Man's Best Friend

Some people will tell you that a man's best friend is his dog.  But this sentiment could be disparaging to a man's wife, especially if she looks like a poodle.

As a man ages, he discovers that he has many friends.  Most of them are dead, which is not all-together a bad thing, as it saves him a lot of money on greens-fees and beers.  And of the friends who are still living, many have difficulty remembering his name.  His friends remind him that he is lucky to be alive and that, within the course of human events, things could have turned out worse.

The manopausal male's best friend is, of course, his wife.  He has learned this through trial and error--perhaps talking to a dog here and there, or adopting a stray chipmunk, or through his feeble attempts to talk to a red rubber ball during his psychological counseling sessions with Dr. Mengele, Jr.  Mostly, he enjoys his wife's company, especially when she is absent.  Sometimes he dreams about her.  And some of these dreams are erotic and usually involve kitchen utensils of various sizes and shapes.

The older male appreciates his wife for many reasons--not the least of which is her willingness to live with him--and as he enters manopause he counts his blessings and hugs her a lot more.

Naturally, the older woman returns these sentiments--which are usually redeemed in the form of coupons or meatloaf.  Women, of course, are here in the height of their sexuality and attractiveness even as their husbands are wilting inside their skins and can longer make a decent martini.  This dichotomy can be frustrating, especially if the man is awake, and some older women may  be tempted to go on the prowl for a younger man.  These women are often called "cougars" . . . meaning that they never trim their toenails and are also willing to pick up a dinner tab at Applebees. 

The manopausal male, however, can still keep his wife satisfied if he pays for spa treatments or is able to express his innermost emotions (how he feels about the Green Bay Packers, for example, or his frustrations with collective bargaining). An older woman will usually latch onto these emotions and fix dinner, and some women will put out once in a while if the man uses the word "love" in a proper grammatical context. 

The older male, of course, cherishes his wife's friendship.  Chances are, the wiener dog is already buried in the back yard and his wife is now his best option.  He loves her, too.  And sometimes he reminds her that she is his best friend.

 

The Dating Game

Men at mid-life no longer date.  There are reasons for this.

First, if the man is not married, his new manopausal status catapults him into the arena of "the truly desperate."  He knows he has little time to waste and so he fills out an application on e-Harmony or Match.com and finds the one woman (usually located in Slovenia or Sasquatch, Alaska) who has five of the seven compatibility features he is looking for:  the most important of these being money.  He has no desire to date a rich lady,  and so he gets married over the internet, or at the bar in Topeka where they meet for the first time (bartenders, we've been told, can perform marriage ceremonies in case of emergency and, by God, this is one!).

The married male, on the other hand, has no need to date, either.  Once the children are grown and have moved out of the house and the cat is dead, the married man and woman realize that every day--especially every evening--is a date night.  They can come and go as they please.  Eat whatever they like.  Make love on top of the washing machine when it kicks into the spin cycle.  They can even watch Conan O'Brien and fall asleep on the couch in a spooning position.  These things never happen . . . but they are possible.

Non-manopausal people, however, might not recognize these evenings as "date nights".  They are, after all, fixated on finding a baby sitter or setting aside the twenty-five minutes needed to make a quick dash to Arby's without the kids.  These non-manopausal losers must rely on heavy orchestration to plan even the feeblest attempts at "solitude" and, if they go to dinner, normally don't finish the main course and carry home most of their fillet Mignon in a doggie bag.

For the manopausal male, however, every day is a date night.  When he meets his wife after work, he usually asks, "What would you like to do tonight?"  The field is wide open--and the couple has so many choices they generally feels like they are shopping at Target.  In most instances, since the wife is too tired to fool around or eat Hamburger Helper, the male suggests that they go for a hike or pack up the kayaks.  The woman suggests they drive uptown or, perhaps, make a two-hour visit to Home Depot to look at carpet swatches.  These scenarios constitute a manopausal date.

But there are others.  Including:

Date #1
The woman comes home from a twelve-hour work day and says, "I just need to talk tonight.  I want to tell you about the horrible day I had!"  They walk to Starbucks and the male pretends to listen for four-and-a-half hours while he writes an incredible essay about Polar Bear scat.  Yes, this is a date, and one of the better ones, actually.

Date #2
The male bursts through the front door at home and announces that he has no evening meetings, no work to do, and is at the complete disposal of the woman's whims or pleasures.  She is elated at his availability and asks him to paint the trim in the downstairs bathroom.  Yes, this is a manopausal date and is an evening the woman will long remember.

As you can see, the manopausal dating experience for the married man is filled with fits of excitement and lots of heavy breathing.  That is why, after each date, the married male enjoys a cold beverage and sleeps like a baby.

 

What's In YOUR Wallet?

The older male, mid-manopause, is coming to grips with his wallet.  He discovers, for example, that he rarely carries cash.  There are reasons for this.  Chief among them:  he has little cash to carry.  Most of his cash, of course, is simply being transferred to a university campus where, subsisting on a meal plan of immense proportions, a son or daughter grazes over a smorgasbord of caviar and smoked salmon while the parents spoon cold pork'n beans out of a Costco can roughly the size of a trash compactor.  This is because the parents buy in bulk to save money, and subsist on crude roughage and lawn clippings so that they can ship even larger sums to the bursar's office.

