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Thursday, November 13. 2008

A New Day

It is a new day in America. With President-Elect Barack Obama waiting in the wings, reminding us there can be only one president at a time, the caveat he adds when he’s telling us what parts of the Bush policy he will undo with Executive orders, the rest of us look busily towards our days, that are remarkably the same as the ones we had just ten days ago.

Some of us have some hope: maybe even a new job! Now that’s a commodity hard to come by! Mine is but a seasonal gig that, hopefully, could turn permanent. Do I really want that though? I mean, it is a job!

On the other hand, as pointed out in my previous post, this sure beats living on the streets, dumpster diving for dinner. But it’s 6 a.m. and I’ve been awake for an hour now, woken by my alarm, the Yes art rock classic from 37 years ago, Starship Trooper. It blasts out of my cell phone at astounding volume. Tuesday I woke before the alarm went off (thanks to my aging bladder) and was in the shower when it blasted. Hope the upstairs neighbors weren’t bothered.

And then it’s off for a nearly two hour journey to this job, which isn’t a bad job actually, helping to secure the retail future of a prominent online market for upscale gift-giving. Ten years ago this company got famous for being the place to shop for men who forgot their wives’ birthdays, anniversaries or otherwise found themselves not getting any of the dwindling sex life they hoped would be a daily deal when they got married in the first place.

Curiously enough, many women wonder why their sex life has dwindled since marriage. My guess is the disappointment and lack of interest is a two-way street. As a woman, who wants to do the hokey-pokey with a guy who know looks like Peter (the husband) on Family Guy, doesn’t shower every day and forgot the benefits of dental hygiene?

And what man wants to get it on with a middle age woman who looks like the same woman he’s been diddling for the past 15 years — only now her boobs and butt sag? Older men getting much younger women has been celebrated so much these past few years, why wouldn’t a married man fantisize trading in his 40-something for two 20-somethings?
 Honestly, I have no idea what women fantasize, although I’m sure it’s far different than what men fantasize. I know some women think Daniel Craig (who looks like me when I’m shirtless) is hot.

Most men won’t admit it though. It would be the epitome of insensitivity to be honest about it, but that’s why they still look at the men’s magazines and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. We dream, we fantasize and if we get a few moments free in the bathroom, we masturbate about it.

As a single man, I feel uniquely qualified to be judgmental. I don’t have to have a moment free in the bathroom, I could do it right here if I chose. But alas, I have to get ready and go to this new job. So, I fantasize, not so much about having a couple 20-somethings at my every beck and call, but about being wealthy enough that being awakened by Yes at 5 a.m. is just a distant memory.

It’s the bane of adulthood — having to actually go out and make a living, be responsible, even having pride in knowing we are responsible! There a people who pride themselves in getting up at 5 a.m. every day and going to a job five days a week and coming home to a family and a dog! Well, it’s easy to understand the family and dog. Or cat.

In many cultures, maybe most, there is status to having a family. It’s like a man’s primary possession. From a different angle, it is a woman’s most precious possession because she bore the children. The kids are, most directly, a piece of their mother. They were a part of that woman’s body and the instinct of a mother for her children is born by the fact that at the start of life they were one.

Men don’t share that and as much as men may feel connected to their kids, as much as men love their children, we will never have the same connection to the children. Men’s advocacy groups want to deny biological reality in custody fights and worse yet, when they want to force a sex partner to go through with a pregnancy because we, as men, “have rights too.”

When it comes to pregnancy, as long as it is the woman who will spend nine months with a child in her womb, she will have the responsibility and the choice. Once that child is born, she will, by default, become the primary — and in many cases, the only — care giver of that child. More importantly, because it is the mother who provides nourishment to that child from her body, created by the woman, the mother is the most important of the two parents; the children are the fruit of the woman. The man was just a sperm donor.

Men, when they demand they have rights too, do so from pride. They want to believe the kids are every bit their possession, it’s been the paradigm for thousands of years, written into the Bible’s earliest stories.

Of course, most women know they are the ones who actually “wear the pants in the family.” Some men even agree! In fact, I know couples who are genuinely happy with their family lives and all this blather bears little if any resemblance to their lives. Hell, they may even droop and sag and resemble Maxine and Peter, but none of that matters.

Hell, I’m single, what the heck do I know about love and marriage? Maybe love does conquer all now and then. And who doesn’t want that?

And all I wanted to do originally was whine about having to get up at 5 a.m. to go to work.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Life at 12:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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