Johnny America

 

Just Ask James: Let­ter from a Would-Be Man

by

Dear Mr. Spillane,

Please tell my wife that she is nuts. It is al­most com­plete­ly im­pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate with her. For ex­am­ple: yes­ter­day af­ter a small ar­gu­ment over break­fast or, shall I say, what to eat for break­fast, things took a turn for the worse and soon pans were whizzing by my head. Lat­er, in a fu­tile at­tempt to ease things be­tween us I pur­chased a dozen ros­es, which on­ly seemed to cre­ate an­oth­er ar­gu­ment over fi­nances. What am I do­ing wrong?

Bri­an

Fuck, Bri­an.

I love these sorts of ques­tions… here a few things I be­lieve you need to fig­ure out in or­der to move to­ward a pro­duc­tive re­la­tion­ship with your crazy wife.

  1. All women are nuts. There is noth­ing you can do about it; hell there is noth­ing I can do about it. Ba­si­cal­ly you have to suf­fer through the five stages of ac­cep­tance: de­nial, anger, bar­gain­ing, a sort of de­pres­sion, and fi­nal­ly acceptance.
  2. You say you have prob­lems with com­mu­ni­ca­tion; well frankly I have prob­lems with all com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion as a whole is not used cor­rect­ly, in­stead or so­ci­ety us­es it al­most com­plete­ly as a form a per­sua­sion. Al­most every thing that comes out of our lit­tle den­tal holes is our way of try­ing to bend the wills of oth­ers and force our wills up­on them, whether it is a TV com­mer­cial try­ing to sell you a pe­nis en­hancer, a guilt trip, or you plead­ing your case as to why gays should be al­lowed to mar­ry. Every time you open your mouth you are try­ing to make peo­ple see things your way, every time you wife opens her mouth she is try­ing to get you to see things her way. The on­ly peo­ple right now in the plan­et earth who com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly are the abo­rig­ines, and they don’t say much.

So know­ing what you now know, here is a lit­tle advice:

  1. You need to man it up… stop shop­ping at the Gap and wear­ing mesh truck­er hats; drop the whole MTV look be­cause that is you try­ing to be some­thing you are not. You’re a man; do what you re­al­ly want to do: get in your truck (if you don’t have a truck, buy one), dri­ve to the liquor store and get your­self a han­dle of whiskey. Wear Levis and tee shirts. If it is cold out, wear a sweat­shirt; jack­ets are for wankers. Fi­nal­ly, get your­self a can of chew and lock one in for the work­ing man.
  2. Get a re­al job. If you work be­hind a com­put­er, you are wast­ing your life. Men weren’t meant to work in cu­bi­cles. You’ve seen the movie Fight Club . Un­less you want to roll around with sweaty men and burn build­ings, get a re­al job… look for some­thing in con­struc­tion, some­thing where your hands get dirty.
  3. Stop talk­ing. Don’t say shit. Your wife will just love that, but more im­por­tant­ly she will be­gin the process of try­ing to un­der­stand you. You will be­come an enig­ma to her. She might threat­en to leave you, but don’t wor­ry about that. be­cause now she will be cu­ri­ous. She’ll to know what is dri­ving you and why it’s some­thing oth­er than her. Even bet­ter, she will be more at­tract­ed to you. It’is a mat­ter of evo­lu­tion, my dear friend. Women are a species who are at­tract­ed to men, re­al men. Just watch a pride of li­ons on the dis­cov­ery channel.If you can fig­ure out how it works in the an­i­mal king­dom, you should be able to fig­ure out how it works with humans.

Go forth with God­speed and be­come the man you al­ways dreamed of, be­come SPARTACUS.

Filed under Just Ask James on December 23rd, 2004

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Reader Comments

Jersey Mike wrote:

You hit the nail on the head James — ex­cept for the part about Fight Club. Men should kick each oth­ers ass­es. If we do it, when the wives do it too it does­n’t hurt as much. Fly­ing fry­ing pans don’t hurt as much as your teeth leav­ing your mouth in the fist of a fel­low “man”.
Keep ed­u­cat­ing the wuss­es out there brother!

Ray wrote:

In a world were we work 60 plus hours a week even at home locked to the ma­trix with cell­phone and pager).….where to you go to relax..a dvd..a new cd? It just seems all TV is crap…and most “good” books are overrated.
I am not de­pressed!!! I tell my­self and step off the scale.. I just don’t like win­ter.. Fuck I’ll just drink some more cof­fee and imag­ine I am Henry…so fuck­ing cool to have a com­pa­ny as­so­ci­at­ed with your birthdate…how long did it take for that mas­sive back tattoo…As I look out­side I bet that fuck­er has some­thing re­al­ly cool to­do to­day… some­thing neat and in­ter­est­ing to read…
Me???

Anonymous wrote:

ok that last com­ment was a tad random…any who, like the ad­vice, re­al­ly agree with the part about women be­ing nuts…i used to be one
a fel­low male xx

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