Ask an Insensitive Man

Dear Insensitive Man,

My husband won’t admit his own insecurities and masks them by finding fault with other men, in a transparent effort to bolster his own ego. For example: he totally bags on men who ride electric scooters. I mean, these guys are getting around quickly, doing something for climate change, and not hurting anyone … what’s the problem? Is there any way, short of expensive counseling, to shore up my husband’s self esteem so he’ll stop doing this?

Martha V, Portland, OR

Dear Martha,

Does your husband criticize all kinds of other men and this is one example among many? Because if it’s just the scooters, I think you’re misinterpreting the situation. Any person in his—or her—right mind would rightly lambast adults riding scooters. I mean, have some dignity! Be a grown-up! No amount of energy efficiency is worth discarding one’s self-respect. Also consider that those things are a menace, due to their small wheels and their silent, swift tendency to appear out of nowhere. Imagine the unfortunate motorist who kills a scooter rider and has to live with the memory of that, even if the person killed was a twit.

Dear Insensitive Man,

I get no empathy from my husband when I open up to him about how hard ageing is on me, especially when I contemplate how saggy and crepey my neck is getting. He just blows me off like my grievance is unimportant. Does he just not even see me anymore?

Candace R, Newark, NJ

Dear Candace,

Men don’t care about necks, only women do (and of course you’re in good company, what with Nora Ephron’s classic essay “I Feel Bad About My Neck”). Generally if a man, be it your husband or anybody else, is looking anywhere in the vicinity of your head, he’ll notice your mouth and eyes more. And it’s widely accepted that many a man may call himself “a tits man” or “an ass man,” but I have yet to meet a “neck man.” I mean, think about it: can you imagine a guy describing a first date to a pal and having the pal ask, “So … how’s her neck?” It’s absurd. (Again, if you’re worried about what other women think about your neck, that’s an  entirely different matter. Just don’t go dragging us men into it.)

Dear Insensitive Man,

I am eight months pregnant and my husband seems oblivious to all the suffering and indignity I’m going through, what with the weight gain, the nausea, my feet hurting all the time, and on and on. How can I wake him up and maybe get a little empathy, or at least some more help around the house?

Kim Reed, Oakland, CA

Dear Kim,

If your husband is normally more sympathetic, such as when you’ve got the flu or a twisted ankle, you might chalk this up to him not knowing how to react to the pregnancy, given the strangeness of your metamorphosis and the drastic life change and awesome responsibility he knows is about to descend upon your lives. (Or maybe I’m just making excuses … after all, when my wife complained about such pregnancy-related discomforts, I replied, “If it’s any consolation, I feel great!”) Hang in there, shame your husband into helping more, and hope for the best. And don’t worry, you’ll get to turn the tables one day when it’s time for his vasectomy and he gets dry-shaved with a 25-cent Bic. Sure, his suffering will be briefer than yours, but at least you’ll have a moment to throw it in his face … that and every other trivially painful situation he may encounter after witnessing childbirth.

Dear Insensitive Man,

I truly believe there is something wrong with my husband. Although he’s a loving father and enjoys reading to our young daughters, he’s managed time and again to read aloud the brilliantly touching Love You Forever children’s book, from cover to cover, without crying at the end. Not a single tear, not once! How is this possible? Is he actually a heartless, unfeeling iceberg?

Sarah M, Topeka, KS

Dear Sarah,

Don’t worry, there is nothing wrong with your husband. He doesn’t cry while reading Love You Forever simply because the book is actually not that touching. When you cry reading it, it’s probably because it’s giving you a good excuse, and you were probably going to cry sooner or later anyway. Let me tell you a story: in college, a friend once invited me to movie night at her sorority house. This seemed like a great deal: a free movie and snacks, plus I’d be surrounded by beautiful girls I could possibly hit on! The problem was, the movie was “Fried Green Tomatoes,” a total chick-flick. Before the opening credits were even over, every single girl was already crying, and then as the movie progressed they all shot daggers at me. It seems I’d stumbled into what was probably supposed to be a female bonding ritual, basically a chance to cry together, and maybe Love You Forever is in that insta-cry vein. (All this being said, if your husband can make it through reading The Gardner aloud without crying, why then yes, something is wrong with him.)

Dear Insensitive Man,

My brother-in-law accused my husband of, and I quote, “whining like a little bitch.” My husband hasn’t said anything about it, but I think his feelings were really hurt. Would it be inappropriate for me to confront my brother-in-law and let him know he owes his brother an apology?

Jan K, Cheney, WA

Dear Jan,

Most of my friends call me a whiny little bitch from time to time, and it doesn’t bother me a bit—this is just how a lot of men talk. In fact, it’s almost like a compliment, because it means they know I can take it. And if occasionally I reply, “That really hurts my feelings,” they know I’m joking. Now, if you’re worried about “bitch” being sexist, consider that many modern men call each other “bitch” all the time, and that it’s gradually evolving into a gender-neutral term, via a process linguists call “semantic bleaching.”

Dear Insensitive Man,

My husband is a big pain in the ass when it comes to hiring a tradesman, such as a plumber or handyman. It’s like his male ego can’t handle it. So he says he’ll do something, but then puts it off. Even when I suggest he hire somebody simply because he has better things to do with his time, he acts all butt-hurt. Is there no way out?

Tina O, Brooklyn, NY

Dear Tina,

I can see two main sources for your husband’s hesitation, and both may apply. One, he’s a cheap bastard; two, he doesn’t want to admit he’s incapable. Don’t be too bummed about this; I mean, imagine if your guy was lame, and shameless, and didn’t even know how to change the filter in your furnace or program your thermostat, or if he paid a bike shop to fix a flat tire on your commuter bike. (Is it wrong of me to assume you’d look to him to do these things? Of course it is, I’m an insensitive man!) As for the solution, that’s easy: wait until he’s away all day at a ball game or camping trip, and hire the handyman while he’s gone. When he gets home and acts all irritated, a) consider that he’s probably faking it and is secretly relieved, and b) turn it around and say, “Honey, I wanted it to be a surprise!” (Note: don’t say “honey” unless you routinely call him this. My wife only says “honey” when she’s pissed at me.)

Dear Insensitive Man,

A friend of mine recently transitioned to a new gender identity. My dad is sloppy—perhaps conveniently sloppy—about remembering my friend’s chosen name and affirmed pronoun. I think my dad is being passive-aggressive, and that deep down inside he is reluctant or even unwilling to adapt to this societal evolution. Is there some way to get through to this man?

Alicia C, Los Angeles, CA

Dear Alicia,

I suspect it’s the case that your dad is actually trying, but is having difficulty shedding the habit of using the deadname and previous pronoun, especially if he’s known your friend for years. That you say “sloppy” suggests that your dad sometimes gets it right, whereas a non-affirming traditionalist is likely to be boldly defiant and unapologetic. If your dad apologizes, he probably means it and you should cut him some slack. But if he slanders your friend’s transition openly, you have my permission to kick your old man in the balls.

