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Showing posts with label Men's Lives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Men's Lives. Show all posts
Sunday, 16 April 2017
Tuesday, 16 April 2013
The Gentleman's Guide to a One-Night Stand
Congrats! You're going home with someone! Better yet, someone who miraculously wants exactly what you want from this encounter—a no-strings-attached (unless bondage straps count?) night of sex. But instead of enjoying this rarely realized fantasy, you're paralyzed with anxiety. Siobhan Rosen lays out how to be a stand-up guy throughout the stickiest, most mistake-ridden sexual escapade of them all
In theory, a one-night stand should be as easy as its sexual congregants. You want sex. She wants sex. Commence passionate no-commitment sexytimes. Finish passionate no-commitment sexytimes. Wash face. Sleep. Part. Thanks for the memories, you!
Monday, 10 December 2012
Countdown to Fatherhood: A Manifesto
outweighed by the upside. Should you complicate that primordial narrative with serious emotional reservations, you are History's Greatest Monster, and you may as well eat your child as evilly and cackley as possible with some sriracha aioli and a few stunned but still-breathing Labrador puppies.
So here's the bad news, for me at least: I'm having trouble mustering excitement about my son's arrival into the world, mere days from now. I'm happy for him, of course - come on out, fella! You'll never feel that sense of achievement again! - and I'm especially grateful that he's not entering a Mitt-ruled world, with its high-yield investing strategies and low opinion of lady parts. But the God's-honest reality is that a backflow of worries rises all the way from my heels to the back of my teeth, flooding out the groovy vibes.
There are many kinds of paternal worries. I have a rather extensive fear of fecal matter and its many malodorous forms. I worry about the absurdly expensive luxury versions of every imaginable piece of baby accouterment. (Am I a sonofabitch if young Henry Gregory Edwards-Weinstein doesn't have a Gant Rugger polo of his very own?) I worry about the possibility of having to poop while alone in my own house, and figuring out whether to take the baby into the loo with me... and if so, where he goes while I go.
But these are trifles. I am chiefly filled with the worries you're not supposed to voice, for fear of being labeled a self-centered Bad Parent. I worry about trading what little semblance of fashion sense I've cultivated in exchange for jorts, Crocs and lawn mowing-ready t-shirts. I worry about quitting drinking and tossing darts all night while psychobilly plays on the jukebox at the local smoky drinking hole.
What I mean is that I worry about the finitude of life. I worry that, starting now, I will sleeplessly work myself to the nub in order to nurture an eye-rolling, money-burning pissant who thinks my experience and wisdom and advice are so much smelly patronizing bullshit. And then I will die.
There's a dictionary of existentialism, and it has an entry that deals with finitude. Let me sum it up for you: You're going to fucking die. You're probably more than halfway there already, you overworked meatstick. At the heart of human existence, it says, there is "the dreadful, haunting consciousness of finitude."
There is a very real sense in which this whole death thing comes about because we have babies. Single-celled organisms, like bacteria, reproduce asexually: A cell divides itself, and voila, there is the next generation - no sex, no baby, no mess, and essentially no death. The parent quite literally lives on in its offspring. Us? We live, we come together to screw, we bear children, and we make pretty corpses. We say we live on in our kids and grandkids, but of course it's a metaphor; little Sally or Johnny can't carry us, wrinkly and tired but still stirring, into the last half of the 21st century.
And I swear, when I think about how my son wasn't there and then he was; when I think about how he'll need me and then he won't; when I think how my future seemed wide open and now it doesn't, I think about death, and how much closer it's gotten, and how little I did with all the time I spent up to this point, when I was not considering my beginning, middle, and end.
So what's the score here? How does one win this game? There are those dads-to-be who embrace their own lives by fleeing the one they've created. Some become deadbeat divorces. Some just live at work. Immerse themselves in man-caves. Retreat into their NFL Sunday Ticket.
These are all fine diversions, and tempting escapes. But I don't know. My impending fatherhood impels me to make better use of my time, however much I may have. For example, I should probably stop wasting time reading the dictionary of existentialism, even though it tells me that "far from being a weakness, anxiety commands considerable strength and fortitude."
Sign me up for some of that. Not the strength to coach tee-ball or wipe little Henry's strained-pea vomit or check the school districts and HOA fees before picking a future domicile, mind you. I want the strength to write that goddamn book and take my family on that Baltimore-to-Key West sailing-sloop vacation. I want to tell my wife how sexy she is, even when she isn't (and let's face it, if we didn't live in an age of science, I could be easily convinced that a fetus derives its life-force from the parents' gradual sacrifice of sexual allure through the gestation period.) In short, I want to start living, not stop.
I warned you earlier about the dads who talk in all clichés. I have one of these dads. You probably do, too. The last thing you need is another puffy, sleep-deprived dude with a Baby Bjorn telling you that the adventure is just beginning, or that when one door closes, another opens. I won't tell you, as my father told me, that everything changes for the better when you see that little cheeky monkey face for the first time, and all these questions fade every time you conjure the image of that face. That may be true; I'll find out soon enough.
For now, all I can tell you is that I'm buying into the live-forever metaphor: When I'm dead, I want my kid to think I was cool as fuck. And I'll die trying to make that happen. That, and getting this goddamned pack-n'-play to fit in the back of our Subaru.
Tuesday, 6 November 2012
Every Man's Second Car Should Be a Beater Truck
Oh, you dream of owning a Ferrari one day? So does every pimply teenage boy and hedge-fund junior exec. As Peter Behrens argues, the more discerning man lusts after something a little more humble but with just as much personality: the dusty, worn-in pickup
Something about well-used American pickups grabs most guys right where they drive. Old trucks are stoic, cheap, empowering; own a truck and you discover all sorts of things to do with a truck. Furniture is moved, lumber is bought. And finding the right one is like bringing home a great mutt from the pound. You won't win points at the show, but you'll end up best friends.
I learned to drive in a 1960 Chevy pickup with a suicide knob on the steering wheel, and I fell in love on the bench seat of a Dodge Power Wagon a decade older than me. My first car wasn't a car but an early-'60s Apache with a permanent crust of prairie gumbo (caked black soil) on a $299 paint job.
When I got married, I shoved my obsession deep into the closet. We moved to Maine, had a son, and drove a matched pair of aging Volvos. Then we started spending winters out in Far West Texas. That first year, we drove a long-term-rental car with the soul of a washing machine and a nav system that kept ordering us to Houston. I felt like an astronaut being scolded by mission control.
The Texas desert is a nature preserve for old trucks, and temptation was all around: battered, dusty, and handsome as hell. I suggested to my wife that we really could use one, but old trucks make women anxious. They like reliable. With beater trucks, reliable is not a selling point. Driving one is like sailing—you're never quite certain you'll get where you're headed. And if the road is long enough, something always breaks or leaks or sounds funny. It's adventure travel.
I've found that no matter what, you'll end up spending about $5,000 on a worthy truck. If you find one cheaper, you'll use the difference to get it running and street-legal. A clean old truck with a seized engine or balky transmission is still a smarter buy than a machine with excellent mechanicals and a rotted body or frame. You can fix anything except rust. If you live somewhere that roads are heavily salted, get online and look for a pickup in a drier part of the country. Shipping a beater cross-country can be cheaper than driving it there, though truth be told, the road trip is part of the fun.
When my wife flew north to work on a photo shoot, I sensed my moment. Within an hour, my son and I found our truck in Bee Pierce's used-car lot in Marfa, Texas: a '76 GMC Sierra Grande 15 with stalwart lines, a sturdy frame, and a decent asking price. And it had that old-truck aroma that comes as standard equipment: a heady compound of engine oil, dust, orange peels, vinyl, and the Swisher Sweets the original owner smoked back in 1981.
