my balls will tell me how it all fits together. At that point in my life I didn't have many tools except those in a telephone drawer by the kitchen phone. Unfortunately, something was stuck in the drawer and I couldn't open it. Finally, I heard a snap, and the drawer opened. Inside was a picture of another family. Also, pens that didn't work, broken rubber bands, seven batteries. Four are good, three are not, and you will never figure out the combination.
Clearly I needed some tools, so it was back to Sears. I had to buy so many tools that I didn't want to make two trips. So I rented a Ryder truck. I backed that big diesel turbo up to the loading dock and hauled out half the tool?department stock. Now I got your needle?nosed, vice?grippin' monkey's mother, three?quarter drive and socket?pulling, inside?outside torque jig rip cross. . Yeah, I got myself some tools. Tools that fix tools. Most of them rubber?coated for safety. And duct tape. No shop in America is complete without ninety feet of three?inch?wide U.S.?made duct tape. The silver kind. My wife thinks it looks good across my mouth, too. Matches her jewelry. My motto: If you can't fix it, duct it!
My mom once gave me a gas grill, a Sunbeam 3200. Dual burners, rotisserie grill, pull?down serving area, and in a handy garden cart. But it came unassembled. It looked like a car bomb.
I decided to build it right in the living room and give the whole family a chance to participate. Besides, the light was better indoors and I was flying on pure instinct. Who'd have thought there'd be any grease involved in the process? Every guy's been where I've been. You finish building it, it looks great, but there's a weird bag of important?looking stuff left over.
'Honey? Why don't you try the grill out first? I'll be in the basement with my welding hat on.'
She pushed it out onto the deck and lit it up. Suddenly the place looked like a nuclear test site. Whoosh!
'Ahhhhhhhh!'
'Honey, run toward my voice!
'Running just makes the flames hotter!'
'That means this thing that's left over is a fuel regulator! Not supposed to spray your hair like that. Guess I don't need to tell you, do I? Why don't ya come in and I'll put some salve on that for ya.'
- -
The thing I like most about men's stuff, from tools to stereos, is that your presence affects your possessions. When they glitch, it's probably because you're in a hurry or a bad mood. I've got two TVs at my house that, if I'm in a real bad mood, don't turn on. I called Sony about it. The man says, 'I wouldn't touch it if you're in that mood. Don't go near your stereo either.'
I decided to also avoid the houseplants.
This is when you finally realize that guy stuff has gotten stupid. It should have been easy to tell the first time I had to read the VCR instruction book more than I got to watch videotapes. And another weird thing. In my video room it's always twelve o'clock.
When men's stuff starts affecting the time zones, you
masculinism
Like most men, I'm confused by feminism. It also confuses many women, but that's someone else's book. For the longest time I wasn't sure what the word actually meant. At first I thought it was 'the study of what men do wrong.' That was because many of the loudest early voices in feminism seemed to be man haters. They didn't like us. They said we'd screwed up everything. They thought the planet would be better off without us. When they were feeling generous, they might say that men were only good for one thing, and that we weren't very good at that, either. I don't know why, but I took that personally.
Feminism has grown a lot since then. Most women don't think men should be exterminated. They'd be satisfied if we agreed to submit our brains to a good housecleaning-and if we'd hire an undocumented alien to do it, and remember to pay her social security taxes.
I've always wanted to understand feminism, so I tackled a regimen of intense research into the subject. Eventually, I earned a Ph.D. in Advanced Women's Studies, by correspondence course. All it took was one of my days off after the TV season wrapped, before I went on the road, wrote this book, and made a movie. I now realize that
Unfortunately, there is no related expression or ethos-no opposite of feminism-to bind men together. Hmmm. Some would say that men don't need that sort of thing because we already own everything. We run everything. We have the best jobs. We get to do whatever we want, whenever we want. We don't
Nonetheless, I thought men should have a credo, so I checked around. I read all the great social philosophers. I hung out in leather bars. I looked in the dictionary for a term that might define us. The only word that came close was 'philanthropist,' which means 'love or benevolence toward mankind, in general.' Of course, that definition has been obsolete since women joined mankind about thirty years ago, with the advent of feminism. Still, the definition includes the idea that a philanthropist is someone who makes an 'effort to promote the happiness or social elevation of mankind, by making donations.' This can get pretty confusing. A philanthropist is a lover of man, but a feminist isn't a lover of women.
I don't know anything about that-or putting underwear on my head. A good friend was helping me search dictionaries for answers, and finally he said, 'Clearly, you've discovered an epistemological void.' I didn't even want to look up that word. I was afraid it might have something to do with men's bathrooms or something I should see my doctor about.
I've taken enough abuse without having to look stupid, too.
Finally, after lots of deep, hard thinking in the only place a man can get a little peace of mind, I realized I had no choice but to coin my own term so that men didn't feel left out.
I call it 'masculinism.'
Feminism celebrates female traits. Masculinism celebrates male traits. They collide to create the volatility of life. The
The differences are so much more vast that bookstores are stocked with volumes lamenting the sorry state of intersexual relations, because men and women just don't understand each another. Writer after writer has tried to explain this state of affairs, and the illicit affairs that result. Writer after writer churns out books knowing the female market for self?help is seemingly bottomless.
I'm tired of waiting for the compleat man?woman dictionary. I guess I'll have to do that myself.
To some, the distinctions between the sexes-their attitudes, sexual styles, communication skills, and personal hygiene habitsare unsolvable conundrums, destining men and women to be forever at odds.
Sounds about right.
Masculinism and feminism embody those differences. We hate them, we love them, we can't do much about them. So we might as well enjoy them.
After all, they're pretty darn entertaining.
- -
Men are pigs. We all know it. And the odd thing is that men don't seem to mind it when I say so. There's not much you can call a guy that gets him upset. At least not after we've endured the way men have been portrayed on TV sitcoms for over forty years. Television berates us and we take it. We're thought of as dumb slugs. Idiots. This is troubling since for a long time men also wrote, produced, and directed most television. Maybe we were feeling
