New World Man

I am sore today. Stiff and sore. The reason for this being, in a meanderingly roundabout way, that it is difficult to be a single man in the first decade of the third millenium (C.E.). Guys Life in the Tens requires a nuanced balance of complex character traits because it feels as if today's woman wants a little bit of everything.

Perhaps it is the benefit of removal (or rather the delusion created by it) but is seems like being a desireable man in decades past was more straightforward, more homogenized. There was the radical intellectualism/idealism of the 60's (The Huey P. Newton), the gruff hedonism of the 70's (The Noble Savage), the over-acheiving sensitivity of the 80's (The Alex P. Keaton), and the brooding misanthropy of the 90's (The Eddie Veder). However the Tens are not so easily defined. Maybe they will be in years to come, but right now it is a buffet and we need to provide every entree imagineable. We are now living in the decade of the the renaissance player, a.k.a. Heterogeneous Man.

So what does the price of tea in China have to do with my aching legs? Well that would have everything to do with my attempts to live up to the demands of the renaissance lifestyle. I have got a lot of areas covered: The intellectualism -- I misquote Hume and Hayek. The brooding -- I am grumpy and cynical. The debasing -- I consume vast quantities of watery domestic for sport. And even the sensitivity. Lots of sensitivity. Too much, in fact. Remember that bit about "nuanced balance?" I am tipping the scales on this point. Understanding the McDreamy vs. McVet debate, having actually uttered the phrase "Whoa, there's a sale at Express," ordering salad on a date (I mean, there is half of a dead chicken on top of it but it is still a salad), preferring to gossip with my buddys' wives and girlfriends rather than play yet another game of Risk (it is the game of global domination) are all things which individually could be rolled into one's renaissance game. But taken in aggregate, you begin to careen off of the road into some kind of strange anti-man territory. Sound intriguing? It's not. You really are just the Holden Caulfield of the pussies which, as he would put it, is kind of "phony."

So in order to compensate for said over-sensitivity I have my one All-American straight up hetero guy activity; softball. I play softball with my buddies from college, spit sunflower seeds, fiddle with my junk once an inning, and generally try to play hard and dirty up my "uniform" each week. The problem is that I am no athlete. In high school I played lacrosse for a couple of seasons but that mainly consisted of watching the game from the bench while my buddy and I took turns punching each other in the helmet with our giant padded gloves. I did manage to letter in school, twice, but they were for Marching Band and Math Team. What this adds up to is not being a very graceful individual. I lurch, heave, and jerk spastically in the pursuit of ground balls and infield singles and my muscles scream at me for it the next day. I love baseball and rec league softabll is the closest I will ever get to the game. But why do I really do it? To build up my man points. To fill out my Player pastiche. To be Heterogeneous Man.

This had better work...