A couple of grand and a handshake later, we were proud owners. My wife returned and, after a little thunder and lightning, graciously learned to live with the truck. We shipped it to Maine and bought another last year, a 1986 Chevy Custom Deluxe we'll keep in Texas. Now I've got my eye on a sunburnt, well-weathered 1977 Ford F-150 that needs only two new tires and a tune-up. So many mutts out there, looking for a home.
I learned to drive in a 1960 Chevy pickup with a suicide knob on the steering wheel, and I fell in love on the bench seat of a Dodge Power Wagon a decade older than me. My first car wasn't a car but an early-'60s Apache with a permanent crust of prairie gumbo (caked black soil) on a $299 paint job.
When I got married, I shoved my obsession deep into the closet. We moved to Maine, had a son, and drove a matched pair of aging Volvos. Then we started spending winters out in Far West Texas. That first year, we drove a long-term-rental car with the soul of a washing machine and a nav system that kept ordering us to Houston. I felt like an astronaut being scolded by mission control.
The Texas desert is a nature preserve for old trucks, and temptation was all around: battered, dusty, and handsome as hell. I suggested to my wife that we really could use one, but old trucks make women anxious. They like reliable. With beater trucks, reliable is not a selling point. Driving one is like sailing—you're never quite certain you'll get where you're headed. And if the road is long enough, something always breaks or leaks or sounds funny. It's adventure travel.
I've found that no matter what, you'll end up spending about $5,000 on a worthy truck. If you find one cheaper, you'll use the difference to get it running and street-legal. A clean old truck with a seized engine or balky transmission is still a smarter buy than a machine with excellent mechanicals and a rotted body or frame. You can fix anything except rust. If you live somewhere that roads are heavily salted, get online and look for a pickup in a drier part of the country. Shipping a beater cross-country can be cheaper than driving it there, though truth be told, the road trip is part of the fun.
When my wife flew north to work on a photo shoot, I sensed my moment. Within an hour, my son and I found our truck in Bee Pierce's used-car lot in Marfa, Texas: a '76 GMC Sierra Grande 15 with stalwart lines, a sturdy frame, and a decent asking price. And it had that old-truck aroma that comes as standard equipment: a heady compound of engine oil, dust, orange peels, vinyl, and the Swisher Sweets the original owner smoked back in 1981.
A couple of grand and a handshake later, we were proud owners. My wife returned and, after a little thunder and lightning, graciously learned to live with the truck. We shipped it to Maine and bought another last year, a 1986 Chevy Custom Deluxe we'll keep in Texas. Now I've got my eye on a sunburnt, well-weathered 1977 Ford F-150 that needs only two new tires and a tune-up. So many mutts out there, looking for a home.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Stop Showing Me Your Internet Face
Humans have been flooding social networks with self-pics for almost a decade now, and yet we still suck at taking photos of ourselves. Lauren Bans explains why we're our own worst paparazzi
Listen, Generation Y-Doesn't-Everyone-Always-Look-at-Me: I'm glad you like yourself so much! Really. It takes a lot of self-confidence, verging on crippling egotism, to snap selfies every other nanosecond—here's me getting ready! here's me on my eighth drink! here's me puking into a Cheetos bag!—and immediately post 'em to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—wherever your peeps are. And by "peeps" I mean overly validating near-strangers, including that "sensual magician" from Albania whose friend request you accepted, because, well, one more follower! Woo hoo! Next thing you know, you have 35 new "likes!" It's basically an insulin shot straight to the ego.
But there's a problem: your face. I'm referring to the one you've been wearing in all those self-pics. You're overposed, to put it kindly. To put it unkindly: You look silly. Very, very silly.
It's called Internet Face—or at least that's what I'm calling it right now in this essay—and there are a few variations. Most men go for a vaguely threatening expression along the lines of Bobby De Niro in GoodFellas—a look that says, "What? You wanna take a picture of me? FUCK YOU." It's all raised eyebrows and feigned hostile surprise, as if their hands—the ones holding iPhones a foot away from their faces—aren't their own.
And some guys, particularly those who smell like a Hawaiian Tropic restaurant, like to show more of their waxed chests than an arm's length allows, so they'll use a mirror. A mirror! Which means we can actually see their hand holding up their phone. And still, a visage of pure contempt.
Not that ladies don't have their own horrible self-pic habit. It's earned its own name at this point: duckface. Cheeks are sucked in hard, and the lips are dialed up to full pout like a duck prostrate before a kid with breadcrumbs. You've seen it on Facebook. (Or worse, done it on Facebook—weirdly enough, the occasional dude borrows the pose.) It's a hyperbolic "kissy" face that gives a girl the appearance of vegetable-chopping cheekbones and a ScarJo mouth. At least, that's the hope. In reality, duckfacers look more like collagen-blooded Real Housewives. Or someone who's just been smacked in the face by a jellyfish.
So please trust me, men, when I tell you that your Internet Face—which has assaulted my eyes everywhere from Instagram to OkCupid—is the lady equivalent of a boner killer. All that trying so hard to look like you're not trying so hard? It is not working.
Clearly we aren't meant to be the picture taker and the picture subject at the same time. Maybe Internet Face is just a mask to protect us from the shame of such a narcissistic act. So we don't have to see our "real" face in the lens and think, "Seriously, I'm doing this right now?" The easy solution here would be to quit taking your own picture. Then we would revert to a time when there was a natural system of checks and balances in place—namely, when there was another person in the room holding the camera, protecting us from our worst instincts.
But—sigh—I realize asking this generation to stop snapping selfies is like asking Mitt Romney to let his hair air-dry. It's not gonna happen. So let's compromise: Could you just try, you know, smiling?
But there's a problem: your face. I'm referring to the one you've been wearing in all those self-pics. You're overposed, to put it kindly. To put it unkindly: You look silly. Very, very silly.
It's called Internet Face—or at least that's what I'm calling it right now in this essay—and there are a few variations. Most men go for a vaguely threatening expression along the lines of Bobby De Niro in GoodFellas—a look that says, "What? You wanna take a picture of me? FUCK YOU." It's all raised eyebrows and feigned hostile surprise, as if their hands—the ones holding iPhones a foot away from their faces—aren't their own.
And some guys, particularly those who smell like a Hawaiian Tropic restaurant, like to show more of their waxed chests than an arm's length allows, so they'll use a mirror. A mirror! Which means we can actually see their hand holding up their phone. And still, a visage of pure contempt.
Not that ladies don't have their own horrible self-pic habit. It's earned its own name at this point: duckface. Cheeks are sucked in hard, and the lips are dialed up to full pout like a duck prostrate before a kid with breadcrumbs. You've seen it on Facebook. (Or worse, done it on Facebook—weirdly enough, the occasional dude borrows the pose.) It's a hyperbolic "kissy" face that gives a girl the appearance of vegetable-chopping cheekbones and a ScarJo mouth. At least, that's the hope. In reality, duckfacers look more like collagen-blooded Real Housewives. Or someone who's just been smacked in the face by a jellyfish.
So please trust me, men, when I tell you that your Internet Face—which has assaulted my eyes everywhere from Instagram to OkCupid—is the lady equivalent of a boner killer. All that trying so hard to look like you're not trying so hard? It is not working.
Clearly we aren't meant to be the picture taker and the picture subject at the same time. Maybe Internet Face is just a mask to protect us from the shame of such a narcissistic act. So we don't have to see our "real" face in the lens and think, "Seriously, I'm doing this right now?" The easy solution here would be to quit taking your own picture. Then we would revert to a time when there was a natural system of checks and balances in place—namely, when there was another person in the room holding the camera, protecting us from our worst instincts.
