The scum of the Earth

Oh please. So you dumped her. Or maybe you didn’t even dump her, you just think it safe to suggest it to me that it was you because you reckon I’ll never double-check with her. Since we don’t speak to each other. We fake it really well, but you got the idea, we painstakingly avoid saying anything, or, if anything does slip through, hear what was said.

Anyway. You dumped her. You told me three times, with different tones and pitches of voice. I retorted each time ok, OK, OKAY. Did you get it? I don’t care. I knew it would happen, although I expected her to do it, not you. For a second there you had me thinking you had some character. Walking away from an easy fuck because you dream of someone else. One last try to get me to open my legs. You tried for about five minutes.

“So how about that drummer of yours?” Gotta give it to you, I never thought you’d have the balls to bring him up, given how I met him on a date with you and all. For the first time in your life you actually managed to take me by surprise.

“What about him?”

“How’s it going with him?” You’re so brave under the influence of the alcohol and the loud music and the dimmed lights of a seedy karaoke bar. It’s easy to forget things that happened in places where you’d normally not be caught dead. You think.

“I’m in the capital of Europe, he’s in the capital of the world, it’s going well.” I laughed my sarcastic laugh. Don’t you know yet that means I want to be left alone?

“Well yeah, but he’ll come back, I understand, do you love him?” Getting cheeky, so not like you, I only really liked you while you were harmlessly autistic in your world in which you didn’t understand shit. I don’t like you when you ask questions.

“Love, love, love comes after a very long time which you spend together, and then one morning you wake up and that’s the man you want to see growing old, nobody else. That’s love.” I was not looking at you, you were looking at me, you puppy, you follower, you never stood no chance. “It’s never happened to me yet.” I said, after I had turned to look you in the eye, your face relaxed like that of a baby under my gaze.

I AM NOT A MOM!

She came to sit next to us, in her natural state, wasted beyond recognition, frantically trying to lure you back between her thighs. She's always been quite open-legged about things, but all this trouble just for free rent?

I got up. Ever stopped to consider in which ideal world order you could ever keep up with me?

About twenty-four hours later you figured if you’ll stick around waiting for your break, you might as well get laid in the meantime.

Morale of the story: the gay guy was right. You are spineless. Sorry about your broken dreams. I don’t like people who can’t fly.

Statistics

"All men are gay."

"What?"

"All men are gay. You know what just happened?"

"What just happened?"

"Think of the rudest most inconsiderate most sleazy most likely to be straight man in the whole office."

"Jacob."

"No, the other one."

"Tim."

"Yes. So I'm walking down the corridor and he zeroes in on me and points to my pink shoes and says: they match with the pink skirt, I like that, oh, look, they match with the pink earrings too."

"So, what does that tell us?"

"He's gay. This is just like you noticing my boots the other day. It's unnatural. All men are suddenly gay."

"Right..."

"It's true. Didn't they teach you statistics in Oxford? It's the two-will-do rule."

Love

Forget it. Total waste of time. And it's simple to prove. You spend maybe six months in total bliss. If you're lucky, most need about a week to fall out of love. You take at most a year, depending on how good you are at fooling yourself, to break up. Afterwards you're an emotional wreck from trying so hard to contain the blow but eventually still giving it. Or, if you happen to be on the receiving end, you are incapacitated for anywhere between a year and ten. And I mean literally incapacitated, you can't sleep, can't eat, can't work, can't laugh, can't trust, can't do any of the things you used to do with the same ease as before, everything is slightly slowed down, dumbed down, tied in millions of safety devices. I mean, even the simplest cost-benefit analysis shows it's an irrational pursuit.

So, just don't. Love, I mean. Despite all the bullshit about how love just happens and you can't control it, oh yes you can, trust me. Just remind yourself of your last encounter with it and it will be enough deterrent for one more round.

Love your dog instead. He probably deserves it more than most people you know.

Appalled

“I think he probably is attracted by you, but he also likes you as an intellectual partner, because you have the same type of interests.”

“What are you trying to say, that I’m just some brain, and not a piece of ass?”

What women really want

So what is it that women really want? I’m one of them so I should know. Or, according to a different school of thought, I’m one of them so I should have no idea. I’ll try to refute the latter in a short little paragraph. And you may accuse me of eclecticism, but keep in mind before you say it that you’ll not be the first or last to announce the death of ideology, and in the end taking the middle way is an ideology in itself.

And now back to women. This may come as a surprise to those of you who are into mysteries and stuff, but what women want is pretty much identical to what men want. Sometimes it’s comfort, sometimes it’s a partner, sometimes it’s a sparing partner, and sometimes it’s just sex. Just because one happened to be clingy when you wanted to leave, and another wanted to leave when you were in the mood for clinginess doesn’t mean we’re all upside down or confused or hysterical or heartless. So get over yourselves and try to find the balance. We’re not any worse or any better than your best drinking mate, who lets you in on all of his little (wannabe) conquests and the story of the first heartbreak, which he swore would be his last. We have the ambition to have many lovers in order to feel powerful. Just like you. We also yearn for the familiarity of a stable relationship. Just like you. It may be that we want any of the things we want from you. Or it may be that we want it from someone else. Just like you.

Imagine living in a suitcase

Ok, so he’s apparently gay at first sight. You may see it. They may see it. It took me about two months and someone telling me. I don’t see things. Except if it’s about animals or someone hurting. In the beginning, I hated him because he showed indifference to my anatomy. That is usually unforgivable. Much later he told me in all confidence he’s not really gay, he just can’t stand PMS. Which again is fair enough, I can’t really stand it either, it makes me cry over all kinds of things that never really happened.

Luckily, we soon found a common preoccupation with the hairier part of the human species and we’ve been best friends ever since. That means lots of ups and even more downs. The ups are always visual. We take position on what we see moving cockily on the street and ponder on the trickiness of size. He maintains that height is misleading, the proportion is inverted when it comes to dimensions that really matter. Life has provided me with some examples that come to support his view, but wishful thinking leads me to suppress that knowledge. Such reckless attitude makes me end up in all kinds of close-up situations which call for a silent “You have got to be kidding me!” And some politely faked reactions.

The downs on the other hand are about contradictions. Another thing that unites us except for other men is claustrophobia and its close relative agoraphobia. We suffer of both. We feel trapped most of the time. In a house, in a relationship, in our dependency on white sheets. We’d like to get out and live in a suitcase. Imagine that. We can’t, however, because, from down there in the suitcase, everything seems taller. And that, we have already established, can be momentarily misleading.

In a nutshell

When she got the email she turned around in her usual abrupt manner and asked "What beers on heads?"

"Oh shit, did I copy you on that? I wasn't supposed to. The Frenchie sneaked in here earlier and asked to go for some beers after work."

"Why was I not supposed to know about it?" Then she called the Frenchie. "Why was I not supposed to know about it?" And on goes the loudspeaker.

"He's lying, I never said you were not supposed to know about it. I just didn't think you'd be in the office today."

"I'm not coming anyway." And bang, she puts the phone down.

"I'm gonna be in a movie."

"Oh will you, how come?"

"Because I'm pretty. Smart too, but they're working on that and once it's solved I get new boobs. D-cups on a size eight. Picture that."

"What movie is that?"

"It's not a porn, sorry. Although you will be able to see me on celebritybabes.com once I'm a celebrity."

"Well you'll have to be working on your flexibility then, you were complaining about being stiff."

"I'm not stiff, honey, other people are stiff around me."