Dating Advice To Turn a Midlife Man Into a Monk
A drive in the morning drizzle ignites a raging rant on love.
The wipers clear the water from the windscreen as Willie Nelson signs Hands on the Wheel. This is dour-mood weather where the concrete merges with the fog to form differing compounds of grey, all smudged up by the falling rain.
Mood-wise, it’s a perfect setting for country-music. Setting-wise, not so much. I’m stop-starting in traffic in South London.
I have the wipers set on the slowest auto setting. The only one I need, because they adapt to the level of pitter patter, although there are three other options that make them more sensitive to each raindrop.
This.
This is my life now. Filling mindspace narrating my car’s wiper settings.
Yep. The weather is perfect.
The older I get, the more I listen to country music. Makes up a large portion of my playlist: Sturgill Simpson, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine and Willie, of course. The kids are in the car with me, my daughter, 17, seated next to me; my son, 15, in the back seat. Both their eyes are glued to their phone screens, headphones (or are they “buds”?) in their ears. They’re oblivious to Willie’s lyrical mastery:
At a time when the world
Seems to be spinning
Hopelessly out of control
There's deceivers and believers
And old in-betweeners
That seem to have no place to go
Well, it's the same old song
It's right and it's wrong
And livin' is just something I do
We arrive at the school and the kids get out, grabbing their bags with one hand without relinquishing their eyes from their phone screens held in the other hand. That’s a skill in itself, I guess.
While parked, I pick one of the dating podcasts I downloaded the previous evening and tap play. Switching the car into reverse, I pull out of the parking spot and begin the drive to the office. Two minutes into listening to the podcast the veins in my neck are pulsating and I’m shouting at the voice coming from my car speakers.
Which isn’t a good look for a woke man like me.
The problem is that we woke men are hypocrites. And just to put my “woker” (is that the correct term?) credentials out there: I’m anti-racism, pro-equal rights, anti-global warming, pro avocado sandwiches, and, and, and if I were still on Twitter (or whatever that petty Botox billionaire is calling it today) “woker” is the first insult any Trump-fawning imbecile would throw at me. A badge I would wear with pride, I hasten to add.
So I’ll take accusations of wokerism with pride. I’ll take the hypocrite accusation as well, which works like this: I’m against violence. Condoning, promoting, and celebrating kicking the shite out of people you disagree with is, to me, a thoroughly disagreeable proposition.
And now.
Get ready.
Here comes the hypocrisy.
I can go from “can’t we all just get along?” to “I’d thoroughly relish slapping that person in the face and following up with a left hook of Mike Tysonesque ferocity to his chin…and when he’s down, giving him a kick in the knackers.
And smile once done.
I’m just going to take a moment to savour this mental picture.
Aaaaah, that’s good.
Now that’s what I call hypocrisy and I would wager, I am not alone in my hypocrisy.
We all have violent desires within us. So, what was it that set me off in my car?
Rewind to yesterday evening when I went searching for recent podcasts on masculinity and came across one by a fellow called Mark Sing. According to Mark, “In today’s world, there are so many forces that make us try to feel guilty for being MEN” (capitalisation his). Lucky for us men, we have Mark Sing to fix that and fill our Y-chromosomes with pride.
So, back to wanting to slap Mark on the noggin. It took all of two minutes and nine seconds into his podcast (to be exact).
Now, I appreciate a play on words as much as the next man (with an infantile bent) so I found the references to his listeners as “brotendos”, “brotein shakes” and “Theodore Brosevelts” as mildly amusing. But then came this: he referred to something as “cool as Hell”. Really Mark? “Cool as Hell”?
It wasn’t even said with a sense of irony. Like the definition of the Dunning Kruger effect, Mark just soldiered on, oblivious to his ignorance and convinced of his brilliance.
If you’re going to use a “Hell” simile, analogy, metaphor or idiom, then it should involve heat, because, you know, Hell, by definition, is kind of roasty. Allow me to give two examples:
Hotter than Satan’s balls (can be used to describe the weather or someone attractive)
A snowball’s chance in Hell (like resolution to the Middle East conflict).
But Mark was just getting warmed up as a few seconds later, he told us that something was “cool as fuck”. Now, you perceptive ones reading this may have noticed I’ve had scant experience of fucking in recent times, two years to be exact, however, if memory serves me, the act of two bodies coming together as one is a heat-inducing activity.
There’s vigorous physical movement, an increase in heart rate, and the rubbing of bodies and parts thereon together. Yiihaa!
None of the aforementioned activities result in cooling of the human body, as far as I know.
So, just a few minutes into my lesson on modern dating I’m harbouring doubts about my new coach. Let’s not stumble at the first hurdle though, so I march on, I still have 13 minutes of my drive left.
“What’s feminine energy?” asks Mark. Then, answering his own question, “Feminine energy is being the follower, being the person who’s watching the other person in an admiring way”.