But—sigh—I realize asking this generation to stop snapping selfies is like asking Mitt Romney to let his hair air-dry. It's not gonna happen. So let's compromise: Could you just try, you know, smiling?
Angry Nerds And How They're Terrorizing Our Women
Lately we've come to think of nerds as alpha dogs: They're the shareholders in every Silicon Valley start-up, the stars of every Apatow comedy, and the nice-guy ideal for single women everywhere. But dating grown-up geeks, Siobhan Rosen reveals, isn't all spooning while binge-watching Fringe over a long weekend. Nerds aren't looking for love, they aren't grateful to get in a girl's pants—and they're still really pissed off no one slept with them in high school
My very first boyfriend, Stonefist Murderew (not his real name—his Dungeons & Dragons moniker), was a proud member of our school's computer club. And the mathletes. Stonefist was an underweight nerd who collected Japanese comic books. I was an overweight nerd who'd had a Star Wars-themed bat mitzvah. Love is simple in high school ("You like ketchup on your fries? Me, too!"), and in our case, being two ostracized geeks with opposing genitals was enough to convince me that Stonefist was the Mulder to my Scully. And for about three years, that's what he was. We'd spend most afternoons watching one of his beloved VHS tapes while we fooled around, an activity we dubbed Monty Python and the Holy Hand Job. Hard to believe, but before I came along, Stonefist had never had sex with anyone. Now he was getting daily five-fingered sonatas from a girl who could rattle off every species native to Tatooine. He was pretty psyched. I was pretty psyched, too.
So Stonefist and I continued in a state of mutual psychedness. Until the first semester of college, when he dumped me for a "physical therapy" major named Traci, a former high school cheerleader with lots of unironic kitten posters on her dorm wall. You might be thinking: Why would Stonefist want a cheerleader when he already has a kindred dungeon master? I wondered that, too. "Well...she likes me!" he told me over the phone, with a kind of joyful disbelief he'd hoped I might share. This was my first glimpse of a very important truth: In matters of sex, nerds are no different from any other hormone-addled dude in possession of a penis.
Now, this revelation may seem obvious to you. But it's not obvious to womankind. Women like nerds. Sure, not every woman (Kim Kardashian) and not every nerd (Stephen Hawking). But as a general rule, very much yes. Especially now that nerds are experiencing something of a golden age. It wasn't so long ago that being a nerd meant getting folded into trash cans and hung from flagpoles. Now it's basically a Purple Heart. Who are today's captains of industry? Nebbishy dweebs who spent their youth unpacking computers instead of unhooking bras. And Hollywood is run by grown-up geeks (ahem, Apatow) who cast roly-poly beta males like Seth Rogen and Jason Segel as leading men.
We also go for nerds because we assume that they're going to be the "nice guys." The flawed logic here is that the type of dudes who prioritize brains over brawn will be less superficial when it comes to the opposite sex—that the torments of their youth have enlightened them, made them sweeter, more sensitive, more loyal, than someone like, say, the star quarterback who grows up entitled, well sexed, and generally thinking of himself as God's gift to womanity.
Ever since the fateful day a health teacher first referred to our nether region as a "treasure box," we've been urged to seek out a guy who will appreciate us always and forever (i.e., stop flirting with the fucking waitress). And we've been taught to think this way by everyone from our well- meaning bubbes to Cosmo, the magazine seemingly penned by a drunk brothel madam. A 2010 article titled "7 Reasons to Date a Geek" contained this stunning piece of advice: "Sure, he may secretly want to get it on with his super hot neighbor, but knowing that you're the hottest girl he's ever been with will probably keep him from cheating." In other words: Nerds will treat you like the Second Coming of Christ because it may actually be their second time coming. (Inside a woman, at least.)
But as someone who has spent the past decade dating a whole bunch of nerds, let me tell you: It's all a lie. Of intergalactic proportions.
Just to be clear, I'm sure there are plenty of nice, normal, devoted guys who have blown both literal and figurative loads on Kids in the Hall collector's items, just as there are probably some porn stars with dads who took them to the zoo every Saturday. But they're much rarer than you think. As it turns out, the dark childhood shit that makes nerds nerds—the years of rejection and humiliation, cross- pollinated with a quietly simmering superiority complex—makes them, go figure, total disasters to date as adults. Because nerds tend to nurse their high school wounds with the dedication of war widows. Sure, sometimes that makes them more sensitive. But just as often, it makes them more vengeful. Lots of sweet teenage nerds grow up to be huge adult nerd-holes.
Consider my smart, beautiful friend who dated an ex-nerd turned successful comedy writer, who incidentally looks like Michael Cera if Michael Cera were a lesbian. He was mistaken for a girl throughout high school and, as you might imagine, mercilessly bullied. He finished their first bumbling dinner date, she told me, with a "messy, goal-oriented lunge." He continued with the unwelcome mouth jousting and prom king-y pressure to "go all the way" for three more dates. On the fifth, he insisted, with all the smoothness of a bonobo, that they have sex before dinner lest he get "too antsy." My friend was surprised to find so much angry sexual aggression bottled up inside such a slight, "pencil-shaped" geek.
Another friend dated a nebbishy programmer (fun fact: he named his first computer "Pamela") who was shy and nervous and constantly told her how lucky he was to be with her. That didn't stop him from breaking up with her every six months, the minute any other female gave him the slightest inkling she wanted to have sex with him—really big obvious signals like, you know, sending him a Facebook friend request. And every time he launched into the breakup conversation so that he could boink his way up the social ladder, he would start to weep. Because even when he was being cruel, he couldn't entirely shake his harmless-nerd persona. After all, it's the nice-guy-who-never-gets-laid shtick that gets guys-who-never-get-laid laid. Like, all the time.
If you suspect you might be one of the unsavory types of nerds, ask yourself a few questions: Do you see yourself as a perpetual underdog in life's great battle to get action? Do you believe your underdog status entitles you to enact a sort of psychosexual revenge against those who have historically prevented you from getting laid (i.e., women)? Congratulations! You are probably a nerd, and also kind of a dick. Please let me offer some unsolicited advice: There are better ways to work through your childhood torments—like, say, bouncing a basketball or visiting a nice lady with a soothing voice and a prescription pad. You might also consider dropping the whole sensitive, emotionally intelligent, unlucky-in-love mensch act if you're really just looking to add another stain to your Transformers sheets. Women don't mind the occasional cad, if we know what we're dealing with from the get-go. In short: Be honest about who you are. Real men might talk about Jedi mind tricks, but they don't use them.
Siobhan Rosen is the pseudonym this author is using so her coder-nerd ex-boyfriend doesn't hack her phone and leak the "Wookiee photos."
So Stonefist and I continued in a state of mutual psychedness. Until the first semester of college, when he dumped me for a "physical therapy" major named Traci, a former high school cheerleader with lots of unironic kitten posters on her dorm wall. You might be thinking: Why would Stonefist want a cheerleader when he already has a kindred dungeon master? I wondered that, too. "Well...she likes me!" he told me over the phone, with a kind of joyful disbelief he'd hoped I might share. This was my first glimpse of a very important truth: In matters of sex, nerds are no different from any other hormone-addled dude in possession of a penis.
Now, this revelation may seem obvious to you. But it's not obvious to womankind. Women like nerds. Sure, not every woman (Kim Kardashian) and not every nerd (Stephen Hawking). But as a general rule, very much yes. Especially now that nerds are experiencing something of a golden age. It wasn't so long ago that being a nerd meant getting folded into trash cans and hung from flagpoles. Now it's basically a Purple Heart. Who are today's captains of industry? Nebbishy dweebs who spent their youth unpacking computers instead of unhooking bras. And Hollywood is run by grown-up geeks (ahem, Apatow) who cast roly-poly beta males like Seth Rogen and Jason Segel as leading men.
