Thursday, February 03, 2011

It Is Not Good For Man To Be Alone

A real man is a complex, many-splendored creature. He is rough and unrefined, yet fits comfortably in a tuxedo. His mane of glorious chest hair bespeaks kinship with God’s lesser creatures, yet he is not bound by it. God made him different. Rather than spend a lifetime pinching fleas, he developed technology, culminating in the electric beard trimmer, in order to subdue those obvious ties to the animal kingdom.

A man is competent, capable, potentially dangerous, strong. A man is not a delicate flower.  A man does not loofah.  A man does not know about soap varieties or why you should wash a towel that serves only to dry water off a clean person.

A real man smells of lye soap and leather and fury and brimstone. 

A man is why we have razor wire. A woman would take one look at 14-foot-high barbed wire and think “I’ll keep looking” – not a man. 

A man spends his first 20-30 years of life evolving into a unique organism entirely capable of caring for himself and dominating his environment (after a fashion). One day, convinced that he alone is in control, he seeks out a mate to affirm his dominance who, impressed with his manliness and general ability to destroy; chooses him as a life partner.

All is well.

Shortly after the elaborate yoking-together process is complete, everything changes. After months of subjection to the dark, mysterious, arts of womanhood; a man finds himself sitting alone in a townhouse on a Tuesday night weakly staring down a sackful of Krystals, no television, no internet, no workshop, and no wife to entertain him with lively jokes and knowledge of where stored foodstuffs are located in the mysterious kitchenette area. Two aligned synapses fire weakly in his primitive brain and the man realizes – “God would look upon this and say 'it is not good'.”

Suffering with the pain of his abdicated manliness, the man mutely stumbles about the chilly townhouse, blindly grasping at air and throwing in an occasional JUDO CHOP for good measure until finally he tires, lowering his body to sit upon the sofa. Suddenly, mid-crouch, he freezes and hears in his mind a distant female voice whispering “you are not supposed to sit upon that couch."  Instead, he plunks down upon the floor, next to an empty couch, all alone.

As he sits on the floor, next to the couch that must not be sat upon, gazing into the emasculating stack of gas logs that passes for a fireplace and upon which things must not be burned or roasted; he realizes: “I am no longer in control.”

He remains, allowing the realization to wash over him.  All appears lost. 

Suddenly he reaches out and nudges a bowl of "company-only" pistachios off the coffee table; watching gleefully as they bounce and rattle across the floor.  Satisfied, he gets up and puts himself to bed.

That bowl of nuts should never have crossed him.

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