by N. K. Peske
Chinese proverb
How true. And what a perfect formula for a happy life, if only we can find the spiritual serenity to put down our pens, our fists, our memos, and our cellular phones and run like hell to the nearest corner bar.
What has ever been accomplished through competition? Ulcers, high blood pressure, rampant anxiety, urban blight. Are these the legacies we wish to leave to the future? Would we rather say to our grandchildren, “Yes, I stayed, I fought, I worked my whole life in order to retire and live on a fixed income that won’t even let me buy the brand of toilet paper with the baby oil on it”? Or would we rather say, “No, I refused, I laid down on the couch, I turned on the television, and now I live on the same fixed income, but I don’t need the brand of toilet paper with the baby oil on it because I avoided the stress and don’t have to contend with irritated-bowel syndrome”?
Brave men take naps where workaholics fear to tread.
BEAUTY
The most beautiful subjects? The simplest, and the least clad.
Anatole France
How long has it been since we have allowed ourselves to rejoice in a beautiful woman? How long has it been since we have allowed ourselves to tip back our head, to break the crisp morning air with a heartfelt wolf whistle, to follow our fancy, trotting just beside that gorgeous, big-haired brunette headed in the opposite direction of our office? Be honest with yourself. How long has it really been? Two, maybe three days? This is a good indication that your priorities are out of order.
When we live and work in cities, or even when we don’t, there are endless opportunities to appreciate the gifts Mother Nature has bestowed upon us. There are tall gifts and short gifts, blonde gifts and redheaded gifts. There are gifts that are built like brick shit houses. We must remember where our priorities truly lie. We must learn to look away from that computer screen and take in the miracles around us.
If we want to appreciate beauty more, we are going to have to work less.
I long for the awareness to say, “Oh, what a glorious piece of ass.”
FINANCIAL SECURITY
I spend money on, what—snakes, guitars, and cars.
Slash
It’s okay to have money. It’s best to have a lot of it if possible. In fact, no matter how much we have, it’s never enough. Money, of course, is simply an abstract concept, but it can change into anything we desire: Porsches, imported Scotch, or state-of-the-art electronic equipment. Most important, though, money can buy leisure. Money means you can pay somebody else to shovel your walk, fix your car, paint your apartment, raise your kids, or even occupy your wife for an afternoon if there’s a good football game on. Just tell her to go shopping. Women love that.
Of course, earning money is another matter. Actually working for the stuff can turn into a dangerous and frantic need to labor, accumulate, and hoard. A man may deny himself and his conscience in a lifelong, heedless pursuit of hollow capital gain, so it you can, arrange to inherit a fortune or, if you cannot, marry one.
Financial security is okay as long as I don’t have to work for it.
SERIOUSNESS/
RESPONSIBILITY/PRIORITIES
I never go jogging, it makes me spill my martini.
George Burns
Straighten that tie. Haul that ass. Get that job, because it’s been six years since you earned a decent living. How many of these tapes play over and over again in our minds?
When we hear the negative inner voices or, more often, the negative outer ones nagging at us to get our act together, to grow up, to get serious, we can become tempted to chuck our carefully cultivated patterns of avoidance and become just like everybody else, productive and miserable.
Stop! Stop it right now! Smell those roses. Breathe in that fresh country air. Breathe in carbon monoxide fumes if you have to. Anything’s better than becoming an activity addict.
There are only twenty-four hours in each day, and you’ve already spent half of them asleep. Do you want to spend the other half in a mind-deadening occupation? If you died tomorrow, would you regret that promotion you didn’t get because you called in sick forty-seven times in six months, or would you regret that you never hit the road on that Harley you’ve always dreamed of, with that leggy blonde out of your wildest bondage fantasies clinging to your leather fringe?
Which would you rather have for lunch, a hot dog or a hot hog? Set your priorities and stick to them. It’s later than you think.
RISK TAKING
I’m a Sagittarian … half man, half horse, with a license to shit in the streets.
Keith Richards
Safety, boredom, monogamy. Sometimes I think they’re all one and the same. Crazy thinking tells us that if we take risks, we will get caught, but that’s our disease talking.
We can take risks. We can flirt with disaster, with danger, with the babe in Purchasing. We can ride that untamed mechanical stallion at Cow Chip Charlie’s. We don’t fear reprisal. The phone is broken at Cow Chip’s, so how can she expect us to call home?
If we weren’t meant to drive any faster than 55 MPH, then how come they make Mustangs that can hit 85 in 40.4 seconds on a straightaway? Besides, the cops are mostly in Chevys, so they can’t catch you, and if they can’t catch you, how are they going to give you a ticket?
We can dance with the devil. We can dance with Linda and Evelyn and Suzanne. We can live like outlaws, at least until last call at Cow Chip’s.
I have courage, I have conviction, I have a damn good lawyer.
IN TOUCH/AWARENESS/
LIVING IN THE MOMENT
Hey, Rog, what’s happening?