Ever since the fateful day a health teacher first referred to our nether region as a "treasure box," we've been urged to seek out a guy who will appreciate us always and forever (i.e., stop flirting with the fucking waitress). And we've been taught to think this way by everyone from our well- meaning bubbes to Cosmo, the magazine seemingly penned by a drunk brothel madam. A 2010 article titled "7 Reasons to Date a Geek" contained this stunning piece of advice: "Sure, he may secretly want to get it on with his super hot neighbor, but knowing that you're the hottest girl he's ever been with will probably keep him from cheating." In other words: Nerds will treat you like the Second Coming of Christ because it may actually be their second time coming. (Inside a woman, at least.)
But as someone who has spent the past decade dating a whole bunch of nerds, let me tell you: It's all a lie. Of intergalactic proportions.
Just to be clear, I'm sure there are plenty of nice, normal, devoted guys who have blown both literal and figurative loads on Kids in the Hall collector's items, just as there are probably some porn stars with dads who took them to the zoo every Saturday. But they're much rarer than you think. As it turns out, the dark childhood shit that makes nerds nerds—the years of rejection and humiliation, cross- pollinated with a quietly simmering superiority complex—makes them, go figure, total disasters to date as adults. Because nerds tend to nurse their high school wounds with the dedication of war widows. Sure, sometimes that makes them more sensitive. But just as often, it makes them more vengeful. Lots of sweet teenage nerds grow up to be huge adult nerd-holes.
Consider my smart, beautiful friend who dated an ex-nerd turned successful comedy writer, who incidentally looks like Michael Cera if Michael Cera were a lesbian. He was mistaken for a girl throughout high school and, as you might imagine, mercilessly bullied. He finished their first bumbling dinner date, she told me, with a "messy, goal-oriented lunge." He continued with the unwelcome mouth jousting and prom king-y pressure to "go all the way" for three more dates. On the fifth, he insisted, with all the smoothness of a bonobo, that they have sex before dinner lest he get "too antsy." My friend was surprised to find so much angry sexual aggression bottled up inside such a slight, "pencil-shaped" geek.
Another friend dated a nebbishy programmer (fun fact: he named his first computer "Pamela") who was shy and nervous and constantly told her how lucky he was to be with her. That didn't stop him from breaking up with her every six months, the minute any other female gave him the slightest inkling she wanted to have sex with him—really big obvious signals like, you know, sending him a Facebook friend request. And every time he launched into the breakup conversation so that he could boink his way up the social ladder, he would start to weep. Because even when he was being cruel, he couldn't entirely shake his harmless-nerd persona. After all, it's the nice-guy-who-never-gets-laid shtick that gets guys-who-never-get-laid laid. Like, all the time.
If you suspect you might be one of the unsavory types of nerds, ask yourself a few questions: Do you see yourself as a perpetual underdog in life's great battle to get action? Do you believe your underdog status entitles you to enact a sort of psychosexual revenge against those who have historically prevented you from getting laid (i.e., women)? Congratulations! You are probably a nerd, and also kind of a dick. Please let me offer some unsolicited advice: There are better ways to work through your childhood torments—like, say, bouncing a basketball or visiting a nice lady with a soothing voice and a prescription pad. You might also consider dropping the whole sensitive, emotionally intelligent, unlucky-in-love mensch act if you're really just looking to add another stain to your Transformers sheets. Women don't mind the occasional cad, if we know what we're dealing with from the get-go. In short: Be honest about who you are. Real men might talk about Jedi mind tricks, but they don't use them.
Siobhan Rosen is the pseudonym this author is using so her coder-nerd ex-boyfriend doesn't hack her phone and leak the "Wookiee photos."
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Don't Be The Worst: A 10-Step Plan To Keeping Things Hot
It's often been said that variety is the spice of life, which means some pretty depressing things for monogamy. Namely, that being with the same person forever, sexually and romantically, is sort of the equivalent of eating your favorite food every day. Most people love rice, but not as their only option, aside from masturbating to pictures of rice's Facebook friends in sexy bikini vacation photos.
I firmly believe that you can have rice every day, if you mix it up. (I mean this literally if you live in certain Asian countries or are severely impoverished and have a hotpot). You can keep the flame alive, in the bedchamber and the heart chamber with minimal effort. The key is remembering to do little things for your wife or longtime girlfriend or life partner that keep her surprised and sexually interested— almost to the point of wariness. I know that remembering to be unexpected seems counterintuitive, which is why it's important to plan your spontaneity with laser precision.
I've assembled some tips to keep your relationship feeling freshly shucked. Love is like a car, or intestines, and romance is like the oil change, or colonoscopy. Print these out and keep them in your pocket—you'll be magically transported back to a time when you didn't think of sex as an annoying reason to take off your robe. Back when seeing each other still made you a little nervous. Maybe nervous-er, if you're really good at it.
So put a rose in your teeth and let's go!
• Set an iPhone alert once a month for ROMANCE. On that day, do something romantic, like bringing her a favorite snack or showing up at work to serenade her in front of her colleagues. If she ever sees the iPhone alert, act casual and pretend like ROMANCE is the name of an adult video store.
• Sometimes jealousy is a real aphrodisiac. Why not give her the illusion that you've been cheating on her without any of the actual cheating. Have a friend call your cell phone repeatedly at odd hours, or quickly cover up your computer screen whenever she walks into a room. Now take her in your arms. Surprise! You've been taking a ballroom dancing class the whole time.
• Use an Internet coupon for a couple's massage. Let the soothing music and scent of bamboo take you into your own little world, and feel free to talk like the two people giving the massage aren't there. Maybe discuss how weird it is to be massaged, as a couple, by two people, and wonder aloud if the masseuses would consider having sex with you.
• Why not make a trail of rose petals leading to the bedroom? Or breadcrumbs. Sometimes women reeeeeeeeally want to have sex and we just get lost.
• Have a friend call your significant other from the hospital and say that she should get down there, right away. (If you don't have a friend, use your Paul Lynde impression and pretend to be a sassy male nurse.) When she gets there, have a doctor tell her that you have been in a terrible accident. Surprise! The doctor is a stripper.
• Disaster often brings people together. Try to engineer some kind of bridge collapse when you are together, or schedule a vacation when you think there will be an earthquake.
• Open Tilda Swinton's Wikipedia page. Say something like, "Wow, Tilda Swinton and her three-way marriage are really progressive, don't you think? She's so unconventionally beautiful." If your significant other agrees, go ahead and start checking the Portland Craigslist for people who want to be part of some kind of arrangement. If she doesn't, go ahead and masturbate to Tilda Swinton's Wikipedia page. She is unconventionally beautiful.
• Women really love musicians and sleeping with famous authors or actors. But if you don't have any natural talent, remember that women have really active imaginations. Accidentally crush things to give the impression that you have acquired incredible strength, and maybe let her catch you changing into or out of an outfit really quickly. Come home late at night disheveled and distracted, and maybe make one of those fake newspaper headlines about a mysterious vigilante running amok in the city. She will start to think that maybe you are Batman, who has an awful lot of sex. However she may start to think you are a serial killer and will be so relieved when you are not that she will have sex with you.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Just disappear for a few days. If you're not a minor, she can't do anything for 24 hours. Try it!
• Pick up a copy of Bon Appetit and choose a recipe together. Make a day of it and shop European-style by hitting a farmer's market and butcher shop instead of going to a supermarket chain. Then prepare the meal together while drinking a nice wine and listening to a compilation CD of Cole Porter songs. When she reveals that she's poisoned your food, reveal that you have also poisoned hers. Laugh, and die well-matched. You're in love again!
