What's the Deal with the Real?

Hmm. Must be spring.

Pretty Lady is looking for a Real Man. Well, not actively per se. Go visit her, she is perfectly capable of explaining. She has some standards- good ones, by my reckoning.

Nine Pearls has a man, and is asking other men what a Real Man is, and what is manly. Always a good question. Got the usual mix of unintentional hilarity and sincere but bizarre wackiness that occur when we men-folk start opining on ourselves. She rides herd well on the out of control elements. As of this writing, none of her non-heterosexual female readers haved weighed in that I can see. I'm am very interested in their take, should they have one.

I confess, at the half-century mark, that I have spent a good portion of my life trying to be anything but a real man. It came about that I, while not physically attractive in the classic sense, appear to be very solid. I have appeared to be successful, wise, caring, and have a great future ahead of me. I appear to be protective from a physical standpoint. I appear to have strength and gravitas. I have been approached by a lot of women for a lot of reasons, most of them based on image- the image in their mind.

Mind you, since this started happening long before I became a thinking human being sometime in my late thirties, I went with it, often. It got me laid, it got me female companionship. I do not celebrate, excuse or brag. Please do not think I am proud of it. I mention it only as context.

I have been the Nice Guy to one woman, and the Shit to another. I am the One Who Got Away, and also the One She Couldn’t Get Away From Fast Enough. On my really, really effective days (notice I don’t say good) I have been all those concurrently. I have repaid faithfulness with infidelity, and also had unfaithfulness done to me. Which I deserved, by the way.

So, am I a real man?

Sadly, no, which is actually the basis of my beginning to become a real man. So how the hell do I become one?

Pretty Lady actually brought it up as a description of her father, who sounds like a hell of a guy. She states he has integrity, in great quantities. Apparently it’s a genetic thing, passed down father to son for generations.

If so, then my genes are, well, different. My father was an alcoholic politician with a gift for gab and the underhanded deal. My maternal grandfather was an embezzler of note- his father was a very successful insurance salesman, which is in some ways the same thing.*

Integrity was not an integral component of my manliness.

Dad always said, “You’ve ultimately got to face that man in the mirror”. Dad was an asshat, and wrong to boot.

No one is easier for me to face, and to lie to.

What was hard was to look at the wreckage around me, and say, “How the hell did stuff get wrecked?”.

So I’ve been cleaning up wreckage. This blog will sometimes be part of the clean-up process. Yeah, like a thousand others- I know. I'll try to make it interesting on occasion, or at least grammatically correct. Sometimes. I can promise it will usually be spelled correctly. Best I can do right now. Most other times it will be the usual mix of uninformed opinion, half-truths and outright distortion. Sort of like Fox News. Or Air America (R.I.P.).

When a house is flooded, it is relatively easy to clean the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the outside. What’s hard is to open all the kitchen drawers and get the gooey, yucky silt and sludge out from the drawer, behind the drawer, and inside the frame of the cabinets.

So, if you read any of these or future words, thanks for recognizing the clean-up in progress. I’m trying to discern the integrity of the foundation. It may need shoring up, or replacement- or may be completely irreparable. I'm not too familiar with integrity, but willing to learn.

Helpful suggestions always appreciated.

Can’t tell ‘til the muck is out of the way. This is a site Under Deconstruction.

So decreed.

*Insurance salespeople, do not freak out. 1. I spent 11 years in the trade, I know whereof I speak. I wasn't talking about you. 2. I said “some ways”.

(Mathew Baldwin is, to me, a Real Man. I usually smirk at my computer, rarely LOL. This made me giggle. Yes, I know, it's actually a little sick. Sick makes me laugh.)