Girls Drive the Bus, Boys Go Under It

When I was 15-years-old, my room was wall-papered from top to tails with movie posters.
My teenage room was a dark den of adolescence. None of these posters were in frames and could hardly be passed off as "art"; they weren't stylishly decorative. Each of the more than 25 posters were riddled with pinholes in the corners, tape marks on the edges or sticky gunk staining the heavy stock poster paper. Sometimes vintage posters of "Singin' In the Rain" or "Breakfast at Tiffany's" can be found in Pottery Barn catalogues or Ikea stores across the country. These throwbacks pass as tasteful kitsch artifacts; fodder for homosexuals or girls with no real taste in film. But in 1995, I liked guns and goatees, spurs and bulletholes and stuff. I didn't have Audrey Hepburn's elbow-length gloves and cigarette holder gracing my boyhood walls. I had Nic Cage's "Kiss of Death" and Michael Douglas' "Falling Down" hung in places of unfortunate prominence back in 1995.

It was awful and embarassing.

Not embarrassing enough however, to stop me from revealing it all here for mass consumption.

For those of you who knew me back in 1995, my revelation comes as no shock to you. For those of you who hadn't yet met me, I also doubt my revelation comes as much of a surprise - that's kind of the problem. I'm a male now, just as I was 12 years ago, and throughout that time I've been guilty of perpetrating a general stereotype that surrounds men like a cloud of stink.

The following male stereotypes of which I speak are:

We don't dance.
We don't sweep, dust, mop, cook, or make our beds.
We can't dress.
We can't decorate.
We can't communicate without grunting, swearing or utilizing sports metaphors to make sense of our life.

Stereotypes are stereotypes because they're true more often than not. And I hate this about guys. Everything about the cliched male is true... unless of course the cliched male is gay or metrosexual.*

I know this is a bitter and unfair generality, but I like dabbling in generalities. I'm aware of our grayscale world, but this is my blog and I want only to work in blacks and whites.

That's how it works, right? Men like to speak in simplified, overarching terms in order to make a clarified point, but all that's accomplished is that women find some detail on which to disagree. So if I say that a gay guy would buy a bunch of "cute drapes" from Anthropologie, a girl will correct me by saying that Anthropologie doesn't sell drapes. Nevermind that I'm not talking about drapes, I'm talking about the gay guy buying them.

And now that I've generalized women as unfocused nitpickers, I'm sure there are girls out there intent on telling me that they and three of their best girl friends haven't a clue what Anthropologie sells and that not every girl cares about drapes.

Ugh. Fine.

Grayscale it is.**

The point isn't Anthropologie or drapes or women. It's homosexuals. But the point isn't really about homosexuals either.‡ I just used homosexuals as an example of a bigger point about how generalizing doesn't work with nitpickers. I readily admit that I don't know what goes on inside an Anthropologie store. They could sell auto parts and I wouldn't know it. Anthropologie is a business aimed at a female demographic. Essentially, it is a club that doesn't particularly want me as a member and so how can I be blamed for not knowing the secret handshake?

But let my ignorance on what goes on inside of an Anthropologie not add to the popular stereotype that men are decoratively, stylistically and antiseptically clueless. I'd like to know what goes on inside an Anthropologie, I've just never been given the opportunity.

Why would a 15-year-old boy with a peach fuzz mustache and a "Reservoir Dogs" poster hanging above his bed seek shelter inside an Anthropologie? Who would support this? His mother would think him strange, his friends would ridicule him, the cashiers wouldn't take him seriously and what's a teenage boy going to do with a silver mailholder in the shape of the first letter of his last name, anyway?

College won't be much better for this boy either. Mom takes him to Ikea, buys a bed, a computer desk, a floor lamp and a poster of "Breakfast At Tiffany's"... that's all that's going to fit in his dorm room. There are no more options for this kid. Eventually, his roomate's gonna want to hang up his naked pictures of Carmen Elektra in the spot that Audrey Hepburn currently hangs because the boy's roomate is a perv no longer living with his mother. Say what you want, no one is going to stop a boy, willing to purchase a Carmen Elektra poster, from hanging it on his wall. The floor lamp gets shoved aside by a guitar and a set of free weights and before you know it, we're at the boy's 22nd birthday.