I firmly believe that you can have rice every day, if you mix it up. (I mean this literally if you live in certain Asian countries or are severely impoverished and have a hotpot). You can keep the flame alive, in the bedchamber and the heart chamber with minimal effort. The key is remembering to do little things for your wife or longtime girlfriend or life partner that keep her surprised and sexually interested— almost to the point of wariness. I know that remembering to be unexpected seems counterintuitive, which is why it's important to plan your spontaneity with laser precision.
I've assembled some tips to keep your relationship feeling freshly shucked. Love is like a car, or intestines, and romance is like the oil change, or colonoscopy. Print these out and keep them in your pocket—you'll be magically transported back to a time when you didn't think of sex as an annoying reason to take off your robe. Back when seeing each other still made you a little nervous. Maybe nervous-er, if you're really good at it.
So put a rose in your teeth and let's go!
• Set an iPhone alert once a month for ROMANCE. On that day, do something romantic, like bringing her a favorite snack or showing up at work to serenade her in front of her colleagues. If she ever sees the iPhone alert, act casual and pretend like ROMANCE is the name of an adult video store.
• Sometimes jealousy is a real aphrodisiac. Why not give her the illusion that you've been cheating on her without any of the actual cheating. Have a friend call your cell phone repeatedly at odd hours, or quickly cover up your computer screen whenever she walks into a room. Now take her in your arms. Surprise! You've been taking a ballroom dancing class the whole time.
• Use an Internet coupon for a couple's massage. Let the soothing music and scent of bamboo take you into your own little world, and feel free to talk like the two people giving the massage aren't there. Maybe discuss how weird it is to be massaged, as a couple, by two people, and wonder aloud if the masseuses would consider having sex with you.
• Why not make a trail of rose petals leading to the bedroom? Or breadcrumbs. Sometimes women reeeeeeeeally want to have sex and we just get lost.
• Have a friend call your significant other from the hospital and say that she should get down there, right away. (If you don't have a friend, use your Paul Lynde impression and pretend to be a sassy male nurse.) When she gets there, have a doctor tell her that you have been in a terrible accident. Surprise! The doctor is a stripper.
• Disaster often brings people together. Try to engineer some kind of bridge collapse when you are together, or schedule a vacation when you think there will be an earthquake.
• Open Tilda Swinton's Wikipedia page. Say something like, "Wow, Tilda Swinton and her three-way marriage are really progressive, don't you think? She's so unconventionally beautiful." If your significant other agrees, go ahead and start checking the Portland Craigslist for people who want to be part of some kind of arrangement. If she doesn't, go ahead and masturbate to Tilda Swinton's Wikipedia page. She is unconventionally beautiful.
• Women really love musicians and sleeping with famous authors or actors. But if you don't have any natural talent, remember that women have really active imaginations. Accidentally crush things to give the impression that you have acquired incredible strength, and maybe let her catch you changing into or out of an outfit really quickly. Come home late at night disheveled and distracted, and maybe make one of those fake newspaper headlines about a mysterious vigilante running amok in the city. She will start to think that maybe you are Batman, who has an awful lot of sex. However she may start to think you are a serial killer and will be so relieved when you are not that she will have sex with you.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Just disappear for a few days. If you're not a minor, she can't do anything for 24 hours. Try it!
• Pick up a copy of Bon Appetit and choose a recipe together. Make a day of it and shop European-style by hitting a farmer's market and butcher shop instead of going to a supermarket chain. Then prepare the meal together while drinking a nice wine and listening to a compilation CD of Cole Porter songs. When she reveals that she's poisoned your food, reveal that you have also poisoned hers. Laugh, and die well-matched. You're in love again!
Friday, 1 July 2011
Don't Be the Worst: The Fight Against Whimsy
In the past year, I've learned to avoid men who want to take women out for baked goods.
To most women, this doesn't say, "Wow, this is the kind of guy I want to let kiss frosting out of my bangs." This says other things. Like, "This guy probably has one of those bracelets that will alert his parole officer if he drinks," or, "I need to change my Google image results to look less like somebody who can be lured out of the house by pastry like some kind of Brothers Grimm orphan."
Or worse yet: "This is one of those whimsy guys."
Fellows, I beseech you: No more whimsy.
Before I go any further, let me say that sometimes whimsy is great. I like a taxidermied armadillo holding a beer can as much as the next girl, and I think that turning a bunch of old Airstreams into a pricy motel is an important step in taking some of the stigma out of trailer living. But I would like to suggest that we take a scented panda eraser to whimsy in the realm of adult, grown-up going out.
While we finally, thankfully are reaching a point where fewer men seem to be confusing having a personality with having a moustache, we're confronted with an even lamer sex scourge: Men who confuse dating with an opportunity to showcase a series of highly cultivated quirks.
Outings with a Whimsy Guy read like a kind of Mad Lib involving a series of increasingly diabetes-y nouns. Let's go to Coney Island to eat ginger cookie and Nutella ice cream sandwiches and make up back stories for every couple we see on the Ferris Wheel while the gelato drips onto our gingham sleeves.
This kind of goofiness makes me long for the predictability of chugging a bottle of wine across from someone you're terrified of while wishing you'd had the sense to see the movie first so you'd at least have some kind of Gyllenhaal-based talking point. Dating can be awkward and nervous and boring, but using whimsy to try to charm your date is the equivalent of adding a magical mentally disabled person to your movie to try to charm your audience. Did none of you see Radio? Don't be Radio!
In fact, you can probably blame movies for this kind of behavior. I'm reminded of the live-action drunk post-breakup email, 500 Days of Summer, which I totally saw on a plane and didn't rent and specially buy Bagel Bites to emotionally eat during. Zooey Deschanel dumps a guy after he drags her to a diner to have pancakes for dinner. Pancakes for dinner! You know you've crossed some kind of line when you've out-Zooey Deschanel-ed Zooey Deschanel.
You know how we all hate irony now? Whimsy is even worse because it pretends to be sincere. It is the opposite of sincere. People who are not secretly dying of terminal illness in a movie just look silly blowing bubbles on a date because they don't know what to do with their hands, or do everything like they're being secretly Instagrammed. A girl wants to get to know a guy, not be part of the Facebook status he's ginning up underneath his fanciful hat.
I'd like to suggest a litmus test for whether or not you are being whimsical. Would Danny Trejo shake his head at you? For example: Let's say you have named your bike Sharon. Is it a customized Super Glide? Invite your date to ride Sharon! Is it a turquoise beach cruiser? No va, hombre.
Admittedly, when it's not forced, whimsy can be OK. Even kind of nice. My grandmother loves to relate a story about a guy who tried to cancel a date with her when she was 19 because he had, literally, a dime to his name. "We can have fun on a nickel each," said my awesome grandma, and they did a bunch of free stuff like stealing a ride on a trolley car and sneaking penny hotdogs into a nickel movie. My grandma said she had a great time, and if that guy hadn't died on a submarine two weeks later, he might have been my grandfather.
Ignoring the logistical flaws in that supposition, the only reason I give old people in Ken Burns documentaries and those When Harry Met Sally interstitials carte blanche to be whimsical is because those people were constantly threatened with death by explosion. You guys want to wear lunatic cloches and scat in songs? Go for it! If you're not under threat by air raid or spending your days manufacturing artillery, you have no excuse to act that crazy.
It's possible that the Internet or cute movies have forced us to distill our personalities into quotes and adorable moments and dating-profile charisma. But it's important to remember that you are a person and not a mid-priced chain restaurant. Adorning yourself with tchotchkes doesn't make you charming. It makes you a very sad place to sit in a Buffalo mall.
