I’ll let you in on a secret, bub, now that Swayze has died: your wife had a crush on the dude, and so did you.

You can reverse that if your gender requires it.

Admit it, stud. A childish part of you that feels cheated out of great things always yearned to be a smooth talking bad ass – sort of like the philosophical bank robber Bodhi in Point Break, a role no other actor could have handled (he had to be doubly good to compensate for Keanu’s suckitude) with such style.

Or maybe in another life you could have been one of those understated tough guys, the kind who can drop a man with words as effectively as he does with fists, feet and elbows. The kind of guy other men respect and fear while the ladies just drop their panties. A Dalton kind of guy, with a haunted past but a good soul. A Roadhouse kind of guy.

Or maybe you wanted to be a true street tough, as protective of your honor as you are of your kid brothers whether it means taking on a rival gang or the law. Like Darry Curtis in The Outsiders.

Or a true street tough, as protective of your honor as you are of your kid brothers even if it means taking on the entire Soviet army. Like Jed Eckert in Red Dawn.

Or maybe you just wanted to kick your little brother’s ass because he is getting the opportunity you lost but the little pecker head doesn’t appreciate it. Like Derek Sutton in Youngblood.

Swayze was the man, man. The ladies still get weepy and loin-twitchy over Dirty Dancing and Ghost while you pretend to be disgusted and leave the room to blow your nose. But your levels of lust for the man are equal even if they take on different forms.

His life was short but it was a knife-fighting, sky-diving, wave-surfing, bank-robbing, ass-kicking kind of life. And we all just admire the hell out of that, don’t we?

*addendum: alert reader and sofa dampener Dot Chabot reminds me that Swayze wasn’t too shabby on the small screen, either. In her own words:

“I’m astounded that no blog or commentary even mentions what made all of us women get on the Swayze boat in the first place. The tv miniseries North and South! Does nobody remember his awesomeness in his confederate uniform? How we all had to wipe our chins over his soft southern accent? This man left wet spots on couches all over America for a solid week and nobody remembers????”

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