Godammit, I’m Mad!

When I was little, I loved mermaids. I loved the illustrations in my book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. I drew pictures of mermaids over and over, draping them in strings of pearls.

Now that I’m addicted to tumblr, I’ve discovered that mermaids are more popular than almost any other image. A mermaid also encompasses two hugely popular tumblr subjects: Tits, and women submerged in water. While tits need no explanation, the drowning women are disturbing.  Paintings of Ophelia tend to be lovely and melancholy, but depictions of modern women floating under water or laying dead in bathtubs are reminders that people like to see women in jeopardy (if not actually dead.)

Mermaids are always beautiful and young, so that aspect of their attraction is obvious. In mythology and folklore, Mermaids are sirens who lure sailors to their death.  Do men find this danger seductive?

More important, mermaids have no genitals. Do men love them because of this or in spite of it? Does it relieve them of performance anxiety? I’m convinced that the anatomy issue is key somehow.

For me as a child, The Little Mermaid was a beautiful fantasy of a daughter who was loved by her family and showered with jewels.  I didn’t really understand why she would leave her home. I wanted a home filled with love and warmth. I didn’t feel good about her deal with the sea witch. The prince seemed kind of dimwitted not to recognize her or to intuit her love for him.

Later on, I remember reading The Little Mermaid to little Max, at bedtime. The book I read to him was an old unabridged translation of the original Hans Christian Anderson stories. It probably took several nights to get to the end, and I was so engrossed in the story that I forgot what was coming. I choked up with tears and tried to think of a way to spare Max the tragic last paragraph: The Little Mermaid threw herself overboard and turned into seafoam, comforted by some angelic sprites who asked her to join them. I think I made something up but I can’t ask Max.

Why do we love a story where the heroine sacrifices everything for love, even suffering constant excruciating pain, and ends up getting nothing but death? Until Disney changed the ending and turned a classic tragedy into a sappy feel-good product to sell other products, it was, for me, an inexplicably melancholy story.  It punishes a girl who seeks adventure and romance, so what else makes it such an enduring favorite?

Theories, memories, insults, anyone?

ASK A MAN #104: ABOUT HOMOPHOBIA

“Why are so many men homophobes? Why do they feel so threatened by gay men?”
-Andra

“It can only be seen as funny that demagogues give speeches denouncing men who insert their penises into other men’s anuses – and then go home to insert their own penises into their wives’ vaginas!”
-Wallace Shawn

I hail from the Bible Belt where we don’t cotton much to sexual education. Everything I know about sex I learned from Japanese cartoons and Sunday school.  Penis monsters don’t want to ravish schoolgirls but they just can’t help themselves and Baby Jesus comes down and sends them all to Heck for doing it. Then the schoolgirls will summon the penis monsters back out from Heck on the night of the full moon. This is because the girls are actually werewolves and won’t be able to do their homework on account of they have to be running around on all fours in their sexy schoolgirl outfits all night. At first the demon ghosts of the penis monsters will try to help out with the advanced trigonometry but invariably end up in an accidental orgy of hyperbolic werewolf schoolgirl rape. The next day the headmaster becomes enraged because none of the girls have done their homework and he has to tie them up for discipline and the rope makes him break out in hives so he gets even madder and he takes out his whip but he must be allergic to that as well because his hives get worse and worse and worse until he turns into a penis monster. Then Baby Jesus comes down and sends everybody to Heck, even those of us who were just watching the cartoons for educational purposes.

So really the marital act in all its many iterations and permutations is just a bunch of horrifying hairy gooey swollen abominations that make Baby Jesus cry unless it takes place in the sanctity of the marriage bed. There, in the marriage bed, the same miracle of transubstantiation that turns saltines and grape juice into the body and blood of Jesus Christ also transforms the smelly gruntings, the swellings, the humid orifices, and ungainly herky-jerks of animalistic copulation into the soft-focus roseate sunsets, the burgeoning orchids, the smooth jazz, and delightful conversation over brunch at one of the better hotel restaraunts that’s known as lovemaking. This is why there have been so many crazy weather disasters lately: God is pissed because we haven’t married up enough gays. Having all the gays and lesbos running around and living in sin distracts God from the important work of inventing new guns for us to shoot the French with.