Dear Insensitive Man,

My husband is a generous tipper when he tips, but he seems a bit stingy when deciding who deserves a tip and who doesn’t. For example, when we were traveling recently he didn’t tip a really friendly hotel concierge who gave us great advice on a local restaurant. What do you do with a husband who is insensitive to the service sector?

Lisa S, New Haven, CT

Dear Lisa,

If your husband tips baristas, hotel maids, cab drivers, parking valets, and bartenders, and at counter-service restaurants, I doubt he’s insensitive to the service sector. Frankly, I wouldn’t have tipped the concierge either—it’s that guy’s job to be generally helpful and courteous, and to be given a cash tip for dispensing friendly advice might actually insult him. Ask yourself this: did your husband tip you the first time you had sex? Did you wish he had?

Dear Insensitive Man,

Is it possible to be too sensitive? It seems like my son does all the dishes for his entire household. Every time we talk on the phone I hear him doing dishes in the background. Is my daughter-in-law taking advantage of him?

Jill A, Ashland, OH

Dear Jill,

I don’t think this is about sensitivity or progressivism, but probably just an arrangement that works. Does your son’s wife do more of the cooking than he does? If so, this could be a perfectly fair trade. It could also be that on some level your husband actually enjoys doing the dishes, or at least finds it soothing. It also could be that, if he’s punctilious and efficient about it and you are slapdash, that he’d rather do it right than have you do it wrong. I watched some stand-up comic on Netflix recently who said there are two kinds of men: those who have a particular way of loading the dishwasher, and those who step out on their wives. I think she’s on to something.

Dear Insensitive Man,

My boyfriend has this nagging habit of pooh-poohing very real world problems like climate change, overpopulation, and threats to democracy. Particularly when these are discussed among friends, he just clams up, though he’s normally a pretty gregarious guy. People we socialize with may well get the idea he just doesn’t care about anything, when I know this man’s heart is good. How can I housetrain him to be more politic?

Vivian L, San Francisco, CA

Dear Vivian,

Hang on to that guy, he could be a good influence on you! If he really doesn’t care, that could be a red flag, but it’s just as likely he simply doesn’t consider these worthy topics of conversation—in which case I agree 100%. I mean, what are you and your friends going to actually solve, unless you are in politics or members of a think tank? Maybe he needs to housetrain you to be less political.

Dear Insensitive Man,

I have just started shaving. While I was home from college for the summer, my dad watched me shave with my new Gillette ProGlide razor and started giving me a hard time for how I let the “Shaving Industrial Complex” dupe me into overspending on blades just because I’m afraid I might cut myself. He called my razor a “child’s toy.” He’s normally a pretty good guy but what the actual fuck?! Can you tell him how lame he’s being so I can show him the column and get him to lighten up?

Henry C, Las Cruces, NM

Dear Henry,

I hate to break it to you, but your dad is completely in the right on this one. It looks like the replacement blades for your razor run about four bucks apiece, vs. under 25 cents for a proper double-edged blade, made for a traditional steel razor, that actually provides a closer shave. The ProGlide is stupid, plastic, and does look like a toy, and you need to man up here. Shaving is just not that complicated. If you need inspiration check out “Ode on a Double-Edged Razor.”

An Insensitive Man is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask an Insensitive Man,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ask a Cycling Coach

Dear Cycling Coach,

I seem to have developed tennis elbow—but from mountain biking! How is this possible? I’ve never even touched a racquet!

Kaitlin C, Fairfax, CA

Dear Kaitlin,

I have encountered this myself, and the problem was: hydraulic fluid. Not in my elbow, but in one of my bike’s brake lines. By any chance have you been ignoring a disc brake that needs to be bled? Like, when you pull the lever nothing happens unless you pump it multiple times? Well, that’s a repetitive motion and those can add up. But if your brakes are fine, I honestly don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe see a shrink? ;-)

Dear Cycling Coach,

I’m kind of new to mountain biking and people are telling me I should “go tubeless,” whatever that means. What are these people talking about and should I listen?

Aaron W, Minneapolis, MN

Dear Aaron,

For decades, bike tires always had an inner tube inside them, which occasionally got punctured by a thorn, bit of glass, etc. or by being pushed too hard into the wheel rim due to an impact. The more modern setup (common, but by no means ubiquitous) is to not have a tube at all; the tire forms a seal against the rim, aided by this goo that you pour in there. It’s a big mess, a fair bit of hassle, and requires an air compressor or special pump to inflate, but it’s actually worth it. It saves weight, lets you run your tires at a lower pressure, and best of all the goo seals up punctures as you ride. (I’ve had student athletes on the high school mountain biking team who went four whole seasons without a single puncture!) If you want advice on how to set this up, including how to build your own human-powered compressor on the cheap, check out my post here. Now, on road bikes things get even trickier; if you overinflate the tire it could blow off the rim. So, I’m not necessarily recommending tubeless for road…

Dear Cycling Coach,

Do girls dig cyclists? I’m asking for a friend.

John S, Ashburn, VA

Dear John,

Of course they do! I mean, what’s not to dig? We’ve got these thin T-Rex arms; hairless legs; brightly colored form-fitting costumes like a jockey wears; and best of all, we’re always mansplaining on such lofty topics as bike gearing, cycling nutrition, and power output. I should think we’d be every woman’s wet dream. In fact, in my youth I had young babes falling all over me. Hmm. Do I have that right? I’m trying to remember … actually, come to think of it, they were falling all over the football players and the swimmers. Weird.

[A note on the above picture: I had ChatGPT create it for me. This was its third attempt. I asked for the cyclist to have “very thin, weak-looking arms,” for him to be “lean but thin and unimpressive,” and (on my third attempt) to be “much less muscular, kind of wimpy looking.” It appears that ChatGPT-4-turbo is simply incapable of rendering men as anything but grotesquely muscular and roided out. And as I’ve noted before in these pages, it cannot draw a woman who doesn’t have at least one bare shoulder. Oh well. I tried.]

Dear Cycling Coach,

Cycling is the only sport I do, and in the winter it’s too cold and dark to ride so my fitness falls off. I’m thinking of getting a stationary trainer or maybe rollers. Do you recommend this and if so do you have any advice on what to buy, how to get started, etc.?

Lisa N, Columbus, OH

Dear Lisa,

There are several good reasons to ride indoors: you get the stress relief you need; you build character; you go into the spring with better fitness, so you can keep up with your pals; you avoid the wretchedness of riding in the cold and wet; and you (most likely) avoid crashing. All this being said, you’ll need fortitude because indoor training presents a particularly tough gumption trap. The good news is, I provide lots of advice on indoor training here.

Specifically regarding rollers, they are definitely more difficult than a stationary trainer (i.e., you can’t just shut your brain off), but they’re slightly more fun, and they also improve your balance. You’ll definitely want the type that provide resistance (though I provide some hacks on that here). If you’re into a top-of-the-line product, check out my review of the best ones on the market.

