Uber-Undies
Jock itch is not an ailment for which you are likely to get much sympathy. Ridicule? Yes. Lots! Your sweaty, itchy groin is a prime target for jokes —but if you’ve ever suffered from The Itch, you know it’s no laughing matter. Naturally there is no suggestion here that you settle for black boxers with smiley faces. Or nightmare-inspiring underthings with not-at-all funny saying on them. But man, there are some great-looking undies out there. Try them. You’ll probably like the feeling of the air circulating in that usually claustrophobic, dark, dank world that is your groin.Yes, there are John Smedley and Zimmerli, both of which are top makers of gentlemen's undergarments, and many men swear by them. But true connoisseurs of crotch swaddling tend to dismiss Smedley as too heavy (its briefs are made of the same fabric as its polo shirts) and Zimmerli as too light. For such critically minded men, the napies of choice are Sunspel. As one enthusiast puts it with unarguably finality, "To wear anything else just wouldn't be civilized." Indeed, though that's only one reason to own them. Sunspel undertogs, which originated in Nottingham, England, in 1936 (Established in 1850 under a different name, it wasn’t until 1936 that the company chose the name Sunspel)are a favourite of the finicky haberdashers that cater to Slaone Rangers and Robertson Boulevard habitues and those certain secretive men from the Far East. The fabric draws them in first. Sunspels are made from extra-long-staple cotton, which can be spun into a yarn so fine it yields a feel that approximates silk. Then, the finishing is also first-rate: interior seams are flat; waistbands are of natural, nonbinding rubber; and there aren't loose threads sprouting from the label like crabgrass. And lest you think these fancy underpants are strictly from Oscar Wilde types, keep in mind that Sunspel is standard issue for Royal Navy and British army officers, who might not admit to a fondness for Sunspel's pleasant feel but who do like the famous fit. And now you know why the Privates weren't found scratching on screeen during the Iraqi raids. Devotees claim that the extra pleat sewn into the crotch of a Sunspel brief provides superior support. Unfortunately, that anatomical correctness won't stop your significant other from wanting to try on their silky softness for herself. You may even have to wrestle them off her. It's understandable; just be civilized.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
What's the technique?
Sometimes tech-challenged alpha males have no choice, but follow savvy betas and gammy gammas. But once at the console, we know who controls!Technorati Profile
Sometimes tech-challenged alpha males have no choice, but follow savvy betas and gammy gammas. But once at the console, we know who controls!Technorati Profile
Ace of a man
He examined himself in the mirror. The face he saw was clearly his own, familiar yet disturbingly different. Altered by _ what? _ growth, development, maturity. Hardly. The words that stayed in his mind were time, age, defeat.
He looked again. His cheeks were flat, brown: lines had started appearing at the corners of his mouth and beneath his eyes. And the softness that embraced his middle was a permanent attachment, a mark of long years of indulgence and good living.
The youth had fled. Departed without notice. The signs had always been there to see, had he chosen to recognise the evidence. With youth had gone his dreams, his aspirations; and all that remained were an unknown number of years to be filled with transient pleasures, meaningless sensations, empty triumphs. A shiver wrenched his body and he left the glass gladly.
Abruptly, and _ it shocked him to recognise it _ for the first time in his life, he became truly aware of his own mortality, of the inexorable diminishment of his powers, his vigour, his sexuality, and his inevitable demise. Suddenly the future loomed up as a disaster zone that all sane men would wish to avoid; one which no man could escape.
A sick-making terror gripped him, fear, panic that was almost physical in its painful persistence. But it was not of age he was afraid. Nor of death. Instead it was the clear vision of waste, the waste of his own resources, his own time, of life itself.
How much of himself he had given away. Correction: thrown away. Deliberately at times, consciously. Depositing into an existential sumphole the best parts of his being. The richest lode had been exchanged in favour of passing rewards and pleasures. His love. His work. All gone, all. Looking back, it seemed to him that more than most men, he had killed what he loved.
The past was an icy pit and looking into it paralysed him and increased his fear. Somehow he had to work himself back into shape to survive. In the beginning, when he had first embarked tentatively, timidly, on a writing career, survival had been his primary motivation. What he produced had to feed and clothe and house him; and provide emotional nourishment as well. For many years, he had fantasised about doing better work, the best; when he was ready, he kept telling himself. An empty dream. Now it was vital that he return to that earlier and more sensible reality. In order to exist, he had to work.
