounding blood in our ears mimic that liquid sarcophagus whose benevolent whooshing tricked us into believing that once, in the beginning, life actually WAS a paradise.

And then, we collapse into you…. After a few seconds of vulnerability, too soon, we are back.

We open our eyes.

And all we see is Apples.

Happy ‘Valentine’s Day’ everybody!   In honor of this holiday, may I express my befuddled amazement at the fact that “Romance” hasn’t yet been outed as the cheap street crack that it is.

Because, let’s face it, romance is essentially crack cocaine for chicks. And much like crack, It creates an addiction that makes living simply day to day virtually unbearable. Watch any lonely woman on a Friday night desperately browsing the shelves of a video store; she may as well be saying to the cashier: “Hey, baby, I’ll suck your dick for a Twilight DVD….I WILL SUCK YOUR DICK!!!”

It always amazes me how women fall hook, line, and sinker for the whole notion of “Romance.” It’s like Charlie Brown and his sisyphean challenge of trying to kick that fucking football. He (as well as the viewing audience) strongly suspects that Lucy is going to pull the pigskin away, but the “blockhead” charges full steam ahead in his awful brown shoes, visions of glorious victory dancing inside his stupid, bald cranium.

Inevitably, Lucy snatches the ball and Charlie Brown sails through the air. His line lips shake and vibrate as he lets forth a blood-curdling scream of existential pain and disappointment until he crashes to earth with a brutal and onomatopoeic “THUNK!”

Much like Charlie Brown keeps trusting that Lucy won’t be a fucking bitch, millions of women congregate every monday to watch “The Bachelor” with hope in their hearts, although the sad reality is that — after 13 seasons — NONE of the Bachelors are currently married to any of the women they chose as the “the ONE.”

Partially because the whole conceit of “the ONE” person that can make you happy is Trigger-Palin-retarded!  My mom has been happily married for 40 years and she told me, “Relationships are WORK, not soul-mates and sparkly vampires. Love is when you can take a Clorox Bleach Pen to your man’s tighty-whities and erase a skidmark without batting an eyelash.” Amen, mom, amen.

Still, almost every woman in the history of foreverness has uttered the ubiquitous phrase “I think he just might be the one.” Although that sentence is at once a modern and progressively strong expression of woman’s ability to choose, it is also completely fucking TPR (i.e., Trigger-Palin-Retarded).

Concepts like “THE ONE” don’t actually mean anything substantive; well, other than whatever unicorn-laden-Narnia-like world they conjure up in the romantic’s mind. The phrase is an expression of science fiction and nothing else.

A woman, upon having intense eye contact with some hunky new prospect, might actually think: “I hope he’s the one!” Unbeknownst to her, that same prospect is probably thinking, “I hope she swallows!”

When men use the phrase “the ONE” regarding women, it usually goes something like, “She’s the ONE woman I worry might say something to my wife…” OR “Wow, you know, I think she just might be the ONNNNE MINUTE — WHO’S THAT BITCH THAT JUST WALKED IN THE ROOM?!”

Through some strange cosmic tear in the space-time continuum, this overarching cognitive dissonance doesn’t stop hordes of women from weekly making popcorn and snuggling and imagining themselves getting handed the final rose at the ceremony. And for some bizarre reason, they look at shows like “The Bachelor” as viable paradigms for what love is and can’t believe it when their own relationships fail miserably.

“He was sooo amazing in the beginning!”

Yeah, well, that’s because he was FAKING it, sweetheart.

Look, ladies, it crushed us as well when we learned that you faked orgasms. You fake coming, we fake carats. We both do it for the sole purpose of making the other person feel better, but both sexes are equally counterproductive and TPR in this regard.

Now this is all not to say that, as a guy, you should pin your girlfriend down and fart on her face to quell any and all sense of romance. You don’t need to purposely and violently squash any idea she might have that you’re a romantic character in a Nicolas Sparks novel, but you also don’t need to pretend that you like Walt Whitman and glittery Cullens in order to maintain a relationship with her.

And you definitely don’t need to take her to some epicene movie like “Valentine’s Day,” particularly when you could be supporting your country by masturbating to the Olympic female mogul skiiers. God Bless America…. and Canada too…. and, oooooh, some of the Ukrainians….

Here’s the great PARADOX of the female obsession with romance: as much as women believe in romance and worship at the chintzy-smelling altar of all things fairy tale and epic, they actually have a greater capacity for real love than we silly men will ever have. They are compassionate and take care of us in ways that we can barely appreciate and rarely reciprocate. For as long as their entire lifetime, they can file away their swashbuckling image of you and, most of the time, completely accept you for the schleppy fuck-up that you actually turned out to be.

As my mom said, women have the type of compassion and love where they can pick up their lovers’ ratty underpants and erase skidmarks and STILL think he’s “THE ONE.” Although men aren’t ‘romantic’ at all, do you think they have the capacity to love like that … at all?