Whatever mode of indoor cycling you choose, I highly recommend noise-cancelling headphones and high-energy music with a solid beat. For my workout music megamix, click here.

Dear Cycling Coach,

I love to ride with my friends but it’s hard to coordinate schedules. I dislike riding alone, but my friends all do it. What’s their secret and/or how do I handle the drudgery of cycling solo?

Tracy A, Castle Rock, CO

Dear Tracy,

I see two ways to proceed. One is to see what alternatives exist, such as joining a local club, asking around about group rides, or trying to recruit more cycling buddies. The other is to tackle the solo riding challenge head-on. Going it alone is definitely an acquired taste—it took me until my third year of bike racing to begin to enjoy or at least tolerate it—but it’s well worth it in the long run.

Some ways to motivate yourself:

1. Remind yourself that “stealth training” will make the group rides even more fun
2. If you’re worried about safety, figure out the routes where you’ll encounter plenty of people (and not get bike-jacked, though honestly I think this is a fictitious problem, like ring-around-the-collar)
3. Gamify your solo cycling, either by competing virtually with friends or family or joining Strava.

For more on riding alone, click here.

Dear Cycling Coach,

What chain lubricant should I use? And would this be different for mountain vs. road?

Malcolm R, Oakland, CA

Dear Malcolm,

I could provide an exhaustive treatise about why I choose White Lightning Clean Ride for all my bikes, but wouldn’t you rather read a very brief synopsis, or ideally a poem? Well guess what: you can click here for a nice little sonnet on the topic, replete with end notes. Best of all, it was written by an English major who is also a recovering bike mechanic and a bona-fide coach!

Dear Cycling Coach,

My crappy old bike helmet is coming completely apart. I’m kinda relieved because I never liked that helmet to begin with. But looking at a new one, I see options varying from the lightly used helmet for $4 at Salvation Army to over $300 for a goofy-looking thing at my local shop. Is there any difference among these or is it all marketing?

Emily K, Portland, OR

Dear Emily,

There actually is a big difference, to a point. No, a $300 helmet is not going to be worlds away from a $150 helmet, but you don’t want some bogus made-up brand like Victgoal or Odoland that crumbles in your hands and smells like kerosene. Here’s a true story: when I was on a college cycling team, we were sponsored by an up-and-coming bike helmet company and we all got free helmets. The problem was, they didn’t fit that well, and the straps weren’t quite right, and at high speed the wind would blow this thing back on my head, exposing my forehead. I thought I should replace it but I was already a notorious cheap bastard, and even though I worked at a bike shop and got a discount, I tried to live the motto “cheap’s neat, but free’s me.” So I kept asking the Giro rep to sponsor me with a free helmet. Several times he offered only a discount and I replied, “What am I supposed to tell my helmet sponsor … that I paid for another brand? If you gave it to me, it’d be a lot easier.”

Finally he relented, and I got a top-of-the-line Giro, which fit really well, not slipping back on my head like that free helmet. Well, on the Giro’s maiden voyage I crashed really hard mountain biking (as described here). I was knocked out cold, and was airlifted to the closest head trauma center. I ended up being fine … but only thanks to that well-fitting helmet. Ever since, I have been a real stickler on head protection, and I think you should, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean dropping hundreds of dollars, but get something that really fits, that you really like and will always wear.

(By the way, that bit about knock-off helmets crumbling and smelling like kerosene? I didn’t mean that. I meant creosote. Naw, kidding again. But trust me about avoiding those weird, cheap helmets on Amazon that come with built-in sunglasses and/or a balaclava and no, I’m actually not making that up.)

Dear Cycling Coach,

I’ve noticed you get as many letters from women as from men, and yet something like three fourths of American cyclists are men. Do you just ignore a lot of the men’s questions so as to achieve gender parity? Or do women ask better questions?

Jeannie E, Seattle, WA

Dear Jeannie,

I actually get as many questions from women as from men. I think this is because women are less insecure and thus more likely to ask for advice. I base this on a bike maintenance class I once offered as a prize at the fundraising auction at my kids’ school. In the advertisement I didn’t say anything about me being female, or about the class being for women. But I guess because of my girl’s name, people just assumed, because eight women and only one man signed up. When the man arrived and saw all these women, he immediately bailed. Well, halfway through the class, during the refreshment break, a student approached and complained about my being a man. “I kind of assumed you’d be a woman,” she said testily. I replied, “I certainly didn’t mean to imply that in the flyer, and I’m sorry about my girl’s name … it’s the one I was given and it didn’t occur to me to clarify. I’m happy to give you a refund.” She backed off at that point but still seemed miffed. I guess she understood something about men that I didn’t…

Dear Cycling Coach,

I read an article somewhere, years ago, about how too much cycling can damage your heart. Should I be worried about literally killing myself on the bike?

Suzie L, Queens, NY

Dear Suzie,

You might be thinking of the article “Cycling to Extremes” in the August 2015 issue of Velo magazine. I thoroughly refute its claims here. Beyond that, there have been various alarmist articles in a similar vein over the years. I think it’s a bit silly to be worrying about such a remote possibility given the obesity epidemic in this country, with heart disease being the leading cause of death. I'll concede that an overweight 60-year-old American, whose arteries are totally clogged, can kill himself by suddenly doing something really strenuous; for example, you hear about guys dying of cardiac arrest while shoveling snow. But that's not very common, and presumably you’re a fit cyclist doing a consistent program. If it were really possible for athletes to work themselves to death, don't you think it would happen all the time in professional races?

Think about it: the ability to work yourself to death would not be naturally selected in the evolution of any creature. Or, if you subscribe to the intelligent design theory, what kind of blind idiot God would design creatures that could accidentally kill themselves by trying to do something useful, and do it well? Do you believe that you are somehow going to be able to push yourself harder than 100+ years of Tour de France racers? I think you can rest easy on this one, Suzie. But hey, that’s just my opinion. I’m not a doctor or anything.

Dear Cycling Coach,

I was out for a road ride and joined a group that passed me. I thought I was doing pretty well but then I overheard somebody say, “Who invited the Fred?” I take it “Fred” isn’t a good thing. What did he mean and how offended should I be? Was I doing something wrong?

Peter L, San Diego, CA

Dear Peter,

It’s possible that you were disturbing the flow of the group (by letting gaps open, etc.) but it’s equally possible the “Fred” comment simply came from a snob. Like any sport, cycling has its share of elitist types who may forget what it was like being closer to a novice than a racer. Maybe the guy didn’t like your helmet, or your socks (or lack thereof), or the kind of shoes you were wearing, or that your bike had a pie plate.

There are two ways to handle this. One: you could simply blow it off and enjoy yourself on the bike. Cycling has always attracted rebels, and I hope it always does. Two: you could review my two-part article on how to not be a “Fred.” Part I is here and Part II is here. But please remember: this guide is only for people who want to fit in. Those who don’t care about fitting in have my full respect, and deserve yours, too.

A Cycling Coach is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Cycling Coach,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

What Are “Men Extenders”?