He dressed _ jeans, a loose-fitting linen sports shirt, loafers but no socks. A vodka and a cigarette, allowing the liquor to support his strength. Withdrawal had been necessary, a chance to recoup, to rebuild the cerebral and emotional walls with which he defended his vital parts. But no more; he was looking forward to this night.
He poured another drink. Reality. Reality was the key to successful life. To perceive and comprehend what one’s life was about at a specific moment in time. Now. Now was what mattered. The past was gone, finished, best put aside; the future non-existent, until it too became new.
He ticked it off silently _ he was climbing the rocky path back from a dark, painful spell. It was a long, slow return and it required all the courage a man could muster, all his concentration and dedication. It was a mistake to try and do everything at once; wrong and impossible. A psychological build was necessary, an opportunity for his spirit to replenish itself, come back to its full self once more. Like an athlete coming off an injury too soon and trying to compensate, injuring some other portion of his body. The more highly trained a man was, the more talented, the more sensitive, the more susceptible he seemed to be to hurts of one sort or another. Intelligent nursing, careful planning, periods of rest. These were in order. Time to allow the tension to slack off, to enjoy…
And then?
And then he would try again.
And make it.
All the way back. He was convinced of it. No doubt at all. Not a single one.
One last look in the mirror. If his face was somewhat debauched, it was clearly the face of a man who had lived, experienced, a man who had taken part in his share of adventures, a man of interest to women. Many women…
And why not? His shoulders were broad, with muscular slope, his hips trim under the jeans. And under the white linen fabric, he bulged with promise. Provocative, yes. Obvious, perhaps. But then a little advertising never damaged anyone. That, he thought, laughing aloud, was the press agent in him coming out. He finished the last of the vodka and hurried out of the house. The party would be in full swing by now and he didn’t want to miss anything.
He examined himself in the mirror. The face he saw was clearly his own, familiar yet disturbingly different. Altered by _ what? _ growth, development, maturity. Hardly. The words that stayed in his mind were time, age, defeat.
He looked again. His cheeks were flat, brown: lines had started appearing at the corners of his mouth and beneath his eyes. And the softness that embraced his middle was a permanent attachment, a mark of long years of indulgence and good living.
The youth had fled. Departed without notice. The signs had always been there to see, had he chosen to recognise the evidence. With youth had gone his dreams, his aspirations; and all that remained were an unknown number of years to be filled with transient pleasures, meaningless sensations, empty triumphs. A shiver wrenched his body and he left the glass gladly.
Abruptly, and _ it shocked him to recognise it _ for the first time in his life, he became truly aware of his own mortality, of the inexorable diminishment of his powers, his vigour, his sexuality, and his inevitable demise. Suddenly the future loomed up as a disaster zone that all sane men would wish to avoid; one which no man could escape.
A sick-making terror gripped him, fear, panic that was almost physical in its painful persistence. But it was not of age he was afraid. Nor of death. Instead it was the clear vision of waste, the waste of his own resources, his own time, of life itself.
How much of himself he had given away. Correction: thrown away. Deliberately at times, consciously. Depositing into an existential sumphole the best parts of his being. The richest lode had been exchanged in favour of passing rewards and pleasures. His love. His work. All gone, all. Looking back, it seemed to him that more than most men, he had killed what he loved.
The past was an icy pit and looking into it paralysed him and increased his fear. Somehow he had to work himself back into shape to survive. In the beginning, when he had first embarked tentatively, timidly, on a writing career, survival had been his primary motivation. What he produced had to feed and clothe and house him; and provide emotional nourishment as well. For many years, he had fantasised about doing better work, the best; when he was ready, he kept telling himself. An empty dream. Now it was vital that he return to that earlier and more sensible reality. In order to exist, he had to work.
He dressed _ jeans, a loose-fitting linen sports shirt, loafers but no socks. A vodka and a cigarette, allowing the liquor to support his strength. Withdrawal had been necessary, a chance to recoup, to rebuild the cerebral and emotional walls with which he defended his vital parts. But no more; he was looking forward to this night.
He poured another drink. Reality. Reality was the key to successful life. To perceive and comprehend what one’s life was about at a specific moment in time. Now. Now was what mattered. The past was gone, finished, best put aside; the future non-existent, until it too became new.