Rerun
What’s happening indeed? What’s the scoop, the skivvy, the lowdown? Who’s in, who’s out, who has been benched for the season for having pine tar on his glove? When is Elway going to win a Super Bowl? Is Bud Dry really drier? How many Bon Jovi fans really did keep the faith?
Caught up in our dis-ease, we forget that there’s a world going on out there while we’re at work. Each day for eight hours plus, we’re out of the loop. We don’t know what’s happening. We don’t know who was on Arsenio last night. What’s with Darryl Hannah and John-John? When did they take all the music videos off MTV? When did they start putting headlights on sneakers?
Let’s face it, the world is a rapidly changing and complicated mosaic of events and personalities. It’s a full-time job just keeping up with current events. Who has time to earn a living?
I’d rather be in the swing than in a sling.
REPENTANCE/WISDOM
To repent nothing is the beginning of wisdom.
Ludwig Borne
Wouldn’t it be boring if our lives were completely predictable? How tiresome to resolve each and every crisis right when it happens. Life’s little surprises can be enlivening affirmations of existence.
Yet how easy it is to become resentful when old skeletons we have long ago shut in a closet and forgotten about suddenly resurface, rattling ancient bones. How unpleasant it can become when events that happened at a panty raid on a sorority house after twelve tequilas when we were twenty-seven suddenly resurface when we are forty, signaling us that they need to be worked through or, at the very least, compensated monetarily.
At moments of crisis like this I ask myself, Can I really believe my inner processes were responsible? I mean, after all, how could she have recognized me with a pair of panties over my head?
There is something within me that knows more than I do. Hopefully, it won’t tell anyone else.
CONTROL/ATTITUDE
To be crazy is not necessarily to writhe in snake pits or converse with imaginary gods. It can sometimes be not knowing what to do in the morning.
Christopher Lehman-Haupt
Slowly but surely we are recovering. We are learning to live one day at a time, to not expect too much of ourselves, to take life easy, to smell the dandelions. But sometimes, come nine-fifteen on a traffic-choked freeway, those old panic patterns set in.
I s
hould’ve gotten up by 8:30 like I planned. It takes longer than twelve minutes to go twelve miles at rush hour. I should’ve finished writing that presentation I have to give this morning. Do I have the papers I need for the meeting? Did I leave them in that hotel room? What was her name again? She was over eighteen, wasn’t she? Why won’t this traffic move, for God’s sake?
It’s probably a bus. It’s always a bus. There should be mandatory sentences for drivers who wreck their buses. They should get the chair for causing this kind of mayhem when people are trying to get to work on time. But they don’t, they get a coffee break. The guy’s probably standing there, having his coffee and doughnut. He doesn’t have to get to work. He’s at work. He’s getting paid to stand there with his coffee and his Boston cream. He’s laughing at me. He’s dunking his doughnut and laughing at me.
If I cannot control the world, how can they expect me to get to work on time?
EXPECTATIONS/FAILURES
There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success.
Max Beerbohm
When we experience failure, this is usually a good indication that our goals were too high. Lower your expectations, preferably beneath what you know to be your level of achievement, and success is virtually guaranteed.
The fact is the world is a cutthroat, coldhearted place where nice guys usually finish last, so why plan on finishing at all? Why not run half the race, quit before you’re winded, and join the babes in the stands watching the other schmucks limp through the finish line? When the race is over, all those babes are gonna be looking for some attention, attention that the guys who finished the race aren’t going to be able to give them because they’re too tuckered out from all that senseless race running.
Okay, so the egghead back in school who always ruined the grade curve, that jerk in Finance who always works until eight o’clock at night, and the brownnoser who sucks up to the boss instead of throwing bar dice with us real men is gonna run a better race come eight A.M. But what are they going to get for their efforts, ultimately? Bad knees and fallen arches.
I’d rather do without the gain. I have a low threshold for pain, and I’m kind of fond of my arches.
DESPAIR/HOPELESSNESS
Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.
Jimmy Carter
Do you remember the day you hit bottom? It was raining, so you pulled out your umbrella, the cabana-size one with the fancy logo that you went to such pains to pinch from the VP of Finance at last year’s Christmas party. And guess what? It leaked. All that trouble for a leaky umbrella.
That was the moment you realized that all your hard work and sacrifice would ultimately get you nowhere. The depths of despair were so low that you realized there was nowhere to go but up, and since you knew you weren’t going there, you suddenly realized that there was nowhere to go at all.
That’s when the sun came out. The clouds lifted, and the sky grew bright and blue. You pulled out the lawn chair of life, the suntan lotion of hope, cranked up the boom box of self-esteem, and basked in the sunshine of self-love. Having nowhere else to go, you began to live in the process. You accepted your powerlessness and forgave yourself for working all those years. You let despair dissipate into the stratosphere and bagged some serious rays.
If the way to the top is uphill, I’ll set up camp down here at the bottom.
