I Am Not A Man...

...at least, not a normal one.

Reason #1: the remote control. Not only do I not hog it in our house, at least half the time I can't get it to do what I want it to. Seriously. I'll go to put the TV on channel 800 and somehow end up on channel 50 instead. Then when I try again I'm on channel 80. I have to search an unconscionably long time to find the 'mute' button, or the 'recall' button, or damn near any button. I jokingly attribute this incompetence to having spent five years without a television. Perhaps I should say that my clicker-klutziness stems from not missing a television at all over that five year span.

To this day, I can take or leave TV. Yes, even the hockey games...which are, after all, on radio. I don't listen to radio near as much as I used to, but if push came to shove, I could quit television without very much of a qualm. Only books surpass radio as an invocation to the imagination, in my experience. Radio--mostly public radio--is where the really intelligent stuff is. And best of all, the radios in this house can be operated without a remote control.

Reason #2: I don't follow most of the dicta laid down by my male ancestors, on account of most of them don't make a shred of sense to me. For instance, when I'm lost, I will readily and cheerfully (a) admit it and (b) ask for directions. I will likewise ask for assistance if I can't find something in a store. Now, a lot of men will do this, but most of them look vaguely or not-so-vaguely ashamed when they do it. Not me. Point me to my stuff so I can get out of here, is my motto. In that way, at least, I am refreshingly normal.

Or take that stereotype about how men can easily separate sex from love, and how they tend to place a higher value on the former than the latter, or view sex as proof of love. Not me. The phrase making love has always puzzled me since, well, forever, actually. Isn't the love already made? If not, how exactly does a hundred pumps, a tickle and a squirt accomplish it?

You're reading the words of a man who slept with a women three nights in a row before we ever so much as kissed. And by slept with, I mean sleep as in slumber. That's another phrase that's always bothered me: slept with. "I slept with her." No, you didn't, you had sex. Big difference, in my view. If you can't tell the difference, buddy, you're doing the sex thing wrong.

Corollary: I believe men and women can be "just friends". I get along with women better than I do with most men (he said, girlishly...) And yes, I'm apt to have little crushes on my "girl friends" beforehand, but they wash out with no trace.

(Why can women have girlfriends without anyone questioning their sexuality? Why can't men have girlfriends without everyone assuming they're, ack, sleeping together? I've been asking these questions for over a quarter century, now, and I'm no closer to an answer than I was when I was a teenager.

(And don't get me started on the ways I wasn't a typical teenager.)

I don't care overmuch what women look like: we'll all be ugly someday, and let's face it, some of the real lookers are pretty ugly inside already. My wife has never caught me ogling, because even if I were so inclined, quite frankly, I'm married and have no need to.

I've stated before that I apologize, most often, like a girl. I say sorry not because I screwed up, but because I'm sorry you're not feeling well/in pain/whatever. What I haven't said is why I do this. Well, obviously, there's the overdeveloped empathy gland, but also there's the fact, learned the hard way, that sorry is just a word. It's best used to express sympathy/empathy: as an admission of guilt and a promise of reparation it is woefully, pitifully inadequate. It's better to show how sorry you are, is my feeling, and sometimes even that's not enough. There's such a thing as screwing up so badly that you can't fix it--and trying to fix it only makes it worse.

Speaking of which, "fixing it" is still my first impulse...how typically male of me. I still haven't quite understood the great female urge to just talk about problems, as if the talking alone will solve them. My first instinct whenever I'm approached with a problem is to solve that mother...so much so that I'm apt to feel a failure when I can't. I hope to be wise enough one day to rise above this instinct. Preferably before I die.

I don't particularly like to barbeque, which is so unmanly I can feel my wrists sagging as I type it: but there it is. I know, I'm supposed to get in touch with my inner caveman and worship the Fire...whatever. To me, a barbeque is an outdoor cooking appliance, and being as I don't really enjoy either cooking or the outdoors, you can perhaps see the problem here.

Sports cars bore me to the ground. So you can drive really fast in them. Well, good for you. The only place driving really fast is legal is on a track, and to quote the venerable George Carlin, driving five hundred miles in a circle does not impress me!

I look in the mirror and see a man, but my manliness is (mostly) only skin deep.