He ticked it off silently _ he was climbing the rocky path back from a dark, painful spell. It was a long, slow return and it required all the courage a man could muster, all his concentration and dedication. It was a mistake to try and do everything at once; wrong and impossible. A psychological build was necessary, an opportunity for his spirit to replenish itself, come back to its full self once more. Like an athlete coming off an injury too soon and trying to compensate, injuring some other portion of his body. The more highly trained a man was, the more talented, the more sensitive, the more susceptible he seemed to be to hurts of one sort or another. Intelligent nursing, careful planning, periods of rest. These were in order. Time to allow the tension to slack off, to enjoy…
And then?
And then he would try again.
And make it.
All the way back. He was convinced of it. No doubt at all. Not a single one.
One last look in the mirror. If his face was somewhat debauched, it was clearly the face of a man who had lived, experienced, a man who had taken part in his share of adventures, a man of interest to women. Many women…
And why not? His shoulders were broad, with muscular slope, his hips trim under the jeans. And under the white linen fabric, he bulged with promise. Provocative, yes. Obvious, perhaps. But then a little advertising never damaged anyone. That, he thought, laughing aloud, was the press agent in him coming out. He finished the last of the vodka and hurried out of the house. The party would be in full swing by now and he didn’t want to miss anything.
Thou Shalt Not Covet
You invite His Girl for lunch. Dinner or drinks would be too obvious. She’s got a boyfriend, after all. Part of you knows even lunch is sleazy. This part of you is fundamentally decent, essentially moral, basically principled. This part of you responds viscerally and forcefully to the simplicity, the symmetry, the overall rightness of the credo “Pals before gals.”
Another part of you wants to have sex with her.
His Girl is wearing a short black skirt. His Girl smells like a spring morning after a night of thunderstorms. A bright little golden sun bursts from each of His Girl’s earlobes. They are beautiful, fleshy (but not too fleshy) earlobes. Her teeth are big and white and evenly spaced; her gums, pink and healthy; her eyes, big and smiling. His Girl’s fingers are long and tapered. When she laughs _ and she laughs a lot _ I see small children running in circles in tall grass beneath a bursting a golden sun until they fall down, dizzy and gasping and delirious with joy. She is laughing now, and I am staring at her hands. I can’t get over her hands. Her fingers are so long, so soft. Those fingers could cook wondrous meals, I’m sure of it, and dry the little one’s tears and nail up bookshelves while I’m at the gym playing hoops. I see those fingers bringing me morning tea in bed, ripping through the newspaper, stroking my hair, unbuttoning my wrinkled shirt, slowly, rubbing…
“…and I finally got to move into my new office, and then the computer didn’t work. I mean, I couldn’t believe it, you know?”
His Girl is talking. But I’m not exactly listening. Move my gaze from her graceful fingers to her big, smiling eyes. They are eyes that have known pain. They are eyes that hunger for connection. They are eyes that demand truth. I tell her I love her. I tell her she should leave her boyfriend, consider being with me. I tell her we can be happy together, that sure, there will be some rough patches, but we can work through them shoulder to shoulder. I tell her the way she smells makes me think of little kids making themselves dizzy in tall grass. I describe the Sunday mornings we’ll read the paper and drink tea and make love, the Friday evenings we’ll rent a romantic thriller and watch it together while we hold hands, with the popcorn she made with her long fingers on the table in front of us. I say all of this, but I say it with my eyes, because this is, after all, just lunch. But I think she understands. His Girl holds my gaze a little longer than is necessary between just friends. When I touch her arm in a purely friendly gesture, she smiles. When we say goodbye, she kisses me on the cheek.
His Girl, I say, holds a great deal of appeal for me. That’s because His Girl is pretty. And because she wears short skirts and golden sun earrings and she smells good. And because she is wanted, cherished. And, big bonus here, because someone else is doing the heavy-lifting part of the wanting and cherishing. All you (by which I mean I) need to do is share some lunches, some coffee, maybe a movie when he’s out of town. You don’t have to share a bathroom with her. You don’t have to argue over who will do the dishes. You don’t have to cut short your France-Brazil re-run on ESPN to visit her mother. You don’t have to worry about her bad-mouthing your mother. You don’t have to worry about sex getting old. You don’t have to worry about anything getting old. She doesn’t demand anything from you. She can’t demand anything from you. She’s His Girl, not yours.