But none of this answers your question about the homophobia. Here’s the deal: we’re not really afraid of the gays. We’re afraid of being gay or, worse, being mistaken for gay. Because for many straight people gayness is the grown-up version of cooties or herpes. There aren’t necessarily any symptoms but once you have it you can never un-have it and if people find out you have it or just think you have it you’re subjected to fear, revulsion, and humiliation. As every kindergartner knows tolerance of people with herpes is the fastest way to get herpes yourself so whatever you do don’t be nice to the gay kid with cooties and herpes.

Also because when you’re chilling with your bros, drinking beers, farting, and cracking dick jokes while watching a bunch of animated penis monsters running amok in the all-girl werewolf high school, having a gay dude there would just make things weird and uncomfortable.

Question answered.

© 2011 Anthony Robert Russo

ASK A MAN #103: ABOUT GETTING A MAN TO CLEAN

“How do I get my boyfriend to clean a little? I’m a realist and I know he’s never going to seriously clean something but he works half the hours I do and I’m sick of being a bitch around the house.”

-MG

“Do it very slowly and don’t confuse him.”

-Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program

Never underestimate the power of pride of ownership. Every man has some thing, some totemic object of power that’s super super important to him and yet isn’t part of his anatomy. Unless a man is fully prepared to protect his Holy Grail with violent force his spirit, sensing its vulnerability, will curdle up to half its normal size and retract into his ab-domen (this may not be the proper way to pronounce “abdomen” but if you try it out for yourself I’m sure you’ll agree it’s better). I’m guessing your man has suffered a loss of his Holy Grail or is not fully prepared to defend it, so why should he care if those dirty dishes have been sitting in the bathroom since Labor Day?

Now if it’s the latter case, if he still has his Grail but is not fully prepared to defend it, just go out and buy him a firearm already. I personally never bed down without my 9mm Uzi Pistol (fully loaded, safety off, and home-tooled bayonet attached) but production of this bad boy was discontinued in 1993 so even if you can find one you’ll be ponying up a big bag of pretty pennies. You’ll probably need two ponies to heft all those pennies around, but one sturdy mule could handle the load so you should just use the mule. If you don’t have the pennies or the livestock, you can’t go wrong with the Colt M1911 or the Glock 22, both of which are the single most popular gun. Since you can’t purchase bayonets for handguns, I had to make one myself using the forge and anvil I keep in my kitchen where the oven used to be and would be happy to provide you with helpful tips in bayonet forging techniques.

So anyway, once he has the means to defend himself your man will realize that life is indeed worth living and that although vermin make for great target practice around the house they tend to attract the French. As we all know, the French are not only an inferior species but their very inferiority endows them with an animal sexuality and techniques that enchant and corrupt the fairer sex, so unless your man is the kind of subhuman dude who actually wants his woman to be ravished by some beret-wearing mime then he’ll start tidying up toot sweet.

If your man is that kind of subhuman or, just as bad, if he has been deprived of his Grail, then you’re better off getting a new man or living in separate apartments like Woody Allen and Mia Farrow did. That whole deal seems to have worked out well for them.

Question answered.

© 2011 Anthony Robert Russo

ASK A MAN #102: ABOUT NAGGING

“How do I make it sound less like nagging and more like reminding?”
-Sam

“It is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Samuel is ‘God heard’. Also possibly as ‘requested of God…’”

-thinkbabynames.com

While I’m no expert in regards to dude-on-dude relationships, I’m going to assume that your domestic partnership is just like the traditional male-female relationship only with 100% more man parts involved. Actually since monogomy is as mythical and rare as the female orgasm, most relationships have more knobs involved than your typical mosh pit but fewer than a Congressional session.

Since you’re asking the question instead of giving out answers I’m guessing you take on the female role in your partnership so my advice to you is to use your supernatural ability to imagine ways to improve interior decoration schemes, but use this skill to imagine yourself as the dominant partner. Imagine yourself running around and doing things, making decisions, dealing with immediate situations like bear attacks or “bear” attacks, driving well, and staving off the advancement of the French by recreating log traps you saw in that Swiss Robinson movie. I think there were net traps as well, but few things are as satisfying as felling trees and trimming them down to their trunks, then arranging them using your Y chromosome-endowed engineering skills in a precariously balanced heap in order to crush your enemies like so much foie gras! I don’t know for sure what foie gras is, but it sounds as if it’s mushy and French, so that’s what I meant by that last simile.

So anyway, imagine yourself out there doing things like stacking up gigantic logs and suddenly this person who knows everything but can’t stack logs and doesn’t even uderstand why you’re out there stacking logs in the first place, this person comes out to remind you that… Look, it’s like I can’t even imagine what would need to be reminded about because everything that’s important is being dealt with.