Men are much more prone to say something akin to the following: “I loved her sooo much…. But then she FARTED in front of me! I mean, what the hell is that?!!! I didn’t hear her fart or anything but I could smell it, and, even though I was farting around the same time, I knew she farted because it had a completely different odor. It was disgusting! It was just SUCH a turn-off that I had to immediately break up with her by email.”

In truth, we GUYS are the hopeless romantics. We are the ones who can’t imagine our ladies being anything but perfect and angelic, while at the same time we deride them for their sappy movies, books and “foolish” ideas about love and romance. Guys, let’s be honest, we kind of suck and we’re kind of hypocrites regarding this.

So, for Valentine’s Day, if you see your girl getting all twitterpated by concepts like love and trust and ‘HE WENT TO JARED’S,” just give her a break. She’s still gonna take care of you. She will always have the magic ability to juggle the Clorox Bleach Pen and the Edward obsession.

But, ladies, I hope that this day at least is sans skidmarks.

As for what happens tonight, well to each their own….

When I was six, I got a ‘Stretch Armstrong’ doll after much begging and cajoling of the parental unit.

I think Santa had fucked up that year and given me a v-neck sweater, so I blubbered and stamped my feet until my folks, out of guilt or exhaustion, finally conceded and allowed me a rare off-season present. They even chauffeured me in the dilapidated station wagon to my childhood mecca, Toys ‘R Us.

In his glossy box at Toys R’ Us, Stretch Armstrong looked like the answer to all of my action-figure needs. In retrospect, his black bikini briefs, golden locks, muscular physique and malleable rubber body made him the paragon of Turkish-bath-loitering Chelsea queen, but at age 6, Stretch was the answer to the void in my soul.

My GI Joes were in bad shape. Their fuzzy little afros looked post-chemo and most of their Kung Fu grip fingers were missing, like maybe Duke had gambled away his digits in drunken bouts of five-finger fillet. Their phalanges had been reduced to curled and lonely index fingers. In short, Duke and his team of Joes looked like Nam vets working at saw mills.

Alas, no worries! NEW Stretch Armstrong– with his helmet of blonde coif and fresh smell of packaged polyurethane — was going to remedy the existential angst brought on by the demise of my dolls. At six inches and bullet-proof, Stretch would be the toy to end all toys.

Although I usually would try to milk my parents for all they were worth whenever we entered a Toys R’ Us, this time I only had eyes for Stretch. I bee-lined, breathless, to the shelf in the back middle of the store, grabbed him on tip-toes, and held him aloft like a conquering hero as my hand-me-down ‘Garanimal’ coduroys happily chafed away until my arrival at the register.

My periphery couldn’t distract me. I didn’t even ask my pushover mom for one of those bouncy “superballs” that I would normally want and then get home and throw against the wall, where it would immediately get lost behind a piece of heavy polyester furniture. Fuck that, I was on a mission.

I marched to the checkout line and my dad handed me a $20 bill so I could make the purchase all by myself. It was the first purchase I ever made and, more importantly, I think the single greatest moment of my life….

About three weeks later, that sucky piece of shit sprang a leak.

Thick jelly started oozing out from his armpits. It was red and viscous and it smelled like dead frogs.

When it first happened, I tried to delicately duct-tape the tears in the rubber, like some mini-MacGuyver. But the rips developed all over his body: his kneecaps, his groin, his shoulders. No matter how hard I tried, the end result looked like Stretch had been held hostage and beaten in the joints with a lead pipe. My Joes would watch in their perches, fingerless and silently smirking.

I continued to try, in vain, to make him do superhuman stretchy things, but he just wanted to lounge around and bleed through his Speedos. I eventually (and begrudgingly) put him in the bottom of an old wooden crate that would end up serving as a sarcophagus for the relics of many of my childhood disappointments.

When I think about some of the women that I fell for who ended up disappointing me, I experience almost the exact same blend of wistfulness and remorse with which I recall those childhood moments. Stretch Armstrong was no different. I actually think Stretch Armstrong was my first heartbreak. I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that my first heartbreak came when I was six, or that it came at the rubbery hands of a gay doll.

You never get your heart broken like you do when you’re a kid, but my most recent heartbreak feels pretty close. In some ways, it’s a similar story.

I fell in love hard with this woman. But somehow, within 7 months, she was quietly packing up her errant belongings in a matching suitcase set. We left our mutual memories in a few digital photos and a duct-taped box - one more sarcophagus for the relics of another adult disappointment.

I had met Adrienne last January 31st, 2009. Although we had corresponded for years, it was the first time I had laid eyes on her in person. She emerged from a yellow cab beautifully alabaster, six feet tall, in a black Valentino dress. She greeted me with soft brown eyes, beguiling lips, and impossibly long legs that looked like the answers to all my questions. Her raven coiffure and fresh female perfume were going to remedy the existential angst brought on by the demise of all my previous relationships. The first kiss that night was arguably one of the great moments of my life. It was supposed to be the kiss to end all kisses….

And then it sprang a leak.