Introduction

Have you ever come across the term “men extenders”? Perhaps? But maybe you can’t recall where? Well, I don’t recommend googling it. For research purposes I had to do this, but at least I used an Incognito browser window. The results were not pretty. It took me a while to turn up the origin of the non-penile sense of the phrase, but I am finally equipped (no pun intended) to tell you where it came from. Following that I’ll launch into a full exegesis, as is my wont.

The origin of “men extenders”

Outside the realm of the saddest cosmetic surgery known to man, the term “men extenders” appears nowhere on the Internet except pages deep into the Quotes section of the IMDB entry for “Barbie.” Here is the reference:

This movie is a perfectly fitting place to kick off this new (and highly useful) term, because as we all know from being kids, Barbieland’s denizens are replete with accessories. (Here’s an old joke from my brother: “Hey, have you heard about the new Divorce Barbie? She comes with half of Ken’s stuff!”) Of course, most of the accessories are hairbrushes and pink dream houses and pink convertibles, etc.—i.e. her stuff—and whenever one of my daughters got a new Ken doll the first thing she’d do was rip all his clothing off, exposing his greatest lack (which is an interesting counterpoint to the non-Ken context of “men extenders).”

I can’t remember exactly what got me thinking about men extenders, but I know it came from a dialogue I had with my wife, where she posed a question along the lines of, “What are the quintessential men extenders?” It turns out to be a fascinating realm of exploration.

But first, some housekeeping

Look, I’m going to get into some ideas here involving what’s manly, and what a man ought to be able to do, and what it would actually mean to extend a man’s, well, manliness. (And no, that’s not a euphemism for his member—enough with that already!) Naturally there has been a lot of evolution, perhaps even revolution, lately about what it means to be a man and what ought to be expected of us. So I should state right up front that I’m not going to be so progressive as to ignore the past, or try to make this all about a new male paradigm, much less delve into the realm of non-binary. This post is about the traditional sex roles that, looking across the landscape of mankind, continue to be predominant: roles that even the most modern man—and woman—are still saddled with.

Yes, modern man is more civilized than he used to be, particularly in progressive countries (of which, say, Afghanistan would not be an example). We men have learned to dress better, scratch our groins less publicly, be a bit less dense about equality, and may more willingly share the boardroom with women, to a greater or lesser degree. But this doesn’t change, in my mind, the fact that we men have certain impulses—unconscious biases might be the better term—that we either quell or indulge, depending on our personalities, our position on the cultural spectrum, and the situation. What I’m getting at is, when our intellect, education, and breeding cause us to modify and refine our behavior, what is the knee-jerk behavior that’s being subdued?

My past and present have enabled me to come at the thing from both directions: the base primitive male and the educated, enlightened, housetrained modern man. Consider the following photo:

Look at the dazed look in my eyes. I was not just the kind of dad who bottle-fed his baby once in a while so he could get brownie points for having done so at all. For complicated reasons, I bottle-fed one of my babies a great deal, in lieu of sleep. And I changed a lot of diapers. How many? Well, if I were to say in the presence of my wife, “I reckon I changed about half of A—’s diapers,” she wouldn’t burst out laughing. (I actually tried this. She said, “Probably more like 40%,” and didn’t even roll her eyes.) On top of that, I am such a modern man, I am able to keep track of a non-cisgender person’s preferred pronouns when they have changed. (This surely seems like no big deal to Gen Z, but believe me, it’s not easy for my generation and I assure you, we are trying.)

And yet, evolved as I am, I am a person who over the course of his childhood was in a number of fistfights, and rather than looking back on those episodes in shame, I recall them wistfully—fondly, even. And although my now fully formed neocortex would prevent me from ever resorting to actual combat anymore, I still like to have an excuse to duke it out (metaphorically speaking) with some rando when I’m cycling (see here, here, and/or here). Many a woman would call this “macho bullshit,” and maybe it is, but I’m gonna own it … it’s my macho bullshit and I’m not giving it up (even though I did a huge load of dishes earlier).

For more on the topic of male impulses that won’t go away, click here. On the other hand, if you are so highly evolved that the last few paragraphs have triggered you, maybe it’s time to stop and go read something else instead.

So what are the quintessential men extenders?

As you saw earlier, the men extenders example given in “Barbie” is the horse. Certainly this makes sense; in an archetypal way, a man on horseback is utterly masculine … just think of the Marlboro Man. Of course, nobody rides horses anymore, and a modern man who can afford a horse and the land, stables, etc. required for one is probably more like a polo player than a cowboy … not exactly macho. It’s only because “Barbie” itself is so archetypal that this notion works in the movie.

So what about a motorcycle? Consider the Bon Jovi song “Wanted Dead or Alive” and its central lyric, “I’m a cowboy/On a steel horse I ride.” Frankly, I think this song kind of killed any chance of a motorcycle extending anyone’s manhood. The video, showing well-groomed pretty-faced rock stars playing in a stadium full of star-struck teenage girls, makes them come off as pretty much the opposite of an actual cowboy.

A truck? Now we’re getting somewhere. A big manly truck … built Ford tough, etc. I certainly see a lot of pickup trucks when I’m out biking, and it’s not uncommon for one to accelerate mightily as it passes me, as if to demonstrate something. If I’m riding with a pal when this happens, I’ll generally remark, “Wow … did you hear  the size of that guy’s testicles?” And more often than not, the dickhead who uses his pickup in that antisocial way is a well-upholstered middle-aged white guy and his truck is immaculate and probably never leaves the asphalt. In contrast to that, the smaller pickups that pass me, which invariably give me plenty of room, are usually more run-down, and are full of gardening tools (shovels, mowers, etc.) and driven by workmen, usually Chicano ones, like the guys who, in a few short hours, dug a deep trench in my backyard to install a French drain, while I watched from the kitchen window while doing dishes, feeling deeply inferior as a man.

Does this mean a big, expensive truck can’t be a men extender? Why, no. It’s just that a pristine Range Rover with leather seats exemplifies only wealth, not manliness, so there has to be more going on. Take, for example, my friend B— who drove a bunch of us to the Deschutes River recently to go inner tubing, and hauled everything in the back of his big pickup. Nothing about his payload that day was particularly impressive, but he mentioned that a pal gave him the truck because it was so old and beaten down it was getting hard to keep running. B— gladly accepted it because he has a lot of fun making little repairs to keep it on the road. And that is fundamental: the know-how that goes with the physical object. Bonus points for lashing a canoe to the roof and knowing all the right knots so it doesn’t slide off and maim somebody.

The more I ponder it, the more utility seems absolutely central to men extension. This is why, in fact, a beard or a tattoo or an ear gauge cannot be a men extender: because these decorations don’t do anything; anybody can choose to have one. It’s a sartorial thing done to you then you just parade it around, as frivolously as a fancy woman of old showing off with a big feathered hat.

Is know-how itself a men extender?