His Girl tells you things. Things she doesn’t tell him. Things like her hopes, her dreams, and what a schmuck he is, and what a manipulative ferret his mother is, and isn’t it just kind of creepy, almost unnatural, really, how close he and his mother are, and how she feels lonely sometimes, and how he doesn’t really understand her taste in literature, because he doesn’t read much besides Robert Ludlum, and how their sex life isn’t so great and sometimes she gets jealous when his old girlfriends call, but it’s not like she’s asking to know everything. I mean, she doesn’t tell him about her lunches with you, you know? (Actually, you didn’t know, but now that you do know, you like.)
His Girl is beauty and safety and the chance to indulge your wildest and the most exotic notions of romance and love. His Girl is a fragrant, charming repository of your most impossible, consequence-free fantasies. His Girl in unavailable.
We have lunch, then another lunch. She tells me he has asked her to marry him. Then she tells me they’ve been fighting a lot and she’s been having disturbing dreams about me. She doesn’t go into detail about the dreams. We have more lunches. I tell her how great she looks. She complains about him. I listen. We progress from kiss on the cheek to kisses on both cheeks. I come to believe that His Girl deserves better. I come to believe that His Girl deserves me.
I keep it light. I have learned to keep it light. I have learned that her luminous eyes and delicate scent and the way her laugh sounds like wind chimes in an alpine meadow notwithstanding, it’s important to keep it light. At least for the time being. At least while she’s engaged.
“I really enjoy our lunches,” she tells me one day. I think about this statement for the better part of a weekend. Did she stress “enjoy” or “ lunches”? Did she mean she would enjoy something more than lunch? Is it time to tell her with my mouth what I told her with my eyes a few weeks ago? Is it time to shift to nonlight mode? Yes, I decide, it is time.
I invite her for another lunch. She’s busy and says she’ll call back. But she doesn’t call. I wonder. I wonder if, in the same way that she serves as a bejewelled and well-dressed non-bathroom-sharing screen upon which I can project my most blissful fantasies, I am functioning for her merely as a well-scrubbed guy who offers maximum understanding and minimum maintenance. I wonder if to her I am nothing more than freedom and possibility, a lark, a motherless mark who always pays the tab and never gets any action. Wondering can do ugly things to a man. That evening I wonder how many other poor suckers she “enjoys lunch” with before sashaying home to Him.
Finally, she does call back. She “needs to talk.” We meet for lunch. Her ears are naked, her eyes puffy. Her blouse is wrinkled. I tell her she looks great. She laughs, then cries. I ask what’s wrong.
“Nothing much,” she says. “I called off the wedding. I’m moving out.”
Something moves in my throat. I realise that I’m thrilled. Also terrified. Picturing His Girl and me with popcorn on Friday night is easy when you only have to see her once a week and don’t have to deal with things like actual spoken words and real live sex and taking out the garbage. This is different. So what am I supposed to do?
I realise I’m still not breathing. I also realise that she’s staring at me. Can she read my thoughts? Is she disappointed in my predictability, disgusted at my cowardice, justified in her no-doubt long-held suspicion that deep down all guys, even smooth-talking, lunch-buying keep-it-light Lotharios like me, are all the same?
I breathe, I swallow. I breathe some more. This is the time for me to do something. I know this. If Friday nights are ever to be filled with popcorn and love, if my chest is ever to feel the cool caress of fingers on Sunday mornings, I need to be brave.
So I’m brave. Silently, I take her hand. Her palm is sweating. I tell her I know that His Girl and he have been together for years, and that breaking up is always tough. I know it’s complicated, and I don’t want to put pressure on her, but I’ve really grown fond of her, and I think maybe there could be a chance for the two of us if we gave each other the chance. I’d like us to give the chance. I’d like to see her more.
I say this with actual words.
“Shhhh,” she says. She says this with an actual sound.
She says she’d like to see me, too.
I suggest dinner.
You invite His Girl for lunch. Dinner or drinks would be too obvious. She’s got a boyfriend, after all. Part of you knows even lunch is sleazy. This part of you is fundamentally decent, essentially moral, basically principled. This part of you responds viscerally and forcefully to the simplicity, the symmetry, the overall rightness of the credo “Pals before gals.”
