Has It Been That Long?

     "I'm not feeling too well," she explained when I called Friday night to firm up our Saturday plans.  We'd been dating every weekend for about two months.

     "I'm kind of run down and a little depressed."

     This actually suited me, as I wasn't feeling my best either, and was struggling to come up with something  interesting to do for a date that wasn't too taxing.  Thinking it polite to show some concern for her condition, I continued, "So it's not like a bug or something then... you're just kind of  stressed out?  I have lots of bad days myself but don't actually get sick much.  Usually I get a cold once a year in October.  Actually last year, I didn't get sick, probably cuz  I wasn't working around kids anymore."   Blah, blah...

     I called Saturday afternoon.  We had a long chat that went pretty well: I scored some laughs, cheered her up a bit.  And then I wanted to recap how she was doing.

     "So then you don't have like a virus or anything serious, you're just run down?"

     I'm not sure at what point over the next couple days it finally dawned on me.  God.  Two things:  I'm pretty slow, and I need to get out more.   It's been so long since I've had a regular relationship that I forgot women have periods.

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!

Naivety Scene

     Out of the corner of my eye, “nativity” appeared to be “naivety.”  An honest reading mistake. 

     In the 21^st Century, naivete  (or the British naivety) helps people believe.  Truth to tell though, if anyone had a naïve young adulthood, I did.  In my late-blooming, sheltered mid-twenties, I went to my dad and earnestly said, “People who believe in God…they’re just pretending to believe in it, right?”

     According to an article in The New Yorker, when a person sees something, only 20% of the image is created by nerve endings in the eye.  The other 80%?  Memory.  Explains a lot.  Fully 80% comes from that part of the brain that controls memory.  Which is why my particular eye/brain combo came up with naivety.  People see what they want to see.  Ex-Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens thought that the fat one-third of a shattered baseball bat was in fact a baseball.  Maybe that's not the best example.

     Another word I have misread is “storied.”  The day after Bonds hit homer number 756, the photo caption read, “Bonds breaks Aaron’s storied home run record.”  Can you think of an apt anagram for the word “storied?”   Need more time?  I’ll wait.  By the way, I am not suggesting that Hammerin’ Hank used performance enhancing drugs, naturally.  I'm suggesting the virgin did.  (Oprah to conduct seance.)

     Of course, for many people, sports is their religion.  Only instead of putting the cash in a  collection plate, they give it to the beer and hot dog guy.  Tithing to the god of nitrates, saturated fat and alcohol.  Seeing what you want to see.  And you don’t want to see how they make the hot dogs.  Or the "miracles."

The Morality of the Male Maintenance

     I came across a video of a debate titled Is Porn Bad For Society?  Both sides made excellent points, but were often talking past one another.  Like life itself, porn can be both good and bad.

     But count me in the camp that has a real problem with pornography.  It's difficult to get the timing right. So oftentimes it happens that just when you're about to be delivered from your encumbrance, they cut to an extreme close-up, Learning Channel sort of shot.  Nothing romantic there.  In my experience the most common sin committed by porn directors is not keeping everything in the frame.  The viewer should be able to see everyone head to toe  for the vast majority of the video.  "Pull back!"  It's about context.

     Also, pausing is paramount.  Who's the Einstein who decided that having the "play" icon appear  in the middle of the picture every time you hit "pause" is helpful?  That triangular icon is usually blocking something important, maybe even another type of triangle.

     Yes, things would be different if I ran porn.  All I need to see is a few cute ladies, cotton undergarments and Newton's laws of motion.

     I once got into a conversation with a self-described "recovering priest" who tried to explain the reason why Catholicism  considers masturbation immoral.  Something about "You're not being devoted to your partner if you ejaculate on your own."  (Away from her?)  In other words, masturbation  cannot be separated from sexual intercourse, which is for procreation. 

     Tell it to the hand.  As I get older, the male maintenance is a job, not an adventure.  It needs to be done, and I don't necessarily enjoy it.

     I'd actually have to say that, in general, porn probably is bad for society for several reasons.   Like ice cream and twitter, it can be very addictive for many people.  And it usually does demean women.  However, masturbating is a personal health issue; and, to borrow from  (and paraphrase) the great stand-up Tom Rhodes, what are we going to look at?  The picture on the box of Close-Up toothpaste?

   

Keep a Ring on It?

     It’s not hard to imagine an uncorrupted family man (then again)—perhaps from an underdeveloped country—who moves with his wife and child to a modern, entertainment-addled community.  Then one day he sees something called a music video.  He has never seen anything quite like these gyrating, grinding dancers.  They mesmerize him, put him in some kind of trance.  Within a week of being inculcated by this powerful public service announcement known as Put a Ring on It, he begins to rethink the construct of limiting himself to just one woman—a non-gyrating one at that.  Mixed message.

Sugar-Coated Nuptials

     Certain words strike me as odd-sounding.  Nuptials is such a word.  “Last week I went in to have my nuptials removed.”  It’s like an appendix: no longer needed.  Nuptials to me sounds like a food.  Hostess bite-sized nuptials.  “Mrs Sedgewick, these nuptials are scrumptious.”  Sounds like “vittles.”  Birds Eye frozen nuptials:  the groom has cold feet.  Mixed nuptials:  inter-racial.  Green Giant steamed nuptials:  she’s a pissed off bridezilla.  

     Remember, for women it’s bad luck to see the groom before the wedding.  For men, it’s awkward to see other customers at the massage parlor.  Other annoying words:  Kudos, props and preggers.  “Kudos and props on the nuptials.  Are you preggers?” 

Excellence in Obviousness

    You hear some aging rock legend reflecting in his memoir on his six-and-a-half marriages, and  he says something like, "The thing is, I love women.  I really do.  To me there is nothing more beautiful than the naked female body."  What a Renaissance man coming up with that!  Give him a Nobel Prize for excellence in obviousness.