Julieanne Smolinski AKA Boobs Radley is a writer who has been in a monogamous relationship with the Internet since 1993. She tweets here.
To most women, this doesn't say, "Wow, this is the kind of guy I want to let kiss frosting out of my bangs." This says other things. Like, "This guy probably has one of those bracelets that will alert his parole officer if he drinks," or, "I need to change my Google image results to look less like somebody who can be lured out of the house by pastry like some kind of Brothers Grimm orphan."
Or worse yet: "This is one of those whimsy guys."
Fellows, I beseech you: No more whimsy.
Before I go any further, let me say that sometimes whimsy is great. I like a taxidermied armadillo holding a beer can as much as the next girl, and I think that turning a bunch of old Airstreams into a pricy motel is an important step in taking some of the stigma out of trailer living. But I would like to suggest that we take a scented panda eraser to whimsy in the realm of adult, grown-up going out.
While we finally, thankfully are reaching a point where fewer men seem to be confusing having a personality with having a moustache, we're confronted with an even lamer sex scourge: Men who confuse dating with an opportunity to showcase a series of highly cultivated quirks.
Outings with a Whimsy Guy read like a kind of Mad Lib involving a series of increasingly diabetes-y nouns. Let's go to Coney Island to eat ginger cookie and Nutella ice cream sandwiches and make up back stories for every couple we see on the Ferris Wheel while the gelato drips onto our gingham sleeves.
This kind of goofiness makes me long for the predictability of chugging a bottle of wine across from someone you're terrified of while wishing you'd had the sense to see the movie first so you'd at least have some kind of Gyllenhaal-based talking point. Dating can be awkward and nervous and boring, but using whimsy to try to charm your date is the equivalent of adding a magical mentally disabled person to your movie to try to charm your audience. Did none of you see Radio? Don't be Radio!
In fact, you can probably blame movies for this kind of behavior. I'm reminded of the live-action drunk post-breakup email, 500 Days of Summer, which I totally saw on a plane and didn't rent and specially buy Bagel Bites to emotionally eat during. Zooey Deschanel dumps a guy after he drags her to a diner to have pancakes for dinner. Pancakes for dinner! You know you've crossed some kind of line when you've out-Zooey Deschanel-ed Zooey Deschanel.
You know how we all hate irony now? Whimsy is even worse because it pretends to be sincere. It is the opposite of sincere. People who are not secretly dying of terminal illness in a movie just look silly blowing bubbles on a date because they don't know what to do with their hands, or do everything like they're being secretly Instagrammed. A girl wants to get to know a guy, not be part of the Facebook status he's ginning up underneath his fanciful hat.
I'd like to suggest a litmus test for whether or not you are being whimsical. Would Danny Trejo shake his head at you? For example: Let's say you have named your bike Sharon. Is it a customized Super Glide? Invite your date to ride Sharon! Is it a turquoise beach cruiser? No va, hombre.
Admittedly, when it's not forced, whimsy can be OK. Even kind of nice. My grandmother loves to relate a story about a guy who tried to cancel a date with her when she was 19 because he had, literally, a dime to his name. "We can have fun on a nickel each," said my awesome grandma, and they did a bunch of free stuff like stealing a ride on a trolley car and sneaking penny hotdogs into a nickel movie. My grandma said she had a great time, and if that guy hadn't died on a submarine two weeks later, he might have been my grandfather.
Ignoring the logistical flaws in that supposition, the only reason I give old people in Ken Burns documentaries and those When Harry Met Sally interstitials carte blanche to be whimsical is because those people were constantly threatened with death by explosion. You guys want to wear lunatic cloches and scat in songs? Go for it! If you're not under threat by air raid or spending your days manufacturing artillery, you have no excuse to act that crazy.
It's possible that the Internet or cute movies have forced us to distill our personalities into quotes and adorable moments and dating-profile charisma. But it's important to remember that you are a person and not a mid-priced chain restaurant. Adorning yourself with tchotchkes doesn't make you charming. It makes you a very sad place to sit in a Buffalo mall.
Julieanne Smolinski AKA Boobs Radley is a writer who has been in a monogamous relationship with the Internet since 1993. She tweets here.
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Sex Trade
Want to take the sex in your relationship to eruptive new heights? The hottest and most salacious mom in Canada, Kelly Oxford, proposes that it's time to put sexual favors on the table and start negotiating
In the beginning, every serious romantic entanglement is an electric, superconducting, steamy, fleshy hump festival. New sex partner = new sex, and new sex = lots of sex. That's sex math. You're in the kitchen making pasta sauce—bam!—you're having sex on the floor. You're parking the car in the garage—bam—you're having sex in the car. But inevitably, invariably, it wears off. Soon all your conversations, once so filled with erotic promise, are about bills and barfy kids and how that swollen knee makes your leg look like Jackie Gleason's.
Then, one night, she's sitting next to you on the couch, perfecting her mock-Piers Morgan accent, when she stops and says, "Man, I really want a Slurpee." Meaning, of course: "Will you go get me a Slurpee?" But by now you're way past the white-knight stage of the relationship, so you don't budge. And then it occurs to her.
"Will you get me a Slurpee if I give you a blow job?"
And everything goes silent for a moment. Then she raises her eyebrows and does that blowie-pantomime thing with her tongue inside her cheek. The one she hasn't done since, oh, month four of the relationship. With a single gesture, an arousing new world has busted open. You are—let's face it—whoring, but with a safe, committed partner. In no time, you're trading tricks for trips to the dry cleaner. You're making dinner for the kids, and later that night you're coming twice.
The negotiation process quickly becomes its own thrill. But know the terrain, boys. Example: Your woman proposes that you pick up a box of ice cream sandwiches, a copy of W magazine, and a bottle of Essie nail polish (Lollipop color) in exchange for a three-position sex session. Analysis: That's not a good deal. Renegotiate. For that price, she'll also put on those thigh-high black stockings. And trust me, this is fun for her, too. A gentle spanking in exchange for taking out the trash during a rainstorm? A brief experimentation with a ball gag for two weeks of laundry? All this can be yours.
Sex bartering has been a part of my married life for so long that it's hard to believe there are couples who haven't thought of this yet. Now when I see a father at the water park with three young children and no mother in sight, I no longer think, "What a cool dad" or "How sad—widowed so young." Instead I think, "That guy's getting fucked for hours tonight." One of the biggest "deals" my husband and I ever "closed" was over a handbag that I wanted after our second child turned mine into a paint canvas. Among other things, I agreed to a Brazilian wax. Yes, I could've just bought the bag and skipped the bartering (and the wax). But what the hell fun is that?
There are, of course, ground rules. Number one: Only agree to sex acts that you're both actually interested in trying. If she doesn't really want to do the reverse cowgirl, dangling a pint of Cherry Garcia is not cool. Resentment will creep in. Number two: No reneging. Back-outs are the first sign that your "deals" are no longer in kinky air quotes, that the whole game has turned bloodless and one-sided.
Sexual heat in a marriage is a funny thing; sometimes it roars back when you least expect, and sometimes you have to light your own match. Last month my husband and I were out to dinner, and our waitress giggled and flirted with him the whole time—I could practically see her ovulating. And yet watching her eye-grope him snapped my libido wide awake. Our deal later that night was simple and unspoken: He could have whatever he wanted, and all he had to do in exchange was spend the rest of his life with me.
In the beginning, every serious romantic entanglement is an electric, superconducting, steamy, fleshy hump festival. New sex partner = new sex, and new sex = lots of sex. That's sex math. You're in the kitchen making pasta sauce—bam!—you're having sex on the floor. You're parking the car in the garage—bam—you're having sex in the car. But inevitably, invariably, it wears off. Soon all your conversations, once so filled with erotic promise, are about bills and barfy kids and how that swollen knee makes your leg look like Jackie Gleason's.