Another part of you wants to have sex with her.
His Girl is wearing a short black skirt. His Girl smells like a spring morning after a night of thunderstorms. A bright little golden sun bursts from each of His Girl’s earlobes. They are beautiful, fleshy (but not too fleshy) earlobes. Her teeth are big and white and evenly spaced; her gums, pink and healthy; her eyes, big and smiling. His Girl’s fingers are long and tapered. When she laughs _ and she laughs a lot _ I see small children running in circles in tall grass beneath a bursting a golden sun until they fall down, dizzy and gasping and delirious with joy. She is laughing now, and I am staring at her hands. I can’t get over her hands. Her fingers are so long, so soft. Those fingers could cook wondrous meals, I’m sure of it, and dry the little one’s tears and nail up bookshelves while I’m at the gym playing hoops. I see those fingers bringing me morning tea in bed, ripping through the newspaper, stroking my hair, unbuttoning my wrinkled shirt, slowly, rubbing…
“…and I finally got to move into my new office, and then the computer didn’t work. I mean, I couldn’t believe it, you know?”
His Girl is talking. But I’m not exactly listening. Move my gaze from her graceful fingers to her big, smiling eyes. They are eyes that have known pain. They are eyes that hunger for connection. They are eyes that demand truth. I tell her I love her. I tell her she should leave her boyfriend, consider being with me. I tell her we can be happy together, that sure, there will be some rough patches, but we can work through them shoulder to shoulder. I tell her the way she smells makes me think of little kids making themselves dizzy in tall grass. I describe the Sunday mornings we’ll read the paper and drink tea and make love, the Friday evenings we’ll rent a romantic thriller and watch it together while we hold hands, with the popcorn she made with her long fingers on the table in front of us. I say all of this, but I say it with my eyes, because this is, after all, just lunch. But I think she understands. His Girl holds my gaze a little longer than is necessary between just friends. When I touch her arm in a purely friendly gesture, she smiles. When we say goodbye, she kisses me on the cheek.
His Girl, I say, holds a great deal of appeal for me. That’s because His Girl is pretty. And because she wears short skirts and golden sun earrings and she smells good. And because she is wanted, cherished. And, big bonus here, because someone else is doing the heavy-lifting part of the wanting and cherishing. All you (by which I mean I) need to do is share some lunches, some coffee, maybe a movie when he’s out of town. You don’t have to share a bathroom with her. You don’t have to argue over who will do the dishes. You don’t have to cut short your France-Brazil re-run on ESPN to visit her mother. You don’t have to worry about her bad-mouthing your mother. You don’t have to worry about sex getting old. You don’t have to worry about anything getting old. She doesn’t demand anything from you. She can’t demand anything from you. She’s His Girl, not yours.
His Girl tells you things. Things she doesn’t tell him. Things like her hopes, her dreams, and what a schmuck he is, and what a manipulative ferret his mother is, and isn’t it just kind of creepy, almost unnatural, really, how close he and his mother are, and how she feels lonely sometimes, and how he doesn’t really understand her taste in literature, because he doesn’t read much besides Robert Ludlum, and how their sex life isn’t so great and sometimes she gets jealous when his old girlfriends call, but it’s not like she’s asking to know everything. I mean, she doesn’t tell him about her lunches with you, you know? (Actually, you didn’t know, but now that you do know, you like.)
His Girl is beauty and safety and the chance to indulge your wildest and the most exotic notions of romance and love. His Girl is a fragrant, charming repository of your most impossible, consequence-free fantasies. His Girl in unavailable.
We have lunch, then another lunch. She tells me he has asked her to marry him. Then she tells me they’ve been fighting a lot and she’s been having disturbing dreams about me. She doesn’t go into detail about the dreams. We have more lunches. I tell her how great she looks. She complains about him. I listen. We progress from kiss on the cheek to kisses on both cheeks. I come to believe that His Girl deserves better. I come to believe that His Girl deserves me.
I keep it light. I have learned to keep it light. I have learned that her luminous eyes and delicate scent and the way her laugh sounds like wind chimes in an alpine meadow notwithstanding, it’s important to keep it light. At least for the time being. At least while she’s engaged.
