#3-0 (advice for jilted men)
So, in the very beginning of all of this, that still early part of our chronologies where some still claim is childhood but others see it as the first few years of being a young adult, whatever that really means, the two genders walks into it with vastly different versions of what they think things such as dating, and love, mean. The girls, already fine-tuned by so many various little pointers all through our culture, start dating the first boy they find acceptable and vow to all who would listen to them that this boy, whoever he is is going to go to the same college as she is and start living together and eventually marry. They write their first name with their beloved's last name over and over again in their notebooks at either high school or middle school, or wherever, always in cursive, more often that not (if applicable) little ♥ where the dot of the lower case "i" is supposed to be. It isn't always true, but it's somehow always true.
Almost every time, it doesn't last forever, of course. Testosterone is a heady thing for boys who experience the first doses of it in their bloodstream; we want to know what it's like to be with that one girl, but then we want to know about her friend, or the one they saw in the parking lot that one time, or the one pictured in the ad in the magazine, or the Spanish teacher, or that distant second cousin. Our hormones leave us disoriented with so many ideas, too many possibilities, and hearts always get broken along the way. Sometimes these little relationships progress into something with a bit more meaning than what we're comfortable with at that particular point in time, manifesting itself in things like having dinner with her and her parents out somewhere, or renting a tuxedo for the prom, and somewhere along that way we start feeling concerned that perhaps we had gone too far. But in reality, at that age, all it takes is just the right look from just about any other girl. It's greener pastures and new frontiers; blondes instead of brunettes instead of blondes.
Some boys never get out of this pattern; they're the ones in the bars in the warehouse part of town that still play classic rock on the jukebox, wondering where all the good times had gone. Or driving their Mercedes to meet someone they've contacted through Craigslist, because socioeconomics have nothing to do with this. Certain girls never quite get out of their patterns. Between you and me, Jilted Men, I see both cases all the time, but in most cases something else happens as everyone starts to grow up a little more, it's very drastic: when it comes to their respective views, it's almost as if the boys and the girls switch places.
It seems like it happens either somewhere shortly before the legal drinking age in this country or somewhere shortly thereafter. Although I don't think drinking has anything to do with it, it might, I don't know because I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly. Maybe, for the guys, the chauvinism they've been fed in magazines and locker rooms simply gets old, and silly, and unrealistic, and we find ourselves needing a partner because we start becoming aware of just how hard life actually is, how little excuses there are and how much real work there is that we have to do. Also seemingly true is considering all the men I know, and how they got older, and how they started becoming more emotional about things. Consider, how more often than not, the sad songs about betrayal and heartbreak are written and performed by men. Women may occasionally sing a song about cheating men, or at least Tammy Wynette used to, but usually women sing about love, especially the empowerment of love. Men, however, sing of love once known but then lost.
Women, on the other hand and about the same time, become far more aware of all the possibilities themselves. For many of them, if they weren't, they'd have to be incredibly dense. And those women are out there, but chances are, if you're reading this, you're not messing around with that kind of woman in the first place. Good going, by the way. Keep not doing that.
As men, if any one of us have ever been catcalled upon by any strange women before, it's probably only happened either worse and absolutely no more often, ever, than what could be counted on by one hand. Any of us who claim that it's happened to them more often than that are either delusional or lying. For most of us, this hasn't happened at all. But one in the prime of womanhood, on the other hand, can have this happen to them more often in one single day than any man, ever. It happens in the parking lot of the grocery store, while they're at the gas station, walking down the street, pretty much anywhere. It's probably at once self-assuring and terrifying. I mean, really, seriously think about that for a second. It would probably be awesome for awhile...but, you know?
And so they start to figure out how beautiful they really are, through trial and probably more error than anything, and begin to understand the true value of it on top of being intelligent and being funny and having things going on in their lives, too, and are more in control of everything than most of us men could ever really hope to be, and want to experience as much of it as they think they can get away with. They grew up being told they could do whatever they set their mind to in life, and then they finally do. In the meantime we begin to understand in no uncertain terms everything out there in the world that we can't. Then we either eat their dust, or choke on it (or choke on the dust that's caused from spinning our own wheels but I'm not writing about that particular problem right now), because there is no greater force out there than the space between a woman in the height of her powers and what they want at that particular time. You just experienced it. You were the experience once, but then you became the one in the way.
