Last night,the Astronomist was maundering and to some extent speaking in gibberish. He had just finish watching Poison Ivy: Lust & Seduction. A must watch recommended by yours truly for all hot blooded male with a penchant for "romance". His usual intelligence and compose self has vanish in that interim of 2 hours. Men are miracles of evolution but after 3 billion years, there is still alot of room of improvement - the crucial point here being pin pointed by comedian Robin Williams, 'God gave men a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to run one at a time.' This certainly explains the insane blabbering coming from the Astronomist.
A woman lacks the extra spark of a special gene called the SRY that determines the sex region of the Y-Chromosome and summarily explains that even after watching reruns of Lust & Seduction we can still hold a perfectly intelligent conversation with the President. The SRY has clearly got a lot to answer for. But how can such a tiny sliver of genetic material have such profound consequences for a human being? The answer, says geneticist Professor Steve Jones, of University College London, is simple. 'The SRY is a switch that directs other genes on to their allotted path,' he states. It's like the railway points outside a large terminus: with a single tiny shift the SRY sends the sexual express towards one destination rather than another.
Al Kennedy describes what maketh a man perfectly. I shared this with the Astronomist and I feel obligated as a responsible alpha female to share this with you too..so bear with the torture and read on.
Ah, men. Ah, sweeping generalisations. Of course, you wouldn't want to put the two together. Then again, somewhere in my reptile brain, they are together, because I am a creature of hormones and natural fluids and so, for me, men are divided sweepingly into Dofindattractive and Dontfindattractive. The ones in the former category can behave like lobotomised Visigoths with relative impunity and those in the latter can be saints come to earth, with particle physics degrees and the muscle tone of gods, and yet still seem, somehow, completely uninteresting. I try to rise above this, but frequently I don't. And as I find so very few men attractive and the rest of them are pretty much invisible, I can't say that I'm any kind of expert when it comes to my masculine counterparts.
But I have noticed a few points. For instance, there aren't any New Men. There are only men who want to hear about your periods so they can give you the kind of solemn look they'd offer to someone who's suffered a bereavement. When this makes you want to slap them, they will then look even more sympathetic because your Special Girlie Body Chemistry is clearly leading you astray. Then they will offer you cake. Or try to shag you. Or both. Naturally, there are men who want to hug each other, sit in sweat lodges and weep theatrically, but that's not exactly New.
Because men are all softies. I know, I know, that's entirely sweeping, but I've given this some thought and I would still argue that it's true. I have, for example, spent four hours trailing round shops with a man locked in the agony of buying himself trousers. The assistant in the first shop made him feel old, the second place made him feel fat, then he worried about his hair - and dying, possibly alone - and finally he stood, shaking and on the verge of hysteria, unable to even tell a gentleman's outfitter that he hadn't intended to test-run an overcoat.
Men don't actually want to have such a limited sartorial repertoire; they don't want to drag about in suits and ties and jeans and shell suits - they're just far too scared to try anything else. It takes huge support and coddling to get a man to even change his socks. Men can sometimes break out into brave, little displays of colour, the occasional mini-kilt, but this takes months of encouragement from other, understanding and strong-minded men who are used to adversity and well-versed in exotic fabrics. Men who dress like abandoned sofas and whose personal maintenance regimes rely entirely on stolen cloakroom soap and irregular splashes of cold water aren't hideous slobs, they've just given up, lonely and overwhelmed by the weight of their own ugliness. Men are expected to like and understand football, badger baiting, power tools, the internal combustion engine, and yet very many of them are tragically unhandy, unsporting and fond of badgers. Men are never allowed to be wrong, to read instruction manuals, and are expressly forbidden to ask directions.
Add to this the fact that men are required to fight - in wars, in bars, in post office queues - and it's easy to appreciate that most spend their lives in a broth of nervous tension and sensations of impending doom.
Which explains why they're generally so messy. And, to make matters worse, they're big. Even quite small men are big. They have to clomp round on their big feet, support the constant, nagging weight of their big heads and manipulate objects with their big hands when everyone knows that all the useful things in life - remote controls, computer keyboards, mobile phones, buttons, bra clasps, cutlery - were actually designed for people with the hands of slender elves. No wonder there are breakages and hasty words.
Possibly for some of the reasons above, my relationships with men amount to a series of slow-motion car crashes. But now, after mature reflection, I've discovered the one key fact that would have helped me approach all male contingencies: men are essentially like horses.
No, no, no, not like that, nothing Catherine the Great about it. I mean, if you've ever had to deal with horses, you will know that they are large, powerful and often fine-looking things. But they are also afraid of dust, air, newspapers, traffic, loud noises, quiet noises, intermediate noises, each other, themselves and anything else they feel like. They tread a ghastly path between nervous exhaustion, potentially fatal coughing and leg injuries. Fair enough, if they're really terrified they can kill you by mistake, but treated with consideration they can be pitifully trusting and will put themselves tirelessly to work in return for a few pieces of liquorice or a kind word.
So speak gently to your men folk, rub their foreheads, make no sudden moves and you may find they'll be your friends for life. Be tender - they can seem noisy and inconvenient at times - but they're still probably worth the effort. And, above all, keep them away from sweeping generalisations that may irritate them, or affect their self-esteem.
So I hereby retract what I said about you being a slobberish incoherent speaker of the English language. I thought it was pretty cuteeeeee. :)