He's 22-years-old and he's never been given proper instruction on much outside of how to properly throw a curveball. It's never been acceptable to learn much else. But now he's fallen in love and the girl he wants to marry has been sifting through Crate & Barrel catalogues since she was seven.

Who knew that there was a difference between a mustard colored wall from too much cigarette smoking and a mustard painted wall created to enhance the warmth of all the cedar furniture? Well... for starters, guys didn't know that. And what if guys did happen to know this? There's no way in hell a women would be fine with a hetereosexual man with a beautifully decorated house. They'd question his sexuality until the mistrust drove a sharp stake in between the relationship. It's like when a girl knows more about basketball than I do.

It jerks the earth off its axis.

I hate that guys don't know this stuff. I've always fashioned myself ahead of the boy curve but most girls out there still look at me with disdain and pity.

What's that say about all the other guys out there?

What the hell have we been doing since we were seven that we don't yet comprehend why track lighting and candles are more inviting than the ceiling light? Why do guys consider "the good glasses" to be Slurpee cups that haven't been through the dishwasher more than a dozen times? Why, according to most guys, are the female shoppers the only cute things in a West Elm?***

While women were preparing for the workplace, the homefront and motherhood, guys were foolishly playing videogames. Boys waste their prime learning years (8-26) mastering Zelda and Mario instead of learning about the world they're going to have to live in for the next 70 years.

I hate the stereotype. I hate it because it's true.

So I try to catch up. I'm beginning to see the importance of cute light fixtures and shoes for every occasion. I understand the need for fitted shirts and hardwood floors. I'm sold on the importance of cute wine racks and cute end tables and cute headboards and the word "cute" itself. ±

I get it all, but I'm so far behind. Men have been oppressed in the culture of domestication. We've never been taught. We've been sold a faulty bill of goods and it's hard to admit we've been duped.

But I like candles, especially when they're flower-scented. And I want to learn. Give me a cuticle pusher and a Mike's Hard Lemonade - I've heard they're both refreshingly soothing.

Which is an emotional state I imagine guys are wholly in favor of.

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* Metrosexual. Met-row-SECKS-ew-all. n. 1. A man still unaware that he likes other men. 2. A man forced to act like a woman because other men don't get along with him.

** From here on out, if I use the word "every" assume I mean "occasionally," if I utilize the word "all," I'm sure I meant to type "many" and if "dumbass boys" or "unreasonable girls" occur anywhere in this blog - assume I meant "some people."

‡ I would like to state for the record that I haven't any problem with homosexuals or homosexuality. My mom thought I was a homosexual for the better portion of high school. I've had sex with homosexuals and I currently date a homosexual. Homosexuals don't bother me, but we live in a world where poking fun or writing something humorous about a population of which you are not a member, can sometimes cause people advocating for or members of that group to become defensive, oversensitive or downright angry. I'm intending no ill will toward homosexuals.

I'm intending ill will toward women and drapes.

*** West Elms are apparently the "funky modern alternative to Pottery Barn." I had to ask my girlfriend about this because I ran out of furniture stores that I could name off the top of my head and I didn't want to be redundant.

± The way girls use the word "cute" can most closely be related to the manner in which guys use the word "dude." Don't confront a girl about this. She will deny she overuses the word. But if you listen to women describe things that they a) truly find aesthetically pleasing or b) find hideous and awful, but don't want the people around them to know, you will hear the rat-a-tat of "cute" dribble outwardly at an alarming pace.

Junk Utopia

When I was 4-years-old, my mom was either just finishing nursing school or a recent graduate from it. During this same period, my dad was a commercial photographer. As a youngin', I can't claim to have cared much about either of their professions. All I cared about was that they let me peruse the toy aisle of our local grocery store* and that at least one of them picked me up from pre-school each day.

As a 4-year-old, I rolled with a lot of punches and didn't ask many questions. I'm not sure if this is true for the majority of young children, but it was true for me. I made the best out of what I was handed... at least that's the way my 26-year-old brain remembers the 4-year-old version of myself.