So what you should do is bring out a beer or, in your case, a wine cooler, because stacking logs is sweaty work, then praise the progress on the log trap, hand over the wine cooler, and then as your “husband” takes a swig, look with love and longing at the bulge in his plum-smuggler shorts, and then remind him of whatever it is you happen to think is so important that you have to interrupt the all-important task of shoring up domestic defense against the incursion of foreign threats.

And even though this is the best possible way to “make it sound less like nagging,” it’s still nagging and you shouldn’t do it. He heard your request the first time.

Question answered.

© 2011 Anthony Robert Russo

ASK A MAN #101: ABOUT HANDSHAKES

“When they met one another, there was an uneasy moment as each watched the other’s right hand. If it went to his sword or gun, there was a battle, but if it went to his hat it was a salute of friendship or respect.”

-The Boy Scout Handbook

Doubt and uncertainty will get you killed. An indecisive driver is more likely to cause a collision than that jerkhole who just deliberately cut you off (if you’re reading this while driving, your GPS told me to tell you to unfasten your seatbelt, accelerate, and make an immediate hard left turn exactly… now). If the month-old milk in your fridge smells like it might have gone bad, don’t drink it until you’ve tricked someone else into drinking it. If you’re not sure that the firearm you wear to bed is loaded and the safety is off then the Chinese have already invaded your home, devoured your pets, and you and your family have become slave labor in one of those sweatshops where the little letters that appear on computer screens are assembled one pixel at a time. In a social situation, the handshake provides a shorthand determination of who’s who and how steady or shaky their character is.

But the question at hand is how do guys know which handshake to use and, when it’s your standard fist bump pas de bourrée, whose fist is on top? It turns out that the top fist is determined by an extremely complex equation developed by the heretical 14^th century Portuguese mathematician Aperto de Mão. Fortunately the equation with all its arcane symbols can be summed up as “who hast initiated ye fist bump is on top, unless ye initiator is a dwarfe or ye totally precocious baby.”

As for how we determine exactly which handshake to use, the magic of the Y chromosome has endowed men with a specialized gland that emits and detects identifying pheromones.

This gland coupled with our ability to recognize types of headgear allows us to know in advance of physical contact whether the other fellow is a Lakers fan, a Freemason, a gang banger, or French, and we adjust our handshake/aim accordingly. Scoffers: this is science, dammit, and cannot be disproven by any method known to Man.

So the next time you see a couple of bro’s or homeys engaging in complicated modes of manual hierarchical determination, remember that you are witnessing just one beautiful thread in the grand tapestry of snips, puppy dog tails, farts, and dick jokes that makes being a dude so totally totally awesome. Question answered.

© 2011 Anthony Robert Russo

One of the exciting new features you can look forward to here will be the convenience of A Man to answer your questions regarding male behavior. The feature will be called Ask a Man, and written by my friend Romeo, who is not only male but has served in our armed forces, drives a truck and currently brandishes a forbidding mohawk.

Romeo has always shown a willingness, however reluctant, to answer all my questions and now he will answer yours, too.

Here are the ones that bother me most, or let’s just say they mystify me the most:

When two men greet each other with a handshake, how do they know which kind of handshake to use? If it’s the fist on top of fist, how do they know whose fist goes on top? How do they know whether it’s going to be just an ordinary handshake or a special Bro Shake? What is the signal?

My second question is, why are men so fucking touchy? They can’t take any direct criticism, obviously, but anything that might remotely be construed as some kind of criticism makes them get testy. While they love to open sentences with “You ought to try…” or “Why do you always…” it is strictly verboten to address a man like that unless you want him to snap at you or sulk for an hour. Why are they so thin-skinned??

While I await Romeo’s lucid explanation of these mysteries, feel free to submit your own question for him in the comments. I am looking at this coming Friday as the launch date for Ask a Man.

When my friend R suddenly proclaimed herself skeptical about the G Spot during Christmas Eve dinner, I told her she was preaching to the choir. According to R, that idiot “Dr. Oz” was on TV trying to teach people how to locate the G Spot by using the roof of the mouth as a model of the female Area.  (Sorry, can’t use the V word.)

So here’s my analysis of the G Spot situation, and R backs me up on this.

The G Spot is a male fabulation, designed to put women back in their place after the superiority of female sexuality became common knowledge. In other words, since women have a better capacity for orgasm, lets find a way to make them feel inadequate again.

