Myths about men

Since I’m writing this days before Father’s Day when people will generally be disposed to look more kindly on men, I thought I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to deal with some perniciously persistent myths that have been circulating about us. I’m not addressing this to women my age (and you can extend that to women above 20, or anyone who’s been in a serious male-female relationship), whose views will have been so set that any attempt to convince them of the honest truth will only prove unavailing.

Rather, I’d like to speak to unsullied females between the ages of seven and 17, who might yet be capable of entertaining some reasonable doubt about whatever their mothers or older sisters might have infected their impressionable minds with by way of atrocious misconceptions about my kind. Are you listening, girls?

There’s this strange belief, for example, that all men are babies. Never mind how old they are or how many wars and battles they’ve been through and how many dragons they’ve slain. When they come home, they expect – nay, they demand, through whining and similarly mewling sounds and gestures – to be suckled at the teats of their mates’ affections. They’ll be deaf to female entreaties about the busted shower or the kids’ bus service, but they’ll curl up in your lap and expect you to understand what a wretched bastard Mr. X was for stealing that account or cheating at that golf game. They’ll hold up that finger that supposedly got hurt when they poked their enemy in the eye, and expect you to kiss it back to wellness. They’ll scream when you try to touch that finger, but will scream even more if you don’t.

Now, I know for a fact that this isn’t true, because only insufferable weaklings whine. I sulk, unspeaking, until I’m blue in the face and someone takes notice; only then do I cry, and only to give the other person a worthy purpose in life, which is to bring comfort and joy to mine.

There’s also this nasty notion that men live for food and sex, are hopeless creatures of appetite whose idea of heaven consists of an imperial lauriat followed by a Roman orgy with a year’s worth of FHM centerfolds. (Since I’m addressing myself to very young women, I should hasten to explain that a lauriat is, well, a party with lots and lots of outrageously good food and an orgy is, well, like a lauriat, and I’ll leave it at that; go ask your mom.) I’ve been tearfully told that all men think about is how to get drunk and how to get laid.

That’s absolute rubbish; we all have other, loftier things in mind, and I’ll name you three off the top of my head: (1) the war in Iraq, which I follow on CNN; (2) the responsibility of the news and entertainment media to the truth, as I’ve often heard discussed on the BBC; and (3) that impossibly pretty and sexy chef on the Lifestyle Network, who can’t make me decide whether to watch her or her bonbons.

I have no idea how it is that some women can claim that men are naturally born faithless – that is, after having been married for a quarter-century or more, they still can’t resist chasing after every swishy skirt (or better yet, the absence of one) or staring at the frontage, profiles, and backsides of women young enough to be their grandnieces. And their propensity for philandering supposedly rises with their ages and paychecks – i.e., full professors, army generals and company presidents are more likely (if more portly) Lotharios than instructors, privates, and clerks, bringing us to the interesting proposition that those who have more to lose also have more to gain.

But I’d venture to say that it isn’t so much that men are congenitally incapable of fidelity to one and the same person; going by the same scientific yardstick, recent research proves that women have an attention span a thousand times longer than men’s, which should properly explain why they’re still looking at the same guy when he’s already seen a hundred pairs of whatever sashaying by. There might even be an evolutionary reason for this behavior. This kind of "infidelity" has also been observed of the purple-spotted salamanders of the Nyhurong Valley of Papua New Guinea, lending further credence to my theory. (Yes, it’s one of those species where a male lizard mates with a dozen panting, egg-bearing females before being devoured by his wife with one dart of her poison-coated tongue. But at least the species survives, creeping deforestation and acid rain notwithstanding.)

Speaking of resistance, I was amused to overhear a woman exclaim in an ATM queue that men can’t resist crying ladies or damsels in distress – that all it takes for some GRO (that’s, uhm, a Girl Requiring an Offering) to part a man from his money is a sob story about a quadriplegic father and a tubercular mother and more undernourished, unschooled brothers and sisters than you can shake a ladies’ drink at. (It’s said to be worse if the clubgoer is an ex-Marxist, who’ll likely say yes, that’s very true, that’s exactly what’s wrong with this semi-colonial and semi-feudal society of ours, and another rum coke for the lady, please!) Other forms of womanly woes reputedly include premature widowhood, inexplicable singlehood, an inability to write term papers or theses on unreasonably difficult topics given by bitterly bitchy professors, a childhood dream to go to Baguio or Hong Kong, and a fruitless search for a roof over one’s head.

This is pure canard – of course, men can say no to these women, despite the overflowing goodness of their hearts; they do it all the time – especially if the women happen to be their wives or girlfriends.

And how can it be true that men never ask for directions? I’ve been hearing incredible stories about how iron-jawed husbands have driven straight into the darkness for hours, steadfastly unwilling to stop and ask for directions, despite the wailing of the kids and the weeping of the wife. (And God help your soul if you so much as suggest the possibility that you’re lost. "Lost? I looked at the map! I was an Eagle Scout, I can read maps, and those mapmakers can’t be wrong, with all the billions they spent on GPS and satellite photography. Don’t you read Popular Science? Why don’t you put little Tommy to sleep and let me drive?")

While some of this sounds vaguely familiar – I’ll admit that nothing annoys men more than to have to ask other men (or, worse, women) what to do or where to go – I think it’s all a bit exaggerated. I usually stop after plowing onward for 20 kilometers or an hour, whichever takes longer, on the pretext of running into some gas-station toilet, where I can nudge or coerce the attendant into revealing where exactly I am in the solar system.

And whoever said that hell hath no fury like a man whose new car you’ve scratched against the gatepost? Or that men forget everything (i.e., anniversaries and birthdays) except their mates’ dark past (i.e., the guy you kissed goodnight after the J-S prom)? There’s more, girls (and boys), lots more – but you catch my drift. Beware these myths. They may sound true, but if you believe everything you’ve heard here so far, then you’d have to be – indubitably and hopelessly – female.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://homepage.mac.com/jdalisay/blog/MyBlog.html