When I was young, I liked a song called "Magic Man" by a band named Heart. I was under the impression that Heart, who only have three songs worth listening to, were one of the most important and productive groups in the world. Whenever someone mentioned they had memorized a specific song by heart, I thought they meant the song was actually "by Heart."

"I know all the words to 'Like A Virgin' by heart."

Even though "Thriller" didn't sound like a girl singer, you wouldn't believe how many people knew that song by Heart. Heart seemed to be the most eclectic group in the world, whose popularity knew no bounds. Had I questioned just one of the people who knew a song by heart, I would have saved myself both a great deal of future disappointment and a bundle of Heart Fanclub fees.

I'd like to refocus on the pre-school, because really, the pre-school is the most important part of this blog - despite this blog being neither about pre-school nor my youth.

Often, my dad picked me up after a long day of playing with blocks and painting with fingers** and we'd set out to walk the 15 blocks back home. Because my pre-school was in a community college, the bulk of my surroundings were created and designed for "old people" which, as a small child, I defined as anyone older than 11. Somewhere near the pre-school facility was the main college cafeteria.

Before heading home, my dad occasionally detoured us to the student cafeteria and stood me in front of a vending machine. Vending machines filled with candies and chips stacked higher than the Space Needle were more unreal to a 4-year-old than the toy aisle in a grocery store. Not really understanding the concept of coins, vending machines were seemingly free havens of junk food. The mere act of finding a vending machine proved its discoverer worthy of its snacky sweetness.

I don't recall when it was that I realized vending machine food wasn't free, but I'm sure I was devastated.

It wasn't just junk snacks that made vending machines the highlight of my week,*** it was that all this junk dive-bombed into a toddler-level doggy-door delivered by robotic gyroscopes. Watching the slow roll of a Snickers bar nearing the abyss was like sitting in on an open-heart surgery. It was beautiful.

Every part of my life was somehow pre-determined. It was either nap time, arts and crafts time, time for bed or time for dinner and once I arrived at each of these activities, I was told when to sleep, or how to play, or what to eat. Standing there, my fathers pocket change already sitting in the guts of the machine, a wide expanse of choice towering above me; whatever I wanted was at my disposal.

About how many opportunities in life will a child find such choices?

About how many opportunities in life will we find such choices?

Nothing was sweeter than the taste of the candy that I chose from a vending machine. It was mine, the precise treat I wanted at the precise moment I wanted it. We make choices everyday.

How many of those choices are both simple and successful?

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* Toys to a small child were like drugs, weren't they? I hated going to the grocery store. Grocery stores were boring, loud, I hated the cold of the refrigerator section and being in a grocery store meant I wasn't watching "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns at home.

But the sweet siren song of a trip down the toy aisle was like the pied piper's flute. Our grocery store's toy aisle was like a miniaturized orgy of glorious id-feeding commercialism. Despite the fact that I rarely walked out of their with my mother having purchased me anything from the aisle, the pungent whiff of possibility was enough to compel me to go every time...

...that and the fact that I was too young to stay home by myself.

** Me, not Dad. Perhaps my father played with blocks and finger-painted before picking me up, but I can't be sure. You'd have to ask him.

*** No seriously, the highlight of my week.

Bigger Than Jesus

I was trapped in an argument with a good Catholic friend of mine recently.

I should clarify that when I say "good Catholic friend," I mean that she is both religiously active in her Catholicism and a longtime friend of mine (and, a longtime friend of Catholicism too, I suppose). Most of my friends are Catholic, I've never dated a girl who was not Catholic and any religious debates I find myself tangled in, are often doctrine vs. faith arguments with Catholics. I'm unsure the point of this paragraph, but whatever it is, it is probably what also propels me to list all the fruits and vegetables I eat when I'm discussing food with vegetarians.