Then, one night, she's sitting next to you on the couch, perfecting her mock-Piers Morgan accent, when she stops and says, "Man, I really want a Slurpee." Meaning, of course: "Will you go get me a Slurpee?" But by now you're way past the white-knight stage of the relationship, so you don't budge. And then it occurs to her.
"Will you get me a Slurpee if I give you a blow job?"
And everything goes silent for a moment. Then she raises her eyebrows and does that blowie-pantomime thing with her tongue inside her cheek. The one she hasn't done since, oh, month four of the relationship. With a single gesture, an arousing new world has busted open. You are—let's face it—whoring, but with a safe, committed partner. In no time, you're trading tricks for trips to the dry cleaner. You're making dinner for the kids, and later that night you're coming twice.
The negotiation process quickly becomes its own thrill. But know the terrain, boys. Example: Your woman proposes that you pick up a box of ice cream sandwiches, a copy of W magazine, and a bottle of Essie nail polish (Lollipop color) in exchange for a three-position sex session. Analysis: That's not a good deal. Renegotiate. For that price, she'll also put on those thigh-high black stockings. And trust me, this is fun for her, too. A gentle spanking in exchange for taking out the trash during a rainstorm? A brief experimentation with a ball gag for two weeks of laundry? All this can be yours.
Sex bartering has been a part of my married life for so long that it's hard to believe there are couples who haven't thought of this yet. Now when I see a father at the water park with three young children and no mother in sight, I no longer think, "What a cool dad" or "How sad—widowed so young." Instead I think, "That guy's getting fucked for hours tonight." One of the biggest "deals" my husband and I ever "closed" was over a handbag that I wanted after our second child turned mine into a paint canvas. Among other things, I agreed to a Brazilian wax. Yes, I could've just bought the bag and skipped the bartering (and the wax). But what the hell fun is that?
There are, of course, ground rules. Number one: Only agree to sex acts that you're both actually interested in trying. If she doesn't really want to do the reverse cowgirl, dangling a pint of Cherry Garcia is not cool. Resentment will creep in. Number two: No reneging. Back-outs are the first sign that your "deals" are no longer in kinky air quotes, that the whole game has turned bloodless and one-sided.
Sexual heat in a marriage is a funny thing; sometimes it roars back when you least expect, and sometimes you have to light your own match. Last month my husband and I were out to dinner, and our waitress giggled and flirted with him the whole time—I could practically see her ovulating. And yet watching her eye-grope him snapped my libido wide awake. Our deal later that night was simple and unspoken: He could have whatever he wanted, and all he had to do in exchange was spend the rest of his life with me.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Kicked Out of Kindergarten
The true story of what happens when an unemployed dad and his rambunctious six-year-old son are forced to conduct an involuntary experiment in homeschooling. Introducing a new five-part series about fatherhood and other catastrophes
My son's hippy charter school did not do Christmas. Instead, the administrators created an artificial, substitute holiday called the Labyrinth Celebration, and they took it very seriously. So seriously that the teachers didn't think twice about marching dozens of children—and me—outside in howling winds and numbing cold for an hour to practice a stupid song about a shiny lantern.
"I don't know the words," my son Wilson confessed through chattering teeth. He'd only paid sporadic attention in music class.
"Let's fake it," I said.
As the shivering kindergarteners around us mumbled their way through the song, Wilson and I lip synced, cracking each other up with exaggerated faces. The humor wore off after we finished the song and waited, and waited, while the organizers dithered over where the other K-6 kids should stand and sing.
Anita*, Wilson's teacher, fought a losing battle to keep her batch of five-year-olds standing still in the arctic freeze. But back at the end of the line, I let Wilson spazz-dance around and jump off a short garden wall. "Paratrooper!" he screamed. At least he was keeping warm. I only gave him a token warning about crashing into people after he joined hands with a girl named Daisy and spun her in circles. Wilson and Daisy both laughed as they fell to the ground. But Anita wasn't amused. "Hey!" she shouted at me. "Would you keep them under control?"
When I agreed to chaperone Wilson at his school a few weeks earlier, I hadn't signed on to be scolded by a kindergarten teacher. Not that I really minded—she was just cold and overwhelmed. And it's not like I had much dignity left anyway. Getting leg cramps at Rug Time and being jostled by kids at the pint-size urinals during Bathroom Break will do that to you. Actually, my entire experience as a parent had done that to me. Years of playing stay-at-home dad in family-friendly Austin for two "spirited" boys had burned me out. As much as I loved my kids, I'd counted the days until Wilson started school and his younger brother, Oliver, could start daycare. I had a cushy part-time job editing an alumni magazine for a small university nobody cared about, but I hadn't had any real time to myself for years. Finally I could get my life back. Do more freelance writing. Read an entire book. Use the bathroom without interruption.
That simple dream vanished when the principal at Wilson's school demanded that I chaperone him all day and every day. "For safety," she said. By this she meant that she wanted some way to stop the other parents from calling to complain about Wilson. Once he started school, our witty, creative, energetic son had begun using his considerable powers for evil. He'd verbally and physically abused most of his classmates, disrupted nearly every class he'd bothered to participate in, and even managed to kick Anita in the head. (His side of the story: she got in the way of his flailing.)
After second guessing everything we'd ever done as parents, my wife Erin and I started to wonder if Wilson's past was catching up with him. We'd adopted him when he was only five months old, but life hadn't been easy for him up until then—he had been abused and then separated from his mother. A therapist we saw told us that early trauma of the kind he had experienced can wire a child's brain to distrust the world. She recommended a fresh injection of close and constant contact with us—attachment therapy for a kid who'd always kept us at arm's length. We figured the chaperoning might help us reconnect.
Besides, I'd just been laid off, so I had the time.
Not long after the class came in from the cold, Anita had a breakdown during a particularly chaotic Choice Time. Wilson wasn't the only troublemaker in her class. She lined up the most rambunctious kids along the wall and shouted at them, then burst into tears. Did I mention this was her first year teaching? I felt horrible for her. Like me, she was in over her head, doing her best in thankless circumstances. Even so, I was glad Wilson didn't witness her freakout; he'd already been sent to the Focus Room for trying to smash a stack of popsicle frames.
We should have had the sense to take Wilson out of school that day. Kindergarten—the new first grade—was like a gulag to him. But what was the alternative? Home school? That was for creationists and refuseniks whose kids turned out to be maladjusted weirdos or annoyingly successful weirdos like that teenager who wrote Eragon, that fantasy book about dragons. Wilson was a great kid, we reasoned, and if we all just kept trying a little longer, he could be a great student, too.
So we stayed, and slowly, things began to turn around. Over the next few weeks Wilson engaged more with his classmates. He began learning how to calm himself down. He didn't even call me "chicken fart" or "garbage butt" in front of everybody quite as often.
···
One day, Karen, the school's behavior coach, pulled me away from Anita's reading of Charlotte's Web, which had degenerated into a lecture about interruptions. Karen told me Wilson had improved but was using me as a crutch. I agreed wholeheartedly. "I think we're ready for you to pull back how much time you're spending here," she said. Words kept coming out of her mouth, but all I could think about was one word: freedom.
We set up a meeting for later in the week to plan my scaled-back hours. On the way to school the next morning, I brought it up with Wilson.
Me: "I've got good news. You've been doing so well, I won't have to be with you in class as much."
Wilson: [silence]
As soon as we got to school, I knew I'd made a mistake telling him so soon. Within the hour he had stabbed a classmate in the hand with a pencil and hurled a chair across the room. He caused such a ruckus in the Focus Room that Karen—the professional voice of calm and reason—shouted at him and sent us home.