UNIQUENESS/FEELING SPECIAL
If there is such a thing as genius—which is what … what the fuck is it?—I am one, and if there isn’t, I don’t care.
John Lennon
Am I normal? Am I crazy? Am I an overlooked genius who by some stroke of terrible luck got stuck with this job, this apartment, this hairline? What hidden wonders lie beneath my hair plugs?
Perhaps in a former life I was a great warrior, a dragon slayer, a pharaoh, or a lusty priest.
Perhaps in this life I am actually a slayer of hearts, even though nobody knows it yet. Maybe I am meant to be pursued by Kathy Ireland, Naomi Campbell, and Cindy Crawford all at once. It’s only that they’ve never happened by the Starlight Lanes in Cincinnati on a Friday night and seen me in action.
Out of five billion human beings on this planet, there is only one me, perhaps because the world isn’t big enough for two. My insights and opinions are worth as much as the next man’s, probably even more. I could write a novel or not. I could host my own successful television talk show. Who knows what awesome destiny I am meant to fulfill.
I’m special just because I’m me. My mom said so.
MATURITY/SOPHISTICATION
I’m extremely careful. I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.
Keith Richards
Face it, one man’s sushi is another man’s fish bait. So you’d much rather go have an egg in the skillet at the Short Stop than chateaubriand at Laffite’s. So you’d rather watch football than have sex with your wife. So she insists you look stupid in leather fringe. She’s not exactly Sharon Stone, either.
How often we are told that we’re acting foolish, immature, or boorish because we don’t fit someone else’s narrow-minded definition of sophistication or maturity? But this is because we’re rebels, unappreciated trailblazers who do not fear the disapproval of the cultural elite or the culturally bankrupt.
We know there’s nothing worth watching on PBS. We know it doesn’t matter what we eat or how we eat it; it all winds up in the same place eventually. Well, more or less. And hey, Road Runner is still the funniest damn thing on TV and we’re not afraid to admit it.
If my inner child says it’s cool, it’s cool. End of discussion.
HOSTING/BUSYNESS
Every man likes the smell of his own farts.
Icelandic proverb
Whenever I have visitors, I find myself so busy playing the good host that I forget to enjoy their company. I forget that they came over to see me, not to sit on a chair or drink beer out of a glass. This is unfortunate, because as I have neither furniture nor drinking glasses, sometimes I can get to feeling pretty bad about my hospitality.
I’ve got to remember that being close to somebody means letting them feel right at home. That’s why I’ve started to allow Mom to stop by and clean the oven, as long as she closes the kitchen door while she’s going it, because those fumes can be carcinogenic and cause birth defects in future generations. Mom’s already had all her kids, but she ought to be more considerate about my reproductive capabilities. After all, I’m still a young man.
I can hear her murmuring to herself contentedly, and when she emerges, flushed with enthusiasm, I know she’s pleased that I’ve given her the chance to express her love for me and to be at home in my world.
Next month, maybe I’ll give her a big kick and rent a carpet steam cleaner. I’ll probably have to get a hotel room for myself that weekend, though. Those things are known to cause tumors in lab rats.
BALANCE/RESPONSIBILITIES
I have a tendency to get really drunk and then I get to the hotel and I’ll pick the first chick that I can get…. You’d be surprised at some of the chicks I’ve picked up…. What you do is you go up to the room and just drink till they look good.
Slash
Okay, okay, so I screwed up. It’s not like I meant to call her Anne instead of Shirley. It just slipped out. And it’s not like I intentionally forgot to bring a condom. So I forgot to mention that I’m married. It’s an understandable omission, given the heat of the moment.
What can I say? I’m a whimsical, impetuous kind of a guy. I’m fun loving and free. I’m a live wire.
So occasionally I slip up on the minor details. I forget to cross my t’s and dot my i’s. I miss a few deadlines and cut a few corners when it comes to annoying details like health, hygiene, income taxes, and federal regulations governing the use of controlled substances. I’m worth it.
I’d rather be fun than done.
TRAVEL
A good traveler is one who does n
ot know where he is going.
Lin Yutang
What a thrill it is when the world stretches before us like an open highway! What a sensation to go where no man has gone before, or at least never when he was sober.
Men are born explorers. Women sometimes think that they are explorers, too, but it is best to discourage them from subscribing to this theory because they may get ideas about coming along and spoiling the fun.
Our explorations take many forms. We may take a road trip across town to the new go-go joint on the county line. We may test the limits of our boss’s patience or the grace period on our auto insurance.
Whatever the territory, we Men Who Do Next to Nothing must not shrink from boldly probing into unknown nooks and crannies.
If Columbus had listened to his wife and gotten a real job, he never would have discovered America.
BEAUTY
When I’m in the studio and I’m creating beauty, I’m six foot nine and look like Cary Grant. And then I see that reduced to this nebbishy little guy with a double chin.
Billy Joel