Mark’s not done yet, though, he elaborates: “Such as a person on stage singing and you’re looking up at them, with tears in your eyes and a boner in your pants. That’s being in the feminine energy. It’s following in any way whatsoever.”
What? What? What? I’m confused. Feminine energy involves getting a boner? Maybe in a Bangkok ladyboy bar it does but at the risk of stating the obvious, women don’t tend to get boners.
It’s now apparent Mark is a master of the contradiction in terms, let’s ignore his raping of the English language for a moment and just concentrate on the point he is attempting to make that “following in any way whatsoever” is an example of female energy.
To “follow” is feminine? Really? So, according to Mark’s thinking a Navy Seal following orders would be feminine?
The traffic light turns red and I press the brakes coming to a halt at the lights. I look to my left and right and check the rear-view and side mirrors. No Po-Po around, so I grab my phone and type “female Navy Seal”. Google confirms it, the answer pops up straight away, no active female Navy Seals. So these feminine men (according to Mark) will just have to generate their feminine energy without any females around.
Mark goes on to explain that feminine energy is “working for the other person”. To preempt any possible doubts and complaints from his listeners (I am forming, as you may have noticed, doubts and complaints) Mark tells us not to “hyperextend your butthole” at his strong opinions. Let me just repeat that term: “hyperextend your butthole”, it’s such a baffling term to use in this context that I can only conclude he is speaking from personal experience. Bangkok, perhaps?
I’ll admit I’m starting to lose hope with this fellow. All I’ve gathered so far from Mark is that he has a penchant for boners and buttholes (it’s 2023 Mark, feel free to step out of the closet at anytime) and the belief that if you just lead, put a woman “in her place”, so to speak, then you’ll enjoy a happy relationship.
I’ll grant him there are people who love the sound of their own voice, who have a need to constantly be in charge, requiring people to follow them, and can’t handle dissent or challenges. I believe the common term for those types is narcissist. So what Mark is offering is a dating solution for narcissists–be yourself and find a submissive partner.
My problem is this: Like most people, I’m not looking to be a cult leader. I want someone who I can talk with, who has her own ideas, her own personality. Someone whose thoughts and ideas sometimes surprise me and perhaps bring a sprinkle of excitement to my life. Likewise, I want to provide the same back. I don’t want every interaction to be a game of chess, a zero-sum transaction with a winner and a loser, I just want to be and share being with someone who wants to be with me.
I long for that reaction when I say something and it makes her laugh, not because she thinks her laugh will please me, but because that impulse to laugh comes from within her, because she enjoys it, because she can’t help it. Seeing that joy in another person is joy.
As the drizzle continues to fall in the London morning, my thoughts come back to the podcast and my ears prick up because Mark wants to share a practical example of how you should behave with a woman.
The lights turn green, I set off again and continue to listen.
Mark begins to tell an anecdote of a conversation he had with a lady about a picture of him with his family. The lady commented on the pic by telling Mark that his pants were too high. This is an American podcast, so I assume she was referring to his trousers and not his underwear. Well this meaningless quip kicks off events in a proper way for Mark. Unbeknownst to me, Mark reveals how her comment had deeper connotations than just how Mark’s pants sat on or around his hips.
Mark goes off on one, explaining to us listeners how he has long legs. Then, after telling us, at length, about the length of his legs, Mark tells us that answering at length about the length of his legs would have been the wrong thing to do.
Confused?
Me too.
Apparently, such an answer would mean he was hyperextending (here we go again) his “anal chakra” (is there such a thing?). So what does Mark suggest you do? He suggests you move the conversation to the crotch area (clearly his favourite region) and he comes up with this zinger of a reply: “Why are you staring at my crotch? Take it easy Casanova, we just met.” Oh Gaaaawd give me strength.
His point is this: turn what she says around on her.
This was apparently a “gangsta move” and with that comment, I’m done. I can’t listen anymore. All I have learned from Mark is that he has an obsession with the male anatomy, particularly the crotch and butt areas–as icing on the cake, he goes on to refer to the woman as a man (Casanova). I don’t have a degree in psychology, but I don’t think you need one to read between the lines that Mark prefers the boys and is in a state of inner conflict. Mark just can’t accept he likes the boys, so he turns his self-loathing about his homosexuality into a hatred of women. Mark just needs the good, good, lovin’ of a good, good, good man and life would, I’m confident, be more bearable for him.
Looks like I’ll have to find another guru to guide me.
I shut Mark up for good with the press of my thumb on the steering wheel and switch back to Willie Nelson.
There’s deceivers and believers
And old in-betweeners
That seem to have no place to go.
Interested to read how our protagonist got to this point? Then start here.
Heh, this was hilarious, and Mark sounds like a real idiot. Unfortunately, there's a lot of this crap around, and at times it's hard to avoid. Fight the good fight mate - someone decent who deserves you will come along eventually. Regards from Cyprus