“I really enjoy our lunches,” she tells me one day. I think about this statement for the better part of a weekend. Did she stress “enjoy” or “ lunches”? Did she mean she would enjoy something more than lunch? Is it time to tell her with my mouth what I told her with my eyes a few weeks ago? Is it time to shift to nonlight mode? Yes, I decide, it is time.
I invite her for another lunch. She’s busy and says she’ll call back. But she doesn’t call. I wonder. I wonder if, in the same way that she serves as a bejewelled and well-dressed non-bathroom-sharing screen upon which I can project my most blissful fantasies, I am functioning for her merely as a well-scrubbed guy who offers maximum understanding and minimum maintenance. I wonder if to her I am nothing more than freedom and possibility, a lark, a motherless mark who always pays the tab and never gets any action. Wondering can do ugly things to a man. That evening I wonder how many other poor suckers she “enjoys lunch” with before sashaying home to Him.
Finally, she does call back. She “needs to talk.” We meet for lunch. Her ears are naked, her eyes puffy. Her blouse is wrinkled. I tell her she looks great. She laughs, then cries. I ask what’s wrong.
“Nothing much,” she says. “I called off the wedding. I’m moving out.”
Something moves in my throat. I realise that I’m thrilled. Also terrified. Picturing His Girl and me with popcorn on Friday night is easy when you only have to see her once a week and don’t have to deal with things like actual spoken words and real live sex and taking out the garbage. This is different. So what am I supposed to do?
I realise I’m still not breathing. I also realise that she’s staring at me. Can she read my thoughts? Is she disappointed in my predictability, disgusted at my cowardice, justified in her no-doubt long-held suspicion that deep down all guys, even smooth-talking, lunch-buying keep-it-light Lotharios like me, are all the same?
I breathe, I swallow. I breathe some more. This is the time for me to do something. I know this. If Friday nights are ever to be filled with popcorn and love, if my chest is ever to feel the cool caress of fingers on Sunday mornings, I need to be brave.
So I’m brave. Silently, I take her hand. Her palm is sweating. I tell her I know that His Girl and he have been together for years, and that breaking up is always tough. I know it’s complicated, and I don’t want to put pressure on her, but I’ve really grown fond of her, and I think maybe there could be a chance for the two of us if we gave each other the chance. I’d like us to give the chance. I’d like to see her more.
I say this with actual words.
“Shhhh,” she says. She says this with an actual sound.
She says she’d like to see me, too.
I suggest dinner.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
The Long Good-Bye
They say breaking up is hard to do. They're wrong
The last time we broke up, we decided to quit having sex each time we ended things. Actually, she decided. What she said was "I think we would be happier if we were friends." She said it barging into my cabin while I was busy e-mailing creatives to an important client. Important issues needed to be discussed, and I am not an insensitive brute, so I put the laptop to sleep.
"What is it with you?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked as cluelessly as she knew how.
"I mean, why does verything have to lead to something else?" I asked. "When we started going out, we were just seeing each other and having fun. Why do you have to measure things now in terms of where they're going?"
Because she wants more than fun, I thought. Because she doesn't want to live life in a holding pattern. Because this isn't moving anywhere, and she wants someting that moves somewhere.
Because unless she ends things, she thought, she and I will become more and more involved, and that means she won't be able to do what she wants and when she wants. Because she think she isn't in love with me, and she wants love, and even when she finds love, the what-I-want-when-I-want equation will still be hard to work out, but at least the upside will be greater then, with all the love, and...
I thought a lot in those few seconds, all the while looking at the laptop, and to my girlfriend, whose eyes were welling with tears and whose tiny hands were balled into tiny fists.
"This is about me," she said. "I'm the screwed-up one. Really, I think someone else would make you happier."
She cried then, and tenderness and guilt and connection and affection flooded through me, much of it ending up in my loins. I reached for her. With one of her tiny fists, she hit me in the chest. Tonight there would be no breakup sex.
Every woman wants out at some time. But a real woman must ask herself why. I know she has asked herself why.
Is it because, even though she's dedicated and respected professional who looks great in a miniskirt and is possessed of a voracious sexual appetite, you can't stand the brown shade of lipstick she wears any longer?
