Take It Like A Man

Thesedays, my precious darlings, dating runs in two rivers.

The first river is the old-fashioned kind, a river like, say, the Colorado. It starts in the Rocky Mountains as snow-melt and spring bubbler, gradually turning into Lake Mead by way of the Grand Canyon. Eventually it keeps LA alive...a dubious prospect but nonetheless the fact of 1,400 miles of downhill adventure.

The second river is newer, much shorter and without any of the history or variety. It would be like a glacial river in Iceland: short, sharp and to the point. A thoroughly modern river. A great ride.

You can see where I'm meandering to with this metaphor. Long-form relationships and their precursors - by which I mean formal dating and marriage - are like the Colorado. Although the flow might start with a rush, time and terrain change the river's direction and temperament. Dams create reservoirs and calm, but also tail water and froth. Flat land slows the river down, and steep terrain does the opposite. Rocks make rapids. And eventually it turns out that we have to give it all to Hollywood...but it was one helluva ride.

Our Icelandic river is more of a day-trip flow. Anyone can hop on for the short ride, all we need do is hold hands and jump in together. It'll be fun and breathless for a while, then the ride ends. You can start back at the top again (because it's only a short hike) with or without the same partner. It's an amusement park outing.

Trouble arises (because you knew there had to be a downside) when one or other of the participants in the River Party forget which ride they signed up for. I see this when women think they are in the Icelandic way of things, but as soon as they get wet decide they need the guy to be more of a riverboat captain. The guy who thought he was in for nothing more than a quickie, or multiple quickies in a row, suddenly finds himself being expected to pitch riverbank tents and create fires and text "good morning" every day.

Huh? I thought that by her active participation as an equal that Icelandic Rules applied here, not Red River Rules. There are no tents in Iceland; we go to the bar, drink, and decide in the morning if we want to go swimming again.

That's it. Unless you want to try the Colorado. That changes everything.




Bottoms Up, My Beautiful High Country Trout.

Two Chimps on a Davenport

I tried outrage once, and what a waste of time. It was a stretch of whatever emotion I was inflating, a complete push. I discovered that outrage doesn't make friends; outrage puts you - alone - in the back yard at parties, when everyone knows that the guest bedroom is the place to be.

Milquetoast ever since, it's worth noting that I see lots of guys in the same mental space now. Hot-headedness has given way to a kind of mellow acceptance, especially of other blokes. For this I thank our womenfolk. Ladies, I think you've won.

After years of being told...

+ to show my feminine side

+ not to be afraid of crying

+ to be a little less macho

+ to try getting in touch with my emotions 

...y'all can stop now. I'm there, I'm right there with you. No need to continue, I have seen the (foxglove hued) light.

 
To the outside observer (ie: women) the male social process must appear to be little more than mildly boastful bravado mixed with sport-talk. I'm sure you see it through the female prism, which is to say that you think we're working out the hierarchy in the room; who's above and below whom in the pecking order.

The reverse is true. What's really happening is that we're attempting to find the common ground, so that we know how to communicate. This low-level détente is designed precisely to avoid conflict. We know how discord goes, and it's good for no man. Much better to figure out how we can sit happily and watch the women doing their thing at parties. 

BTW, I'm waiting for the first man to say to a woman:

+ you know, you should really find your masculine side.



Bottoms Up, Peaceniks.

Menage a Snooze

A certain animus towards Hugh Hefner wafts around the place, which is appropriate because he smells like stinky old person. He smells like old person because he is old person, wearing that funky fragrance like it's Old Spice.

The problem with Playboy's playboy-in-chief is his lost relevance. The niche he fills is that of the delusional male baby-boomer, an admittedly large demographic but one with vanishingly small future attraction. The days of women needing media-savvy pimps and a nude portfolio to kick-start their careers are over, although a distressingly large number of babes have yet to get the news. Hello internet, hello digital photography, hello do-it-yourself pimping.

I have a small sneaking admiration for Hugh. His redeeming quality is the ability to raise the ire of the Permanently Outraged. That gormless smile and the ridiculous three-girlfriends-at-a-time lifestyle are a parody of what he used to be - a fact that escapes only those who take it seriously.

And given what I've seen of his taste in chicks, Hugh and regular guys really have nothing in common. Those dopey blonde bimbos Hef likes are so far removed from the kind of sexy captivating non-perfect women I like as to be out of sight. Hugh's a fossil, and that's his only value.



Bottoms Up, Bikini-ed Babes!





Pic of Heidi from Playboy.

Dinner on the Table

A man of my acquaintance turned near bankruptcy into near billions. He works all the time. He calls his wife all the time, tells her he loves her all the time. There's not a second of the day she doesn't know where he is and what he's doing.

She receives Aston Martins on Valentine's Day. She takes summers in Bermuda. She writes cheques (big cheques) to any dopey political or social cause she wants.

But what she never does is have a hot meal waiting for her husband when he gets home after an eighteen hour day.

He orders in pizza. Or he stops for KFC. Or he just goes without.

The man licks her arse and grills her cheese, but she can't so much as fry him an egg. But I'm the only one unhappy about it.




Fried eggs and bacon from here [link]