I didn't bother to take Wilson in the next day; we both needed some time off. We hung out at home watching TV and eating the unhealthy food his school didn't allow. Then we went to the indoor YMCA pool, where Wilson launched himself head-first off one foot with his hands behind his back. "It's the No-Hands-One-Foot Dive!" he shouted. We grabbed lunch at Whole Foods, where he learned how to skate on the environmentally unfriendly ice rink they'd refrigerated on the roof. I'd been his prison guard for so long I'd almost forgotten how amazing he could be. "I've had a blast today," I said later in the car. He bugged out his eyes and nodded vigorously, his way of saying "me too."
We showed up after school let out for the meeting Karen that had scheduled before Wilson's big blow-up. But something told me we wouldn't be talking about his improvement anymore. Erin was out of town, so as Wilson ran around on the playground, I faced the principal, Karen and Anita alone.
Karen got to the point. "We don't have the resources to handle him." She said we should re-enroll Wilson in our neighborhood public school, which had a special needs program. The principal blathered on about how they'd tried to help kids like Wilson in the past but it "only made things worse." Anita praised Erin and me for our hard work as parents in a way that sounded patronizing, even though I could tell she felt bad.
Each of them had more to say, but I wasn't really listening. I couldn't get past the part where they'd actually kicked a five-year-old—my five-year-old—out of kindergarten.
Read More http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/201101/kicked-out-of-kindergarten#ixzz1J81NHDBZ
My son's hippy charter school did not do Christmas. Instead, the administrators created an artificial, substitute holiday called the Labyrinth Celebration, and they took it very seriously. So seriously that the teachers didn't think twice about marching dozens of children—and me—outside in howling winds and numbing cold for an hour to practice a stupid song about a shiny lantern.
"I don't know the words," my son Wilson confessed through chattering teeth. He'd only paid sporadic attention in music class.
"Let's fake it," I said.
As the shivering kindergarteners around us mumbled their way through the song, Wilson and I lip synced, cracking each other up with exaggerated faces. The humor wore off after we finished the song and waited, and waited, while the organizers dithered over where the other K-6 kids should stand and sing.
Anita*, Wilson's teacher, fought a losing battle to keep her batch of five-year-olds standing still in the arctic freeze. But back at the end of the line, I let Wilson spazz-dance around and jump off a short garden wall. "Paratrooper!" he screamed. At least he was keeping warm. I only gave him a token warning about crashing into people after he joined hands with a girl named Daisy and spun her in circles. Wilson and Daisy both laughed as they fell to the ground. But Anita wasn't amused. "Hey!" she shouted at me. "Would you keep them under control?"
When I agreed to chaperone Wilson at his school a few weeks earlier, I hadn't signed on to be scolded by a kindergarten teacher. Not that I really minded—she was just cold and overwhelmed. And it's not like I had much dignity left anyway. Getting leg cramps at Rug Time and being jostled by kids at the pint-size urinals during Bathroom Break will do that to you. Actually, my entire experience as a parent had done that to me. Years of playing stay-at-home dad in family-friendly Austin for two "spirited" boys had burned me out. As much as I loved my kids, I'd counted the days until Wilson started school and his younger brother, Oliver, could start daycare. I had a cushy part-time job editing an alumni magazine for a small university nobody cared about, but I hadn't had any real time to myself for years. Finally I could get my life back. Do more freelance writing. Read an entire book. Use the bathroom without interruption.
That simple dream vanished when the principal at Wilson's school demanded that I chaperone him all day and every day. "For safety," she said. By this she meant that she wanted some way to stop the other parents from calling to complain about Wilson. Once he started school, our witty, creative, energetic son had begun using his considerable powers for evil. He'd verbally and physically abused most of his classmates, disrupted nearly every class he'd bothered to participate in, and even managed to kick Anita in the head. (His side of the story: she got in the way of his flailing.)
After second guessing everything we'd ever done as parents, my wife Erin and I started to wonder if Wilson's past was catching up with him. We'd adopted him when he was only five months old, but life hadn't been easy for him up until then—he had been abused and then separated from his mother. A therapist we saw told us that early trauma of the kind he had experienced can wire a child's brain to distrust the world. She recommended a fresh injection of close and constant contact with us—attachment therapy for a kid who'd always kept us at arm's length. We figured the chaperoning might help us reconnect.
Besides, I'd just been laid off, so I had the time.
Not long after the class came in from the cold, Anita had a breakdown during a particularly chaotic Choice Time. Wilson wasn't the only troublemaker in her class. She lined up the most rambunctious kids along the wall and shouted at them, then burst into tears. Did I mention this was her first year teaching? I felt horrible for her. Like me, she was in over her head, doing her best in thankless circumstances. Even so, I was glad Wilson didn't witness her freakout; he'd already been sent to the Focus Room for trying to smash a stack of popsicle frames.
We should have had the sense to take Wilson out of school that day. Kindergarten—the new first grade—was like a gulag to him. But what was the alternative? Home school? That was for creationists and refuseniks whose kids turned out to be maladjusted weirdos or annoyingly successful weirdos like that teenager who wrote Eragon, that fantasy book about dragons. Wilson was a great kid, we reasoned, and if we all just kept trying a little longer, he could be a great student, too.
So we stayed, and slowly, things began to turn around. Over the next few weeks Wilson engaged more with his classmates. He began learning how to calm himself down. He didn't even call me "chicken fart" or "garbage butt" in front of everybody quite as often.
···
One day, Karen, the school's behavior coach, pulled me away from Anita's reading of Charlotte's Web, which had degenerated into a lecture about interruptions. Karen told me Wilson had improved but was using me as a crutch. I agreed wholeheartedly. "I think we're ready for you to pull back how much time you're spending here," she said. Words kept coming out of her mouth, but all I could think about was one word: freedom.
We set up a meeting for later in the week to plan my scaled-back hours. On the way to school the next morning, I brought it up with Wilson.
Me: "I've got good news. You've been doing so well, I won't have to be with you in class as much."
Wilson: [silence]
As soon as we got to school, I knew I'd made a mistake telling him so soon. Within the hour he had stabbed a classmate in the hand with a pencil and hurled a chair across the room. He caused such a ruckus in the Focus Room that Karen—the professional voice of calm and reason—shouted at him and sent us home.
I didn't bother to take Wilson in the next day; we both needed some time off. We hung out at home watching TV and eating the unhealthy food his school didn't allow. Then we went to the indoor YMCA pool, where Wilson launched himself head-first off one foot with his hands behind his back. "It's the No-Hands-One-Foot Dive!" he shouted. We grabbed lunch at Whole Foods, where he learned how to skate on the environmentally unfriendly ice rink they'd refrigerated on the roof. I'd been his prison guard for so long I'd almost forgotten how amazing he could be. "I've had a blast today," I said later in the car. He bugged out his eyes and nodded vigorously, his way of saying "me too."
We showed up after school let out for the meeting Karen that had scheduled before Wilson's big blow-up. But something told me we wouldn't be talking about his improvement anymore. Erin was out of town, so as Wilson ran around on the playground, I faced the principal, Karen and Anita alone.
Karen got to the point. "We don't have the resources to handle him." She said we should re-enroll Wilson in our neighborhood public school, which had a special needs program. The principal blathered on about how they'd tried to help kids like Wilson in the past but it "only made things worse." Anita praised Erin and me for our hard work as parents in a way that sounded patronizing, even though I could tell she felt bad.
Each of them had more to say, but I wasn't really listening. I couldn't get past the part where they'd actually kicked a five-year-old—my five-year-old—out of kindergarten.
Read More http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/201101/kicked-out-of-kindergarten#ixzz1J81NHDBZ
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