Hot Wing Beans

“Wake up,” my wife said to me. It was just past 1 AM.

“Wha?” I asked. It was a legitimate question.

“You were laughing maniacally,” she said. I was glad that she didn’t add the word “again” to that sentence.

“Oh,” I said. “I had a bad dream.” It was true. I had been having a bad dream; one in which there is at least one unexplainable thing and at least one impossible goal. You know how those are. That’s what makes a dream go from vivid or just plain crazy to bad. In my case, I remember that it was crucial I get to the curtains and close them. But I just couldn’t do it, no matter how I tried. And then I began laughing maniacally, ostensibly to scare off the baddies. Or maybe I was the baddie.

It turns out I scared my wife awake. I felt a little bad, mind you. What spouse wants to be awakened by the love of their life in bed next to them, laughing like a super villain? It’s no bueno.

I don’t know if there is cause and effect in dreamland. There are the usual suspects when it comes to bad dreams, i.e. what- did- I- eat- last- night and all that. In my case that would have been the hot wing beans (2 cans of pinto beans, ½ cup of brown sugar, ½ cup of Frank’s Red Hot, and some bacon grease; simmer on low for an hour). But it just as easily could have been the Sleep Notes. The latest entry in that file reads, Someone fell thru the F, which means God knows what. Honestly, why do I bother? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m sure there’s potential there.

After my evil episode, in that unsettled mood that always follows the rude awakening, I fell back to sleep and dreamt in vivid Technicolor. It wasn’t bad, but it was borderline bad. I don’t remember details, but I do remember it was quite a ride. I’m having friends over for a barbeque today, and I might make the hot wing beans again, just to see if they’re the culprit. Maybe tonight, around 1 AM, the beans will fuel some federal grant money for dream research.

Probably though, they’ll fuel something else.

Masculine Virtue

Real men: the U.S. Marines.

I know already that someone somewhere reading this will scoff at the title of this piece: “Masculine virtue? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Isn’t that like saying ‘benevolent dictator?” Okay, sure. Men have not acquitted themselves well since, say, the sixties. And all of it led that lady who sang the “Bitch” song to additionally lament, “Where have all the cowboys gone?” Since she’s a self-described beeotch I’ll leave it to her radical feminist friends to run-fetch her a tissue for her tears.

Let me tell you where the cowboys have gone. We’ve pretty much had it. We’re tired of hearing the constant nagging. We’ve run past the point of endurance against the kind of rhetoric that simultaneously scolds and despises masculinity for its violence and rough edges, and then whines about how men refuse to engage and remain distant from the family unit. The cowboys are out hunting. Out riding the range. Out in the garage. Out cutting the grass. Out walking the dog. Out. Why? Because, for lack of a better way to say it, you're not getting us and we're tired of talking all day long about it.

Masculinity is pretty simple and direct, and our chickified culture has misunderstood the meaning of that for a couple of generations now. I'm not trying to be a dickhead, you just tell me I am. I'm not shouting at you or the children, I'm trying to be heard above the freaking noise, okay? It's not that I'm trying to be a tyrant around here, but there are minimum standards for peace and accord that are not being met when the children are shrieking, swinging from the ceiling fan. It's pretty simple! It’s not that masculinity equals stupidity, but things for a man are usually understood in simplest terms; like those exercises with top-heavy fractions you used to have to do in school. Simplify.

Our minds are constantly doing that. All you said was that we haven't been on a date in a while, and that's what I heard. I didn't know I had to read your mind and infer from those words that what you really meant was that you're questioning why you ever married me because I'm an insensitive clot. Remind me again that you don't mean what you actually say. But there's an addendum to that, isn't there? Because sometimes you do. But I'll be damned if I can tell when.

Bill Cosby understood this whole thing perfectly. His characterization of Eve was as accurate as a fifteen thousand dollar watch: “C’mere, c’mere, c’mere, c’mere; no, get away, get away, get away, get away!” That’s it in a nutshell. But guess what, ladies. Your man doesn't stand by you because of the weird mood swings, the irrational blindside outburst, the nagging, the micromanagement of our indoors behavior. Nope. We stand by you in spite of that, and because we love you. We also know you don't have to even try to be confusing as hell for an hour or two, and then give us a teary-eyed kiss, thanking us for...whatever just happened.

So Now Hear This: Men are strong, rough, naturally smelly and hairy, made inherently irritable and uncomfortable by floral prints and doilies, prefer violence, abhor uppity know-it-all high-maintenance women (the maintenance is already pretty high anyway), and aren't amenable to asking your permission to be who we are. We'll tell it like it is; it comes natural. We don't feel like we need to apologize for it, either, so don't feel like you need to make us. We can guarantee you'll be a hell of a lot happier with a real man than with one under your thumb. But that means you've gotta trust us. And that, I'd argue, is why the world is positively filled with unhappy people: because lots and lots of women just ain't havin' that. Those women are the beeotches. And beeotches will always wonder where the cowboys have gone.