What Men Want

In an office of the U.S. Postal Service this morning, a morning show deejay played clips from last night’s Leno and … I forget now, but prolly was a guy after Leno, on the same network.

Come to think it, maybe they own the station, and the whole shtick — supposedly hey you might have missed this because it’s on late at night — was just another advert for itself.

And it’d be tragic if we missed even a minute of TV’s bubble gum flavored Quaaludes.

The bits were about St. Valentine’s Day, which is today, and which at airtime was about to start or had just done so. So there was the Hey it’s                   ! where you fill in the blank, with the joke coming next. In this case, the joke was on the holiday, except insofar as the joke is on us.

The crowd cheered and the jokes were clichéd (one “Notre Dame guy” and one “don’t forget”) and then I was called to do my bidness with USPS. You wouldn’t think getting my chance at the window was a mercy, but compared to what was on the radio, I was dancing to that counter.

*

It’s for women.

I get it. That’s the deal. Flowers, candy, dinner out — not stuff men gen’raly even genially look for. Sure, I like a flower now and again, but no candy. And Michele’s an awesome cook.

Hey, no problem.

But, what of men?

What do we want?

We want to serve.

All right, I grant you: good men want to serve.

Some chronologically adult genetically male individuals want to play Xbox.

But good men, being what men are supposed to be — men who are men — want to serve.

Sometimes husbands and wives end up watching separate televisions. They pass each other in the halls because they still work together and show up for each others’ birthday cakes, but they never socialize outside of business hours.

Thousand reasons for it, 90 percent of ‘em shit, and they boil down to one. Different post.

Suffice to say …

Shouldn’t be this way.

Men … we do want to serve.

Seen it so in myself, if too rarely.

*

Picture this: wife comes home — from work, girl’s night out, shopping for school stuff, whatever — takes off her shoes, rubs her feet.

[Rubs her feet, gentlemen!]

She says something ‘bout that they ache.

If the man’s on: I mean if he’s on, if all cylinders are firin’, if he’s jammin’, if he’s got it down

His first thought is, “Baby needs a new pair of shoes.”
His middle thought is, “Puttin’ in a softer floor this weekend, by God.”
And His last thought is, “I’ma kill the mofo who made my girl those cruel shoes.”

Maybe she just wants a poor baby.

Maybe she thinks all this is overkill.

[Or maybe she wants a foot rub, gentlemen. Duh.]

Alls I’m sayin’ is, we want to serve.

We do.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Ensamples

Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via

Read More »

Lipstick

Pig is revelation. Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen. It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see. + Key is it’s here. Problem is we don’t see it. Action

Read More »

Not For Teacher

There’s an unfortunate instructor-y thing where the guy on stage [I’ve found it’s usually a male doing this] asks a question he already knows the answer to, one of the people in the audience … err, classroom … is the target, the answer given is wrong, and the stagehand just goes and gives the answer

Read More »

Diminishing Me

You’d think a guy’d remember if it was the first time he’d seen a body but I didn’t not at first. [Hadda chance to graduate from college into one of our acceptable wars but didn’t, into the war that is, and no shot at a medical profession: left HS Chem as it had only 28

Read More »

Random

Are You Jackin’ With Me?

The one thing I know about The Dark Knight Rises is that it’s the most boring action movie I’ve seen in years, and yes, I saw The Expendables. But it might not be an action movie. So apart from the surety there, my thoughts remain roundaboutly, which is just, considering the movie itself. And the

Read More »

The Weighty Beauty of the IBM Selectric III

As Annie Dillard might say, I didn’t write this, I typed it. In fact, I typed it on a black 15″ IBM Selectric III — correction, a Correcting Selectric III, which began production, I am informed, in 1980. It’s the one I learned to type on and, I know now, began to learn to write.

Read More »

Of Love

We like lists. Here’s one. Love is a song Love is the greatest song Love is integral Love is alive Love is gospel Love is power Love is work Love is desire and fulfillment Love is suffering Love is free Love is true to reality Love is accurate Love is simple Love is individual Love

Read More »

The Country for Old Men

Walter Hartwell White is going to hell. Whatever else happens — whoever dies in the shootout, no matter what-all happens in the final three episodes, whatever he’s planning to do with the ricin recovered from his burned out house — that’s a fact. In fact, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that was the point, one which

Read More »

Related

Centurion Prayer Day One

Going to start a little experiment. Well, it’s not terribly small, given that it will take nearly a third of a year that’s already one-fourth done. I’m calling the idea Centurion Prayer. I already like the name, so don’t try to change my mind. The idea is 100 days of prayer, and it’s not a

Read More »

Unintelligent Design

Your plan is not working, they say. Ah, but my plan is working, we respond. (I just haven’t fully implemented it, yet … ) But look at the results you’re getting, they say. Things a’gonna change, just you wait, comes our reply. * The truth is, our plan is working. Mine is, yours is, theirs

Read More »

Columbo: Why It Matters

This is part two of a two-part post on why, some 45 years later, Columbo still matters. Part one is here. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, found here. Thank you. * I now have the entire collection, all 35 years, nearly 70 episodes in all, and I’ve seen each

Read More »

Murder, Inc.

In Season One’s “Ransom for a Dead Man” Columbo tells a story about his cousin Ralph. He’s flying in Leslie Williams’ plane and she’s been talking about her husband, whom she’s murdered. By the story he tells after they’ve landed, he enters the murderer’s mind — with a significant stopping point: “I have this cousin, Ralph,

Read More »