Not all know-how is a men extender; it has to be paired with the right object. For example, men who are really good with tech stuff, while they can earn legendary amounts of money, will always be considered a bit nerdy, and seeing these tech titans in action isn’t very impressive. “Look at how his fingers fly over that keyboard!” moaned no enraptured woman ever. And the C-suite types? Knowing how to properly tie a silk necktie isn’t a men-extending behavior, and the hoodies of the Mark Zuckerberg set are frankly childish. What about men who are just really good communicators? Tony Robbins might be worth $600 million, but he’s never going to star in an action movie or get a grill named after him. His tools—a ballroom and a microphone—aren’t the kind the guy next door would secretly covet. How about a telescope and a masterful knowledge of astronomy? Naw. No layman could ever appreciate whatever it is these oddballs see in the night sky. I myself got to see Halley’s Comet through a powerful telescope at an actual observatory, and it was pretty much the most boring thing ever.

I guess I’m not exactly unearthing the pure essence of men extenders here, but it’s like so many things: you know it when you see it.

The men extender I wish I had…

I myself cannot mourn not owning a beater pickup truck, or a canoe, or the earth-turning tools that (combined with laborer-grade sinews) might enable me to dig a giant trench in no time flat. Based on the gentrification of my neighborhood (which somehow transitioned from the Prius Belt to the Tesla Belt while I wasn’t looking), I don’t think my neighbors would appreciate a dilapidated F150 dripping oil on our street. Meanwhile, I don’t generally do much boating (in fact, when my wife and I have tried to canoe together, we just went in circles). And if I were a career gardener who needed a work truck, I probably wouldn’t earn enough money to live in Albany, and my kids needed good schools a lot more than they needed a manly dad. (In fact, having now left the nest, they scarcely need me at all anymore, which is fine I guess—I mean, it’s according to plan.)

But what I do long for, if I could just get my act together as a man, is a barbecue grill … and the know-how to use it. I mean, yeah, I could buy one of these giant gas grills that’s basically a stove you use outdoors, but I’m thinking more of something more traditional, like the classic Weber. Or, better yet, a giant commercial-type grill with the big ring you crank on to raise and lower that big blackened mechanism—a spit, is it?—that’s suspended by chains. You know, like you could roast a whole damn pig on (if you knew how). Because the fact is, I love barbecues, I love grilled meat, I love the smell of flaming lighter-fluid-soaked briquettes even if they’re deadly. And of course I’d love to extend my manhood … but even all these things put together aren’t enough to motivate me to actually buy a grill and learn how to use it. After all, I’m middle-aged, and already eat a dangerous amount of cheese, and had better look out for my health. Moreover, knowing I’d be buying this grill just to extend my masculinity … that seems somehow kind of wrong, kind of sad, kind of … well, emasculating, if that makes any sense.

My own favorite men extender

My wife assumed that to the extent I have any men extension, it would have to do with my racing bike, and my mountain bike, and the athleticism I’m able to pair with them. Honestly, I don’t think bicycles get the job done. Yes, I can ride them pretty effectively, but there’s really nobody around to see this except other cyclists, and at least on this side of the Atlantic the sport has never had the respect it deserves. Above all, a cyclist only propels himself along, and this doesn’t do anybody else any good. A fisherman with his own boat, especially like one of the guys in The Perfect Storm who braved horrific weather to haul swordfish out of the ocean, is very manly, as is a soldier, but some guy pedaling a bike faster than some other guys? Big deal.

My own favorite men extender is my toolbox, because it’s full of a lot of very cool bicycle-related tools that I actually know how to use, and which keep my family’s entire fleet going. Ditto my workbench and my smattering of household tools (drill, hacksaw, wood saw, etc.). Also ditto the tools I carry mountain biking paired with my ability to fix a student-athlete’s bike when it breaks down on the trail. Some of these bike-related tools are weird enough that the layman wouldn’t have any idea what they do. Others, like my wheel truing stand, have an obvious purpose but the layman wouldn’t know where to start. (Truing a wheel, by adjusting the tension on each spoke, is a real art and most DIY types could only cause harm with such tools.)

And what’s my absolute favorite tool? That’s a tough one, but I guess I’d have to say my Dremel rotory tool. It’s kind of like a drill, but you can put various different cutting bits on it, the coolest being a disc-shaped blade that will pretty much cut through anything. Sparks fly everywhere, which looks cool. The first time I encountered this phenomenon—though with some even cooler tool in my dad’s machine shop—I  asked him, “What are all those orange sparks?” He said they were tiny bits of molten metal. “Won’t they burn you?” I asked. He said by the time they hit you they’ve cooled off enough. So I think being brushed by a shower of sparks is actually kind of pleasant. (Of course I wear safety goggles—I’m not an idiot.)

Recently I bought a bike from a pal, and it came with a U-lock, hanging from the top tube, that alas lacked a key (thanks to my pal’s typically clueless teenager). I think I got a bit of a discount based on the hassle of that lock. But I had it off within minutes using the Dremel.

I used my Dremel again the other day, cutting a metal plate out of a giant cooking pot it’d gotten stuck in, and I mentioned to my wife, probably not for the first time, “The Dremel blade spins at ten times the speed of a drill.” Without grabbing my biceps, my wife did not say, “Get over here, you big hunk.” In fact, I don’t even thing she was listening. And that’s perhaps the most interesting thing about men extenders: I don’t think women even notice them. Women just aren’t tuned into that stuff.

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Father’s Day Focus - Are Parents Interchangeable?

Introduction

It has become traditional, or more to the point inevitable, that on Father’s Day I reflect on my role as a parent. This year I was also plunged into reflection by a Culture Desk essay I read in the paper titled “Celebrating mothers who taught me how to father.” I’ve blogged before about whether fathers are necessary and what fathers are for and realized I’m not done grappling with these questions. In planning this post I reached out to my brothers, my wife, and my kids, and their feedback is incorporated in what follows.

(Above: the card one of my kids made me this year.)

The Chronicle essay

The essay in the San Francisco Chronicle is by Kevin Fisher-Paulson and describes how he learned how to be a father from three friends who are single mothers. These women, he asserts, have to be “mom, dad, coach, buddy, the works” and are thus in a great position to share their wisdom. I like the article but it left me a bit confused, because Fisher-Paulson is gay, thus his kids have two dads … so don’t they have to fill the role of mom, too? Aren’t he and his husband really learning how to father and mother from these women?

I was also a bit puzzled by Fisher-Paulson’s fairly traditional sense of what makes a father, given how nontraditional his family is. He cites a number of fathering skills the women taught their sons: barbecue, lacrosse, screen defense, how to install an outside heater. He concludes, “Some days I worry that I will not have taught my own sons how to be a father, that my boys will grow up without knowing how to change the furnace filter” but that “Deirdre, Jill and Sarah taught me that a son does not need instruction as much as he needs support.”

I came away with more questions unresolved than answered. The essay challenges—but also reiterates and thus runs the risk of reinforcing—stereotypes about which parent does what. (I don’t mean this as a criticism: challenging the reader without resolving everything is often what a good essay does.) So I’ve been pondering the matter of whether there is any consistent, demonstrable difference between the nurturing and other resources bestowed on a child by a father vs. a mother. Are parental roles interchangeable? Does the average kid get A, B, and C from Mom and X, Y, and Z from Dad, or is it totally mix and match?

