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The
family tease, gay passes, and fat frumps
 This
is an extremely odd thing to confess but I seem to be
a forty-year-old man in a constant state of embarrassment.
You see, the problem is that I am also a married man
who is happy to be a married man. And now that my 21-year-old
niece is staying with us while she gets her degree in
business administration, I am in trouble. She prances
around the house barely dressed (man's shirt over panties
and nothing else?), she flirts quite outrageously with
me and once, at a party, she even tried to get into
my lap. We were all drunk but I wasn't that drunk so
I hid in the bathroom for a while and cooled off. Help,
I don't want to be a Humbert Humbert but I am weakening
fast. And for some reason I don't think I am going to
get much help from my wife. First, this slip of a girl
is from my side of the family, which seems to matter
somewhat in all things. Second, my wife looks more and
more amused each time the chit does something even seamier.
Cool off brother, cool off. First, you try dipping
your wick in the family inkpot and the trouble will
never end. Second, if that doesn't stop you in your
tracks, try this one. Your little niece is not even
thinking of you sexually. She's seeing you as training
wheels. She's pushing you around because she knows you
are safe. There is very little that is as anti-aphrodisiacal
as being safe. You are the family Fiat, the big armchair,
nothing much more than that. Your wife's amusement is
a compliment; savour it. And just wait a couple of weeks.
The niece will find a young man and she'll discover
the joys of keeping him in a state of suspended animation
and delirious excitement and you'll be dropped.
My
boss is a gay man. Everyone in the office knows this
and seems to be fine with it. I am too. But how do I
respond when he gives me compliments and says things
like, "You are looking great today"?
Do you know what the word homophobic means? It means
heterosexual men who are shit scared of any sexuality
other than their own. And you're a homophobe, you are.
No, you didn't say, 'Some of my best friends are gay'
but you came close. What do you do when he gives you
compliments? You don't have to get down on your knees.
You just say, "Hey thanks" and get on with
it. Sexual harassment it's not. But then again, gay
radicals say homophobes are actually closet gay men
who can't come to terms with their own identities. Dr
Know doesn't think so. He thinks some heterosexual men
are close-minded morons. Like you are.
My friends are trying to set me up with a woman.
It's kind of them because I went through a savage divorce
and spent a year licking my wounds. They want me to
be happy but it is very difficult to take when I turn
up at a restaurant and discover that it's another fat
frump of a woman who they've dragged out from under
a polyester petticoat. How do I tell them that I have
standards?
Do you think you might say something like, "I
have standards"?
Or do you think that might be too difficult for you
to get past your inflated sense of self which must be
taking up most of the space in your head? Or do you
think they might come back at you and say something
like, "Yes, but let's get a reality check here"?
You might want to take a long hard look in the mirror.
Most men wander around with a self-image that has been
established somewhere in the long summer of college.
They still see themselves with the lean body of the
football athlete-so what if they never played any game
other than the nightly pocket polo?-and the full head
of hair of a twentysomething boy. That man is long gone
now. He's been replaced with the fat frump you see in
the mirror with the clothes that were fashionable when
you had a wife who was buying you stuff and maybe that's
why they bring out the pleasantly plump for your delectation.
There's
nothing wrong with my boyfriend. Okay, nothing much
other than the common stuff that women complain about:
he forgets my birthday, dumps his stuff at my place,
drinks milk straight from the bottle. But that's ok.
What bothers me is that after he has moved the earth
for me, he rolls over and picks up the newspaper. I
mean headlines. Is something wrong?
No.
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