You have to understand that this is fine. It didn't matter how good-looking you are, or the measure of your prowess, or how sweet or romantic you were, or even that you made it a point not to gawk at any other women in the restaurant or the party, or even how much money you made: it was time for her to move on, or just to simply do something else. And I know that it's hard to settle for having to be a stepping stone for someone else's path on their way to be a better person, but that's what it was, and it's your only option.
Your only real one, anyway, or perhaps I should say that it's the only one that has a chance of maybe being good for you. My Advice for Jilted Men is really no advice at all, only conjecture, because every situation is different just like every man and woman despite these horrible widespread generalizations I'm making right now, are different.
Advice for Jilted Men is not a fish that you catch while it travels downstream. Consider that you're not a salmon, at least, that mates only once and then dies, else you never possibly could have gotten this far. And although it probably doesn't feel that way right now, you have.
Advice for Jilted Men is a deer, instead, you can almost reach out and touch them sometimes if you're being very still and death-quiet like the middle of a warm night out in the middle of nowhere, probably trespassing somewhere but it was too dark to read the signs, but at the first hint of movement in its direction it turns tail and bolts, and you will never get that close again.
Advice for Jilted Men is one of those New York Times crossword puzzles, the Friday one, because they get increasingly harder throughout the week (try it if you don't believe me) that even the most clever and educated of us can only be so sure about certain parts of it, where the words fit and how they fit with other words, with each other. Advice for Jilted Men is looking in a mirror at the end of the day, or the beginning of it when you shave and brush your teeth and maybe floss but probably don't, getting the earwax out of your ears using a Q-Tip even though they tell you not to do that but how in the Hell do you get earwax out of your ears otherwise, it ain't like you're going to get one of those water picks just so you could do that like somebody told you to do that one time, I mean what the fuck. After a little while you stare at yourself for a long time and realize that there is definitely something wrong with you, but you have no idea what that might be. And Advice for Jilted Men is that one day, probably sooner and not later, someone will come along in your life, look at you in the same way that you looked at yourself in the mirror, and can't think of what might be wrong with you, either.
There is no such thing as good or evil, after all, and the world is not entirely so cruel.
Almost every time, it doesn't last forever, of course. Testosterone is a heady thing for boys who experience the first doses of it in their bloodstream; we want to know what it's like to be with that one girl, but then we want to know about her friend, or the one they saw in the parking lot that one time, or the one pictured in the ad in the magazine, or the Spanish teacher, or that distant second cousin. Our hormones leave us disoriented with so many ideas, too many possibilities, and hearts always get broken along the way. Sometimes these little relationships progress into something with a bit more meaning than what we're comfortable with at that particular point in time, manifesting itself in things like having dinner with her and her parents out somewhere, or renting a tuxedo for the prom, and somewhere along that way we start feeling concerned that perhaps we had gone too far. But in reality, at that age, all it takes is just the right look from just about any other girl. It's greener pastures and new frontiers; blondes instead of brunettes instead of blondes.
Some boys never get out of this pattern; they're the ones in the bars in the warehouse part of town that still play classic rock on the jukebox, wondering where all the good times had gone. Or driving their Mercedes to meet someone they've contacted through Craigslist, because socioeconomics have nothing to do with this. Certain girls never quite get out of their patterns. Between you and me, Jilted Men, I see both cases all the time, but in most cases something else happens as everyone starts to grow up a little more, it's very drastic: when it comes to their respective views, it's almost as if the boys and the girls switch places.
