Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

Vidal’s line is a barbed epigram about the redirection of desire and aggression as people age. Where youth channels energy into erotic pursuit, middle age—he suggests—often substitutes conflict, status anxiety, and the need to “win” into socially sanctioned arenas like lawsuits. The joke depends on the incongruity of equating sex with litigation, but it also critiques a culture that rewards adversarialness and turns private frustrations into public, procedural combat. In Vidal’s broader satirical worldview, institutions (courts, politics, media) become theaters where personal appetites are displaced into power games.