In the past, I’ve made jokes about myself.   About my lack of “masculine” interests.  I don’t watch football or hockey or NASCAR. I enjoy Broadway musicals and ABBA. And I love chatting with the mommybloggers about their bra-shopping.
But now I realize it was all an act, my true nature being hidden out of fear. As a co-dependent personality, I take on the traits of whoever I live with at the time. So, when I share a space with a girlfriend, a female roommate, Sophia, or my mother, my male inner soul becomes feminized. The pheromones of the female are such a powerful and hypnotic force that they domesticate my animal instincts, like the aliens do in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
My mother has now been in Florida for two days. I have not spoken with Sophia in two days. I am left by myself, the way God intended when he created Adam. I have returned back to my true nature, and my apartment in Flushing is my personal Garden of Eden. Yes, I have become a Man. For years, because of the negative influence of the so-called “weaker sex” I lost what the Chinese call the “ch’i,” the natural energy of the Universe.  I have returned to what the 18th Century French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, called natural man — a savage man, “living dispersed among the animals.” To Rousseau, natural man is more or less like any other animal, where “self-preservation being his chief and almost sole concern” and “the only goods he recognizes in the universe are food, a female, and sleep…”
I have become that man. I eat Chinese food from the carton, I sleep ten hours a day, and I think about f**king.
In the two days since my mother has left, the once spotless apartment is a mess. I have not made the bed or done the dishes. Just like a real man. No more watching “All My Children.” On Christmas, I watched the FULL James Bond marathon, dreaming of my own fancy watches, fast cars, and Pussy Galore. I have completely stopped wearing clothes in the house. It saves me from having to do a laundry. I like it. I am like a wild boar roaming the jungle/two bedroom apartment, searching for his next prey. Whenever I pass the large bedroom mirror, I stop and admire how hairy I have become, like King Kong. I have stopped shaving and showering. My only concession to vanity is flossing my teeth and trimming my public hair so my penis looks more prominent when I pose in the mirror. It is looking good. Life is good.
Leah of Daily Piglet clearly wants to sleep with me, which is not surprising.  Who doesn’t?  Why else would she send me a tin of Christmas cookies, with each cookie delicately wrapped in fine paper. I admire the feminine touch of the gesture, because I would never do anything so nice. I ripped open the box, grabbed seven cookies, and wolfed them down for dinner. I’m not going to thank Leah for the cookies. I’m figuring that the real pleasure was all hers.
After devouring these tasty cookies, I wanted some ice cold milk. I took the container from the fridge and was about to pour the liquid into a glass, when I was struck by the flower design on the glass set that my mother recently bought at Pottery Barn during their Holiday sale.  I stopped in my tracks because I was falling from the manly wagon. What guy drinks milk from flower-decorated drinking glasses?
I immediately did what I’ve seen in countless unfunny movies and TV shows — I drank directly from the carton, letting some of the non-fat milk dribble down onto my hairy chest, like the blood of a gazelle as the lion, the King of the Jungle, feasts on the raw flesh of his recent kill.
Now it was time to leave the house, to go forth into the world on my own terms, and to do something dangerous and reckless, as men are adrenaline junkies wanting to push their bodies and minds to the next level of pain and competition. But what insanely crazy activity could I do, something that would make a squeamish female like my mother or Sophia say, “Why the hell would you want to do that?”
I found it. I would sail around Manhattan in the freezing December cold when most mortals just want to stay inside like weak hibernating bears, watching the Yule Log on TV
(I should add that I didn’t go by myself, or do any of the actual sailing. And you could sit INSIDE the boat if you wanted to and drink hot cocoa and sing Christmas carols. )
But I would have none of that pansy stuff. I ordered a whiskey and stood outside, enjoying the icicles forming in my nostrils, like in the sea-faring tales of yore.  I would have even stood outside naked, but there was a family onboard visiting from the Ukraine and didn’t want to give them the wrong impression of New Yorkers. Or start an international competition with the father, who was way more hairier than me, and the type of guy who I bet would SWIM in the water in December.
 