Ladies, are you feeling me here? Why do we need a mysterious “Spot” that almost no one has located, when the C Spot is RIGHT THERE and works great?! I love reading about how some women feel an urge to pee when you press their G Spot, while other women experience a special “V—-al Orgasm.”  Since that theory makes the whole deal seem kind of dubious, newer studies suggest that only SOME women have a G Spot. In that case, let me say that I personally have an H Spot, as well as Spots I through LMNOP, but I’m not going to tell you where they are, since you probably don’t have them.

When I googled G Spot, I came across an piece at Ask Men dot com, about the Male G Spot! I was thrilled! R and I had postulated the existence of an M Spot for men….a nebulous place somewhere between the balls that had to be pressed from a certain angle to be triggered.  How gratifying to imagine men probing desperately for a Spot that isn’t there!

I was disappointed, not to mention saddened and completely grossed out, to learn from Ask Men that the Male G Spot is up their butt. THAT’S RIGHT, you heard me. Up their butt. Ask Men suggests that guys get comfortable and relaxed before attempting to locate…..oh god, I can’t go on. It’s just too tragic. Who are these dummies they write for at Ask Men? It should be called Ask Idiots. Or maybe just “Duh.com.”

While I personally can accept some things on faith, other things (like the moon landing) I’m not too sure about. The moon landing, I’d say there’s a fifty per cent chance it happened. Immaculate Conception, zero per cent. Loch Ness Monster, YES, that one I feel good about. But the G Spot is nonsense and I’m not buying it.

Opinions, anyone?

Here’s the situation:

Tonight, my ex-husband came over to visit and offered to wash a fluffy foot-thing. (Don’t ask, but the tag says it’s washable.) I offered to wash it but he insisted on doing it. He probably thought he’d do a better job. (Men.)

Then, he put it in the clothes dryer, which is in the garage, because that’s where we do the laundry. He came back inside for a while and then went out to check the dryer. He came in again to report that the dryer stopped working. It worked when he turned it on, but now it’s broken. Dead. Won’t go on again.

I said something like, Shit, you broke the dryer?! He said something like, No, I didn’t break it, it broke.

I said, Well, my husband will be heartbroken when he comes home from work at 2: A.M. and finds that the dryer is broken. (My husband has been graciously doing the laundry while I have the fucking walker and can’t carry anything.)

This is like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but without Larry David.

I told the ex to pay for a repairman. The ex was aghast, and furious. Because “he didn’t break it.” But it wasn’t broken before he used it. In my addled mind, HE SHOULD PAY FOR THE REPAIR. Not only that, we have no money. (I’m aware that this has no moral bearing on the issue, but still.)

Should the ex pay? Or not?

Tonight, some friends and I were discussing some mutual acquaintances. It emerged that there was some confusion about how to categorize certain types of men we disdain.

To me, a Douche is instantly recognizable as such. He doesn’t have to exhibit any behavior; he’s just a Douche. Sometimes a Douche can increase his douchiness by bad behavior, like John Mayer, but usually it’s a done deal. Keith Urban is a Douche.

So is Pete Wentz and David Duchovny.

Joe Perry ( as per this photo from the American Music Awards show) is a Scumbag.

Whereas, Steven Tyler is a Douche.  Snoop Dogg = Scumbag. Mickey Rourke, another Scumbag.

Trying to think of a Jerk, my first thought was Levi Johnston, god bless him.  Jerks are more innocent than Scumbags or Douches. I even think that a Jerk could be reformable; he could wise up, theoretically anyway. Douches and Scumbags are lost causes.

I used to be able to explain the difference between a Tool and a Jerk, but I honestly can’t remember the criteria. All I remember was that some guy named Jason (who happened to be a fishmonger) was a complete Tool.

Where do you stand on these categories, and who do you think best epitomizes a Douche, Scumbag, Jerk or Tool?

I went to Nordstrom with my sister and stopped in my tracks at the Estee Lauder display. A new lipstick promised to say on for 12 hours. I asked the nice Black sales lady to show me the reddest red in the new formula. She admired the red I was already wearing. I told her it was Ruby Woo, one of my all-time favorites. I added, “I think every woman should wear red lipstick!” She nodded sagely and said with great conviction: “Mens like the red.”

So true.

I didn’t like the lipstick but I got the Double-Wear lip Pencil with “12 hour staying power” after testing it on my wrist and finding it impossible to remove.