Some obvious parental differences

Clearly there are fundamental biological differences I won’t ignore. To newborn babies, fathers fall into a large category (comprising about 7 billion people) of “not Mom,” meaning they’re not just useless, but in fact barely exist. My brother Bryan echoes this, describing how his wife “certainly had the upper hand initially,” as “it would be many months before the child even realized who I was and that I had anything to do with her at all, while she knew right off the bat where her milk came from.”

I don’t think this is a huge deal, though, in terms of the overall relationship between parents and kids. After all, the breast feeding generally happens before the child is capable of forming long-term memories. And while breast feeding is important, it’s not the be-all, end-all.

There are of course more minor differences. Moms are certainly more valuable in the realm of purses. As a single man, one of the things I looked to marriage for was to have access to my wife’s purse—not to put a lot of stuff in or anything, but because when I need, say, chapstick or a toothpick, there’s a chance it’ll be in there. Kids benefit from this too and in fact it’s far more likely they’ll want something—gum, loose change, cosmetics, a hairbrush—that’s in there. For all the societal changes we’ve seen, it’s almost unheard of for a man to carry a purse.

Many men, meanwhile, still know how to tie a necktie. I taught my younger daughter, in fact, when she needed a necktie for a costume. And men are still on the hook for doing the household jobs that require brute force and drudgery, as detailed here.

But seriously

Okay, I had a little fun there … just seeing if you’re still awake. Of course there are many more noteworthy differences. One, which my wife and both daughters agreed on and which I’ll concede I know myself to be true, regards physical safety. My wife is far more concerned with safeguarding our kids than I am. I’m not talking about home invasion or anything (though I keep a big Maglite next to my bed and fantasize about one day getting to use it) but about keeping the kids out of dangerous situations in general, whether it’s bad neighborhoods or risky activities.

(Speaking of home defense, I once sneaked out of the house in the wee hours of the morning, and just as I made it to the driveway the front door burst open, and there was my mom, in her nightgown, with a large frying pan in one hand and an iron skillet in the other, yelling, “Who’s out there?!” while my father stayed in bed, no doubt sleeping peacefully.)

Here are a couple of examples from my own parenting life. When our kids were very young, my wife found it tiresome taking them to the playground because she feared they’d fall off the slide or jungle gym or whatever, so she would supervise them closely which was exhausting. When I took them, I’d bring a paperback. Or there was the time I had my brother’s family over to visit and their three-year-old went straight to a giant pile of Lego my kids had out, and I asked, “Should I be worried about her choking?” In the same instant my brother replied “no” and his wife replied “yes.”

Another example of this different risk management approach: when I was coaching my daughter’s high school mountain bike team, we were all descending Mount Tam one morning and my daughter was riding more aggressively than usual. Not terribly surprisingly, she crashed. My reaction was twofold: as a father of course I was somewhat alarmed, but as a coach I was glad to see her pushing it a bit to improve her skills. (She wasn’t hurt.)

My wife contends that if the men had to carry those babies around for nine months in our wombs, we’d be a lot more vested. I think it’s also possible that, convinced as we males are of our own invincibility, we may well project that onto our kids.

Now, in terms of sports, math, home repair, and other activities traditionally associated with males, my family members all agreed that the teaching of these things simply falls to whoever is most capable. My brother Bryan described how, as a math major working in tech, he was naturally the one who taught the kids “how to employ the quadratic equation in real life scenarios.” (I hope this was a joke.) He also has the role of fixing broken things around the house, so he said “it was natural for me to show the kids how to take apart the dishwasher or zip-tie something together.” He was quick to add, “I did not discriminate when it came to these sorts of lessons, I was more than happy when the girls wanted to learn something ‘manly’ or fix something. In fact, I would often recruit them just because they were girls.”

Similarly, in my household I do the computer and IT stuff, am more helpful with math problems, and fix the bikes, and I do as much as I can to teach these things. My wife does most of the cooking and gardening, and thus the kids learn these from her. But it could easily be the other way around, in my family or any. My brother Bryan pointed out, “If our roles were reversed and [my wife] was the one running in the rat race, she may have had more practical influences on the kids (how to treat coworkers, how to get ahead of your peers, that kind of thing).”

This being said, it’s not hard to find lots of examples of fathers handling the math, home repair, and sports end of things. Could these truly be a man’s domain? It’s sometimes tempting to think so; just watch small children play and you’ll see predictable gender differences. When our family randomly came to own a toy B-52 bomber (maybe from a garage sale?) they didn’t exactly play war with it. I caught one of them tucking it under the covers of her bed and she announced, “I’m putting my little plane-y to bed.”

But really, can we call this an innate preference when society has been ramming domesticity down girls’ throats for generations, and destroying their confidence in their intellects, particularly where math is concerned? (It’s shocking how often my wife and I heard, growing up, that “girls can’t do math.”) I’m certainly seeing a lot of changes around these attitudes now. Whereas my mom was called a dyke for playing field hockey in high school, my daughters’ high school has a very robust girls’ sports program, particularly their champion girls’ wrestling and mountain biking teams. My older daughter is more science-y than I am, and she and her two best friends crushed it on the math section of the SAT. I don’t think anybody can make a credible case anymore that kids need to learn fix-it stuff, sports, and math from their dads.

A more complex suggestion

The most intriguing feedback I got on this topic was from my younger daughter. She proposed that perhaps a child learns shame from his or her father. This gave me a jolt, needless to say. “Do I make you feel ashamed?” I asked, incredulously. No, no, my daughter said, and went on to explicate the idea: she doesn’t mean it as a criticism; it’s more like the father wants to be more stoic, even to the point of denouncing shamelessness. The mother, on the other hand, may be more freely emotional, and is more likely to model tact than to confront people.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what my daughter meant—this conversation was in a loud restaurant, and we got interrupted, and I have a hard time keeping my teenagers on such a topic for long—but it’s a good jumping-off point for me. It ties into my visceral sense that there’s a traditional male behavior that does need to be modeled, now more than ever as it’s somewhat under assault, and it has to do with keeping a stiff upper lip. I’m not holding up stoicism as a major virtue; it’s more than I’m pretty fed up with this whole emo thing.

Now, I’m not an expert on the exact meaning of “emo” but I’m talking about guys who think being really modern by eschewing traditional male traits like fortitude automatically makes them better. It’s as though appearing vulnerable, and freely describing their feelings, gets them off the hook for suffering from arrested development and other versions of age-old male prickdom. I’d rather see guys bravely facing the music than begging for forgiveness because they can’t.

