The Dwelling Was Fully Involved

  When it comes to marriage and kids, how involved should one get?  Well, to each his own, but remember that word involved.  It’s a word used by firefighters, as in, “By the time we arrived on the scene, the dwelling was fully involved.  There was nothing we could do.”

  What does  life have in store for me?  Am I fated to holing up like Pynchon or Poe, only without the body of work?  It’s an unhealthy existence, slowly withering on the vine, while the images of me in photographs begin to fade away like those of Marty McFly in Back to the Future. 

  For all those guys bent on a life without kids, George Gilder’s Sexual Suicide is one scary read.  In this defense of marriage, family and traditional values, he seems to suggest that men who don’t have children tend to fare poorly in life.  Men need to be socialized by having a family.

  As for the ladies, he notes that many of them like to broadcast their utter lack of interest in having babies, but he says they are denying their biology.  Childbirth is their destiny.  And here I thought childbirth was a publicity stunt.  (That seemed like a pretty good line when I came up with it.  Then along come a few  headline-grabbing, high-output females, and suddenly it doesn’t seem particularly original, clever, or, alas, funny.  Thanks.)  Carry on with your biological chain letter, your parental pyramid scheme, your human hoarding.  Do we really need to be farming humans in overcrowded pens?   Spawning like shrimp in a fetid pond?  Honestly, I miss the days when TV shows were about families like the Petries, instead of families from Petri dishes.  In the film Get Him to the Greek,  Russell Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, says to the boy whom he thought was his son, “Your mother… is a wonderful mother; but she is a terrible human being.”

  Sexual Suicide suggests that in life’s main event, reproduction, women play the central role.  They have the power.  They’re the Johnny Carson, while the father is standing around like Ed McMahon.  To hear all the jokes that male comics make at the expense of females, one would think that men don’t like women: "Why do women knit?  Gives them something to think about while they’re talking."  (I'm just the messenger.)  The male attitude toward women is shaped by the notion that hetero men have but two choices in life:  (a) Settle down, get married, and have kids.  Or (b) Proceed down a dangerous path that leads to prison.  Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me no pleasure to point out that many names for jail sound like slang for the lady bidness.

·         Cooler..................... Cooter

·         Frig ......................... Brig

·         Clit ........................... Clink

·         The Pokey................. (that could be either, really)

·         (ditto the Walls, Up the River, etc)

·         Hoosegow .................. House cow

·         In Stir ......................... In Stirrups (get ‘em up)

  All right, let’s not belabor it.  So men need to be subordinated by family.  Here’s how it works.   A guy will want to nail pretty much anything that walks by until he has his own children.  Why does having his own kids change his behavior?  Based on my observations, it’s because his kids keep hitting him in the nuts.  When I pay a visit to my younger brother’s family, my seven year old niece Julia (Jules for short) comes running at me.  Sometimes I yell, “Cover the jewels!”  She thinks I’m talking about her.  Ever see a family where the kids’ ages are like 9, 8, 7… and then 1?  That woman is trying to keep her man in check.  (By the way, this is all true:  I looked it up on Wankipedia.)  Uh… I guess you guys aren’t ready for this stuff yet … but your kids are gonna love it!