Is it because even though she's kind, giving, smart, crazy about you and perfectly willing to watch ESPN over Papa John's pizza while holding hands and reviewing your respective bosses's character flaws and how they've manifested themselves over the past few days, you have a horrible habit of sticking your tongue deep inside her mouth when you kiss, all the while moaning something that sounds like "errrrf, errrrf"? She hates that.
Is it because in her entire life, you're the only real man she has ever had even though she's an attentive and willing-to-work-hard lover, and she's feeling as if she isn't on a level playing field here?
(Those are gimmes. The correct answers, as most guys know: Yes. yes. Yes. Yes.)
To be continued...
They say breaking up is hard to do. They're wrong
The last time we broke up, we decided to quit having sex each time we ended things. Actually, she decided. What she said was "I think we would be happier if we were friends." She said it barging into my cabin while I was busy e-mailing creatives to an important client. Important issues needed to be discussed, and I am not an insensitive brute, so I put the laptop to sleep.
"What is it with you?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" she asked as cluelessly as she knew how.
"I mean, why does verything have to lead to something else?" I asked. "When we started going out, we were just seeing each other and having fun. Why do you have to measure things now in terms of where they're going?"
Because she wants more than fun, I thought. Because she doesn't want to live life in a holding pattern. Because this isn't moving anywhere, and she wants someting that moves somewhere.
Because unless she ends things, she thought, she and I will become more and more involved, and that means she won't be able to do what she wants and when she wants. Because she think she isn't in love with me, and she wants love, and even when she finds love, the what-I-want-when-I-want equation will still be hard to work out, but at least the upside will be greater then, with all the love, and...
I thought a lot in those few seconds, all the while looking at the laptop, and to my girlfriend, whose eyes were welling with tears and whose tiny hands were balled into tiny fists.
"This is about me," she said. "I'm the screwed-up one. Really, I think someone else would make you happier."
She cried then, and tenderness and guilt and connection and affection flooded through me, much of it ending up in my loins. I reached for her. With one of her tiny fists, she hit me in the chest. Tonight there would be no breakup sex.
Every woman wants out at some time. But a real woman must ask herself why. I know she has asked herself why.
Is it because, even though she's dedicated and respected professional who looks great in a miniskirt and is possessed of a voracious sexual appetite, you can't stand the brown shade of lipstick she wears any longer?
Is it because even though she's kind, giving, smart, crazy about you and perfectly willing to watch ESPN over Papa John's pizza while holding hands and reviewing your respective bosses's character flaws and how they've manifested themselves over the past few days, you have a horrible habit of sticking your tongue deep inside her mouth when you kiss, all the while moaning something that sounds like "errrrf, errrrf"? She hates that.
Is it because in her entire life, you're the only real man she has ever had even though she's an attentive and willing-to-work-hard lover, and she's feeling as if she isn't on a level playing field here?
(Those are gimmes. The correct answers, as most guys know: Yes. yes. Yes. Yes.)
To be continued...
Adios Andre!
After Zizou, it’s Agassi. Another reason to stay away from the boob tube. Federer is still out there, but tennis watching is never going to be the same again. It’s like once Zidane’s not there, who bothers for the English Premier League? In Agassi’s case, it’s a personal loss, too, considering we are both bald (so is Zizou!) and if you looked closely, there’s this uncanny resemblance. Okay, okay, I need to lose ‘some’ pounds. We share the same sign, too! He’s April 29, and me April 24. Jokes apart, what’s the Andre appeal? In one word: expressiveness. While Agassi’s hair and body have changed— he’s been getting balder, grayer, and leaner for years—his eyes still betray joy and frustration as easily as ever. They bulge out when he returns serve, light up after he wins, and go frighteningly vacant when he’s losing. Callow punk or wise veteran, in tough losses and rousing victories, Agassi has never been able to hide a thing. That’s what makes him a man. He has always been embraced by the people because for most part he has been one of us. With the younger Agassi, fans identified their own shortcomings; in the superstar champ, only the fifth man in tennis to win all four Grand Slams, they found inspiration. Most importantly, they loved him for his heart, because he cared, sometimes too much. Fittingly, the last match Agassi won in tennis in New York, had everything written in it _ brain and brawn, age and range, the fire of youth and the assuredness of age. Marcos Baghdatis countered all of that effectively, but in the end, came up short against the ageless heart. Adios Andre. Thank you for caring.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)