The singer Lana del Rey illustrates what I’m talking about. In her song “Norman fucking Rockwell” she totally rips on her “man-child” boyfriend, complaining, “Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news/ But I can’t change that and I can’t change your mood.” The fact of his writing poetry isn’t the problem; it’s that the poetry is bad, and moreover the boyfriend is too self-absorbed to realize it. She goes on, “Self-loathing poet, resident Laurel Canyon know-it-all/ You talk to the walls when the party gets bored of you.” Del Rey continues in this vein on the next song on the album, “Mariner’s Apartment Complex,” complaining that this boyfriend took her sadness (which is temporary) out of context, equating it with his own (which is perennial). But she offers him support: “You lose your way, just take my hand/ You’re lost at sea then I’ll command your boat to me again,” and concludes, somewhat surprisingly, “I’m your man.” No, this is not some gender change-up; the persona in this song is very much a woman. More to the point, I think she’s saying, “If you can’t man up, I will.” Just like the single moms in Fisher-Paulson’s essay, perhaps. If all moms were like Lana del Rey, perhaps my daughter wouldn’t equate such fiery criticism with fathers.

Does any of this even matter?

In response to my inquiry about parents’ roles, my brother Max took a step back and challenged whether there aren’t more important matters to contemplate:

The question about parental gender roles may need to be further contextualized. The question as you put it asks about the average kid. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 45% (2.8 million out of 6.1 million) pregnancies in the U.S. were unintended in 2011. Of these, 58% ended in birth. So the question isn’t whether a kid typically gets A, B, and C from mom and X, Y, and Z from dad. The average kid, if lucky, may get A from mom and Y or Z from dad, but rarely A, B, C, X, Y, and Z. The average kid has to grow up navigating a minefield of parental indifference and/or incompetence. 

I’ll add to this that more and more families don’t have two parents to begin with. According to the US Census Bureau, “Between 1960 and 2016, the percentage of children living in families with two parents decreased from 88 to 69.” So almost a third of children don’t have the luxury of wondering what resources derive from which parent. They only have one.

Max went on to say,

So the short answer is that gender roles in child rearing have much less bearing on the success of the child being raised than the child itself. It is ultimately the work of the kid that will determine success or failure. Sometimes researchers use twins to dig down into these matters, as a control group sort of tactic. … [One] example would be that of Remus and Romulus in ancient times, twins raised by wolves. Remus was eventually killed by Romulus, who of course, went on to found the city of Rome and the Roman kingdom. Although they both grew up with exactly the same advantages (although the sexes of the wolves have not been determined) one was wildly successful, while the other, poor old Remus, wound up dead … most would agree, less than successful.

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Beck’sting: Frexting for Men?

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mature themes, alcohol references, and mild strong language.

Introduction

Dang it!  Tonight is the only night I have free to write, but half my research cannot be done.  There’s something wrong with the Google.  I think their server is down.  So I’ll have to go mainly from memory when I talk about Beck’sting.

What?  You haven’t heard of Beck’sting?  Well, I’m a little hazy on its origin, but have tons of first-hand knowledge myself.  That’s right … I’ve been Beck’sting for years and didn’t even know it was a thing.

What is Beck’sting?

Beck’sting is an empowering way for men to allow their appreciation of fine beer to manifest in a way that will never come back to haunt you.  When you Beck’st a friend, his response is always positive and always confidence-boosting.  It presents you with a really non-dangerous platform to intercept or allocate affirmation and the visual essence of thirst-quenching, pure drinking satisfaction.

Okay, I cheated a little bit there.  I was trying to be expansive and touchy-feely so I could capture some of the excitement and zeitgeist-y-ness of a bunch of articles I read online about frexting.  But unlike girls sending sexy pictures of themselves to their girlfriends, Beck’sting just isn’t all that titillating, probably because it’s a guy thing.  So I borrowed some verbiage.  (You didn’t think “intercept or allocate affirmation” was mine, did you?) 

Beck’s is not one of my favorite beers, and thus not the subject of many of my Beck’sts; fortunately for me, the term applies generically to texting photos of any beer.  I’m hazy on the origin of this term, but one theory holds that Beck’s, the American beer that used to be German, “anonymously” coined the term as an Internet “guerilla marketing” thing.  The more common explanation is that the obvious term, “brexting” (brew + texting) was already taken (it means breast feeding + texting.)

By the way, when I first came across the word “frexting” I had no idea what it meant, and automatically thought to ask my teenage daughter, who is like a walking encyclopedia.  But as the question left my lips I realized with horror what it might mean, and hoped to God she’d never heard of it.  She hadn’t, so I immediately engaged her in a conversation about bird species or science or something so she’d be unable to commit the word to memory to look up later.  (I’m sure I failed but I’m not about to bring this up with her again to find out.)

My first Beck’st

Looking at photo metadata, I can say my first known Beck’st was all the way back in 2010 .  (It’s not like I’ve carefully filed these over the years, as I didn’t expect Beck’sting to become a worldwide phenomenon.)  One caveat:  I seldom text and actually sent the photo via e-mail, but with smartphones the difference between texting and e-mailing is largely semantic. Here’s that (possible) first Beck’st:

I sent it to my friend “Chuck” (I’m using a code name here because I don’t know how public he might want to be about his Beck’sting).  I hoped that he would appreciate my Beck’st’s artistic merit and construe it for what it is:  a fun and empowering way for men to strengthen their bonds while conveying the exciting idea that those who appreciate quality enjoy it responsibly.

I was of course taking a risk.  Frexting, I’ve read, is always consensual and girlfriends “care too much to ignore each other’s hot bods” and “will respond all, ‘GIRL, YOU ARE ::fire emojis::!’”  On the other hand, the frexting literature warns against traditional sexting because of the “critical male gaze” and the danger that “a boyfriend you send it to will do something vindictive with it later.”

How much damage could you do with a Beck’st?  I didn’t want to find out the hard way, but fortunately Chuck was very affirming.  When he wrote back, “Mmmmmmmmm,” I felt that the exchange had brought us closer together.  And not long after, he Beck’sted me back!

A word on –exting and the sexes

Is it really fair to say that only men Beck’st?  Well, I don’t really know because I haven’t known that many women.  But I think it’s fair to say that a woman is less likely to chug down some glorious IPA, pause for a pregnant moment (maybe with a subtle gesture that says “wait for it!”) and then belch, deep and loud and proud, and announce, “Wow, that felt great!”  I think women are less flamboyant about their enjoyment of beer, and thus less likely to Beck’st.

Meanwhile, nobody needs to bother making the case that frexting is a women-only thing.  Some websites—and it’s always women’s sites that have stories about frexting, and they all quote one another like they’re wound up in some tight journalistic braid—suggest that the reason men don’t frext is that they’re homophobic.  But these same sites are adamant that frexting isn’t sexual.  So if it’s not sexual, why are non-frexting men (i.e., men) homophobic?

There’s actually a very simple reason men don’t frext:  we just aren’t interested in our own looks or our friends’ looks. In fact, we’re not interested in any man’s looks.  Case in point:  my wife doesn’t like Daniel Craig as James Bond because, she complains, he’s not attractive enough.  Do I care?  Hell no.  He’s a great Bond because he’s a badass.  I don’t care what he looks like as long as he beats somebody down in a stairwell and drives an Aston Martin DBS really fast.