It seems like it happens either somewhere shortly before the legal drinking age in this country or somewhere shortly thereafter. Although I don't think drinking has anything to do with it, it might, I don't know because I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly. Maybe, for the guys, the chauvinism they've been fed in magazines and locker rooms simply gets old, and silly, and unrealistic, and we find ourselves needing a partner because we start becoming aware of just how hard life actually is, how little excuses there are and how much real work there is that we have to do. Also seemingly true is considering all the men I know, and how they got older, and how they started becoming more emotional about things. Consider, how more often than not, the sad songs about betrayal and heartbreak are written and performed by men. Women may occasionally sing a song about cheating men, or at least Tammy Wynette used to, but usually women sing about love, especially the empowerment of love. Men, however, sing of love once known but then lost.
Women, on the other hand and about the same time, become far more aware of all the possibilities themselves. For many of them, if they weren't, they'd have to be incredibly dense. And those women are out there, but chances are, if you're reading this, you're not messing around with that kind of woman in the first place. Good going, by the way. Keep not doing that.
As men, if any one of us have ever been catcalled upon by any strange women before, it's probably only happened either worse and absolutely no more often, ever, than what could be counted on by one hand. Any of us who claim that it's happened to them more often than that are either delusional or lying. For most of us, this hasn't happened at all. But one in the prime of womanhood, on the other hand, can have this happen to them more often in one single day than any man, ever. It happens in the parking lot of the grocery store, while they're at the gas station, walking down the street, pretty much anywhere. It's probably at once self-assuring and terrifying. I mean, really, seriously think about that for a second. It would probably be awesome for awhile...but, you know?
And so they start to figure out how beautiful they really are, through trial and probably more error than anything, and begin to understand the true value of it on top of being intelligent and being funny and having things going on in their lives, too, and are more in control of everything than most of us men could ever really hope to be, and want to experience as much of it as they think they can get away with. They grew up being told they could do whatever they set their mind to in life, and then they finally do. In the meantime we begin to understand in no uncertain terms everything out there in the world that we can't. Then we either eat their dust, or choke on it (or choke on the dust that's caused from spinning our own wheels but I'm not writing about that particular problem right now), because there is no greater force out there than the space between a woman in the height of her powers and what they want at that particular time. You just experienced it. You were the experience once, but then you became the one in the way.
You have to understand that this is fine. It didn't matter how good-looking you are, or the measure of your prowess, or how sweet or romantic you were, or even that you made it a point not to gawk at any other women in the restaurant or the party, or even how much money you made: it was time for her to move on, or just to simply do something else. And I know that it's hard to settle for having to be a stepping stone for someone else's path on their way to be a better person, but that's what it was, and it's your only option.
Your only real one, anyway, or perhaps I should say that it's the only one that has a chance of maybe being good for you. My Advice for Jilted Men is really no advice at all, only conjecture, because every situation is different just like every man and woman despite these horrible widespread generalizations I'm making right now, are different.
Advice for Jilted Men is not a fish that you catch while it travels downstream. Consider that you're not a salmon, at least, that mates only once and then dies, else you never possibly could have gotten this far. And although it probably doesn't feel that way right now, you have.
Advice for Jilted Men is a deer, instead, you can almost reach out and touch them sometimes if you're being very still and death-quiet like the middle of a warm night out in the middle of nowhere, probably trespassing somewhere but it was too dark to read the signs, but at the first hint of movement in its direction it turns tail and bolts, and you will never get that close again.
Advice for Jilted Men is one of those New York Times crossword puzzles, the Friday one, because they get increasingly harder throughout the week (try it if you don't believe me) that even the most clever and educated of us can only be so sure about certain parts of it, where the words fit and how they fit with other words, with each other. Advice for Jilted Men is looking in a mirror at the end of the day, or the beginning of it when you shave and brush your teeth and maybe floss but probably don't, getting the earwax out of your ears using a Q-Tip even though they tell you not to do that but how in the Hell do you get earwax out of your ears otherwise, it ain't like you're going to get one of those water picks just so you could do that like somebody told you to do that one time, I mean what the fuck. After a little while you stare at yourself for a long time and realize that there is definitely something wrong with you, but you have no idea what that might be. And Advice for Jilted Men is that one day, probably sooner and not later, someone will come along in your life, look at you in the same way that you looked at yourself in the mirror, and can't think of what might be wrong with you, either.
There is no such thing as good or evil, after all, and the world is not entirely so cruel.