I rarely agree with anything this particular Catholic friend of mine has to say, as it is not often rooted in rationality. I've been disagreeing with her for nearly a decade now and I can no longer decide if it's because we're so supremely opposite, or if because I get a kick out of bugging her with my devil's advocacy.* Several months ago, we got into a shouting match over Evangeline Lilly's character on the ABC television program "Lost." The strange thing is that we never argue over war, politics, art or even religion, we argue about which girls are desirable,** which movies suck the least and the general merits of television characters. This is usually enough to frenzy us into shouting matches... mostly just me.

* FACT 1: All Catholics hate devil advocacy.

** FACT 2: We both watch 'The Office' and she hates Karen and can't imagine why any guy would go for her over Pam. And while I love Pam, the idea that going for Karen is a huge mistake, seems overly biased and wrong-headed. She also says Jim isn't all that adorable…

FACT 3: All Catholics hate Jim from 'The Office'

Some nights ago we started talking about "The Da Vinci Code," a film in which I was deeply disappointed (mostly because of Tom Hanks' hairdo). While we agreed that neither the film nor the book are the brilliant masterworks their popularity suggest they should be, we nevertheless managed to find something to bicker incessantly about anyway.

She said that finding a direct bloodline to Jesus Christ would, if it happened in real life, be the most staggering discovery in the history of the world.

And those of you keeping score probably already foresee this as the part where I respectfully (and loudly) disagreed.***

*** Had I known asking her what she thought about "The Da Vinci Code" would lead the following conversation, I would not have asked. I swear to God, I woulda just left it alone. But you can't disagree with Catholics about the importance of Jesus. It's just not smart. They hate that. They all hate that.

FACT 4: All Catholics hate being generalized as one lump mass.

I'm not going to argue that definitive proof that Jesus has heirs wouldn't make the front section of your local newspaper, but it isn't the biggest possible story of the millennium.

She challenged me by asking what would be.

I thought for a moment about the question. Aliens immediately came to mind, but people from far and wide wouldn't line up to find solace in aliens. More than likely, we'd try to kill any alien life forms before we'd seek answers from them.

Who would be comparable to the mythical figure of Jesus Christ? Who else is known by everyone within the confines of large religious sects as a savior, healer and messenger of goodness?

And then it hit me…

Santa Claus.

If Earth found out tomorrow that Jesus Christ had a living bloodline and that Santa Claus as he is known today, exists, we as a mass would be infinitely more effected by Santa Claus. ****

**** FACT 5: Catholics love Santa, but not quite as much as Jesus. There's nothing wrong with this, but it does lead to fewer presents under the tree.

V.S.

Think about it.

Jesus was a carpenter in Israel. No one denies that. Even the crazed marauders trying to convince the rest of us that the Holocaust never happened, admit that some dude named Jeshua existed. The details on how he existed and why he existed are still being hashed out among varying religions, but hey, we can all agree he was walking around for 33 years, right? Just finding his bloodline tells us little more than that he wasn't as pious as the Good Book says he was. Frankly, that goes farther in disproving his holiness than if there was no bloodline to be had. And yeah, there was a Saint Nicholas too (although some say Santa Claus is actually based on a Turkish bishop born in the third century who was never actually canonized), but no one assumed that old Kris Kringle flew around with deer, while going on massive breaking & entering sprees once a year.

So what we're comparing here is a bloodline to the person many consider to be the son of God***** or the existence of a man who lives amongst tiny people and has the ability to shape-shift, stunt the space time continuum and fly.

***** According to the Encarta Encyclopedia, the nickname Kris Kringle evolved from the German words for Christ child, Christkindl.

FACT 6: The Germans play by their own rules.

Are we still arguing about this? No question. The existence of Santa Claus would prove that time can be altered and physics would no longer be a required high school course. It would be a novelty for the overachievers, like those kids who take Latin as their language instead of Spanish.
Honestly, would it be more important to know whether Jeshua of Nazareth had sex or that Sinterklaas knows the secret to everlasting life?

I'll put it to you this way, we all know someone who has had sex. How many of you know someone who is never going to die?

For the record, I totally won the argument. By the time we parted ways, she was crying her eyes, bawling like a small baby. It was embarrassing. I think she's a Hari Christna now.