I’m not judging either sex; I’m just acknowledging what I think is a basic truth about humans:  the females got the looks.  It’s pretty common, throughout the animal kingdom, for one sex to be more flamboyantly good-looking than the other.  Consider the peacock:

You ever see a female peacock fan out her dirt-colored feathers?  Of course not.  I mean, why would she?  Same with men.  Why primp and preen?  We have nothing to work with! We’re not the fair sex!  We’re just crudely made lumps who grunt and scratch a lot, and I for one am glad I don’t have to try to be attracted to us.

And you can call me sexist, but I’m just going to say it:  it’s totally fine, and normal, for a woman to be vain, but vanity in a male I find deeply distasteful.  When I watch my wife (and lately—gasp—my teenage daughter) carefully applying makeup in front of the mirror, I’m as fine with it as when I watch my cat washing herself.  But a guy fussing in front of the mirror is as bizarre and wrong to me as if I saw a dog washing himself.  I spend as little time in front of the mirror as possible, because I’ve been looking at this same face for 46 years and I’m tired of it.  So I use the mirror only for shaving and occasionally making a bare-bones, half-assed effort to style what’s left of my hair.  So why should I expect a friend of mine to want to see a photo of this mug?  (And don’t even get me started on  my stick-thin body.  I’m fine with it, and it does a decent job for me on the bike, but nobody needs to look at it.)

Women might frext to get a friend’s honest opinion about this or that cute or sexy outfit, but in my experience, guys are pretty blasé about what they wear.  And if they see a friend getting too caught up in matters of fashion they’ll probably hassle him, as well they should.  Here’s an example.  In the mid-‘80s, when the original Oakley Factory Pilot sunglasses came out, I thought they were a bit much.

The Oakley Blades weren’t quite as gaudy, but they were also a lot of money, and I made the mistake of asking Chuck, “What do you think of the Oakley Blades?”  He parroted this back to me endlessly, all summer, openly mocking my self-consciousness.  Thirty years later I still remember all his flak, and even though he was right to mock me, it’s really reassuring when I send him a Beck’st and he texts back affirming my choice of beer, or when out of the blue he suddenly Beck’sts me, “just because.”

Okay, I was bullshitting you about the “reassuring” and “affirming” bit, just now and throughout this essay.  I just can’t resist trying to adopt (well, mock) that of-the-moment, “this is how we live” tenor of the women’s magazines as they go on and on about female-empowerment-thru-lingerie-selfies.  But Beck’sting is not about us men—it’s just about beer.  Being a guy, I can pee standing up, I make more money for the same work, and I get to wear comfortable shoes without anybody calling them “sensible” … I don’t need empowerment.  And this toxic “male gaze” the frexters keep talking about?  It’s not pointed at me!  One journo-frext-alist writes, “[The frexter] counters the male gaze by saying ‘I THINK I LOOK GOOD, AND I DON’T GIVE A SHIT IF YOU THINK I’M A NARCISSIST.’”

I don’t think the male gaze itself ever accuses women of narcissism.  In fact, the male gaze doesn’t accuse anybody of anything.  That’s like saying the male’s taste buds accuse a sandwich of not being tasty enough, or of being narcissistic. And how can we find these frexts narcissistic when they’re not even sent to us?

As for narcissism, I think men and women alike should avoid it like the plague.  Vanity is the fear that you don’t look good enough, so there’s at least humility in it.  Narcissism is self-delusion.  Nobody is that hot, except Narcissus, and look what happened to him.  (If you’re rusty on your Greek mythology, this is the guy who saw his own reflection in a pool and fell in love with himself, forgot to eat, and starved to death.)

Speaking of food, here are some pasta-themed Beck’sts:

The point of the first photo was for scale, to show Chuck the width of my hand-cut pappardelle.  The second one was Chuck stoking my envy:  that’s Café Gondolier pasta (which I don’t get any more since I moved away from Boulder), paired with a Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, one of my absolute favorite beers, which I almost can’t bear to shell out for—it’s like $12 for a 4-pack.  Chuck knows I’m cheap.

Why Beck’st at all?

Okay, so if Beck’sting isn’t self-affirming or empowering, and doesn’t bring friends closer together, why do it?

Whoa, hold on there.  I never said you should!  You must be confusing this essay with articles like “8 Reasons Why Frexting Is the Thing You and Your Friends Should Already Be Doing.”  I don’t believe that just because a trend has been identified and labeled, it should pushed on people.  Of course, some people don’t need to be pushed, because they live in fear of missing out on what everybody else is doing.  Consider the journalist who wrote, “Not having sent a frext myself, I decided it was time to see what all the buzz was about. Of all my female friends, I decided my friend Amelia would be the ideal choice.”  (How is this “automatically consensual”?  How does she know Amelia won’t be totally weirded out?  Whether she realizes it or not, this journalist is adopting the Senator Packwood ethos of “How can you know until you try?”)

That said, I do find Beck’sting fun, for a variety of reasons.  First, there’s the sheer artistry involved.  A glass of beer can look really good, based on the composition of the photo and/or the backdrop.  Check these out:

(Regarding that last photo:  no, of course I don’t smoke, and I’m not looking to learn how to roll my own cigarettes.  But I do love the original artwork on that jar of loose tobacco.  And that golden Belgian ale was as tasty as it looks.)

It’s also pretty cool, I’ll admit, how smartphones can shrink the space between us all.  When your friends are far away, it’s nice to realize they’re not completely gone.  Think of the Tom Waits song “Shoreleave,” where the Navy guy over in Hong Kong writes, in a letter home, “And I wondered how the same moon outside over this Chinatown fair could look down on Illinois and find you there.”  This same world-shrinking simultaneity sometimes involves beer, as when I Beck’sted Chuck from a little coffee shop where I was getting some writing done.

Moments after I sent this, Chuck Beck’sted back with the following photo and the message, “Dude, we’re drinking together!”

Beer can fuel nostalgia, too.  There’s a seasonal Boulder beer called Upslope that’s only available for about a month a year.  Chuck socked away a six-pack of it four months in advance of an epic mountain ride we did last year, so we could enjoy it after the ride.  His will power flagged during those months and we only got to share three of them, but that’s probably for the best.  (I meant that bit about how those who appreciate quality enjoy it responsibly.)  Eight months later he sent me the following Beck’st with the comment, “Remember this stuff?  Good freeking times!”

And then there’s the very practical matter of how to remember that great beer your pal recommended to you.  Lost in the aisles of BoozeMo, you can just pull out your phone.  Here are a few beers that Chuck either turned me on to, or that I’m still intending to try:

And here’s a seasonal ale I Beck’sted Chuck about a couple years ago.  It’s back in the stores now (though with a less groovy label; that barn owl drawing, according to a friend of mine in Bend, was modeled on a real owl that hung out around downtown Bend like a community mascot).  I think I’ll have to pick up a sixer of Jubelale and send Chuck a reminder Beck’st!

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