Eventually one of the parents develops a mild case of scurvy and is forced to eat an orange (which costs money), but the memory still lingers.  Meanwhile, the man's wallet thins, and he discovers that, if he searches beneath the floor mat of the car or lifts a sofa cushion of the basement couch, he may find enough pocket change to purchase a bottle of rock gut wine and thereby ease his suffering.

Meanwhile, back in walletville, the older male discovers that, since he has been using his wallet as a personal filing cabinet for phone numbers, pin numbers, and crib notes, one of his butt cheeks is flatter than the other and he has developed a hitch in his gait.  He considers ridding himself of this leather monster in his hip pocket, but realizes that, the moment he tosses these five-year-old phone numbers and notes, he will need all of it and will have lost out on a million-dollar contact.  And so he adds more.

Eventually his wallet takes on the same shape as his body:  round in the middle and frayed at the edges.  He's lived with his wallet for decades--just like his wife--and has learned to count on it always being there . . . empty . . . when he reaches for it.  He only buys two gallons of gasoline at a time.  He eats more pork'n beans and attempts to disguise his flatulence by dousing himself each morning with his son's quart of Axe.

Naturally, the older male who is paying for a college education gets little nookie.  Women are turned on by money and he only has enough cash to get things started but never enough to finish the job.  He grows cynical and jaded.  Writes love poetry.  And eventually he occupies himself with YouTube reruns of Gomer Pyle.  

When the older male does get cash in his wallet he hangs onto it like his lost virginity.  He dreams of buying the two wieners for a dollar at Speedway and saving the rest to bribe his wife with a single red rose.  He hopes for a kiss if nothing more.  And he prays she doesn't ask him for money.     

Manopausal Medicine

Every man's medicine cabinet is littered with out-of-date prescriptions and has-been pills.  But as the older male stretches into manopause he discovers that his assortment is little more than a witness to a by-gone era.  He no longer needs Brylcreme, for example, and he wonders who did.

Gone also is the need for such illustrious wonder-working potions as the multi-vitamin . . . at his age, and with his now-limited diet, he should be able to get 100% of the recommended daily allowance from a single banana.  In addition, he no longer needs his 45-year old vial of Carter's Little Pills (what were they, and why were they so small?), his Grecian Formula (hell, he'd need a gallon to color every gray hair on his body!), and his 30-year-old tube or Preparation-H (really, when was the last time he jammed that stuff up his rear and who was the last one to use the tube? Was it Dad?).

No, the manopausal male cleans out his medicine cabinet and rids himself of his history:  decades of expired drugs that were once so potent they could turn his tongue green and make his eyeballs spin in their sockets.  Now, these vials are only toxic to look at.  The sight of them sickens him, as he realizes that some day soon he will be self-supporting the entire pharmaceutical industry through a single refill.

Eventually the older male realizes that he will no longer need a decongestant or a cough syrup--especially the 25-year-old variety that his been sitting on the shelf since the Reagan administration.  Rather, if he becomes ill, he will use his sick days and enjoy a week's vacation at home watching The Young and the Restless.  He will fix himself hot chicken soup and order Chinese.  He will cough up a lung, return to work, and tell Finkelstein in accounting that he was working from home and actually accomplished more because he didn't have to wear a paisley necktie.

Once the manopausal male has cleaned out his medicine cabinet, he can begin utilizing this space for other ends: storing flashlight batteries, stockpiling small bags of nacho chips, and decorating the second shelf with miniature sculptures created from toenail clippings and toothpaste.

Later, he will consult his doctor and ask for the drugs he really needs.  These he will buy in bulk from Costco and consume like jelly beans.

And his wife will ask him every morning:  "Have you taken your pills?"

The Age of the Superhero

We live in the age of the superhero.  And nearly every manopausal male has a favorite.  All are "men", of course.  There's Superman, Spiderman, Batman.  Each attends to fighting evil with his various assortments of gadgets or gizmos. 

The older male likes to think of himself as a type of superhero, but instead of fighting evil or crime, he's fighting the insidious onslaught of arthritis.  He's waging war against the elusive Dr. Gout.  He dreams of wearing a cape and getting the girl.

Secretly, older males wish that Hollywood and graphic artists would not depict these superheroes in tights.  He knows he would not look good in a leotard, especially chartreuse, and would forever be tugging at the fabric wedged between his butt cheeks.  Tights are not realistic.  But the older male dreams of a superhero named Oldman or Graybeard or Pharmacyman--a superhero who could embody the concerns of the older male population and represent him among the pantheon of crusaders.

The manopausal male no longer dreams of saving the world.  He has tempered his imagination and now dreams of saving money on car insurance.  If he is lucky, he can save half of his dinner steak in a doggie bag for lunch the following day.  His only strength resides in his ability to see his own weaknesses and to arrive at the conclusion that he is fortunate to still have a willing wife (Wonderwoman). 

Men of a certain age do, however, frequently fly through the air.  But now, when they land they break a hip.  Afterwards, they receive a super-bill for services rendered.

Superheroes are normally portrayed in the prime of life.  We don't know what happens to older superheroes, or where they go to die.  But the manopausal male still considers himself invincible.  He doesn't don a cape, but he can work a spatula and he keeps his arsenal of lawn equipment at hand.  He keeps his gaze ever fixated upon the skies, waiting for the signal to appear that will vault him into his costume and onto his riding mower.







 

Card Carrying Member

By the time the male species has entered manopause, his hip pocket is bulging under the extra fat of his wallet, for he is porting a preponderance of plastic cards--all designed to give value to his life and siphon gigantic sums of money from his bank account.  His wallet is loaded with cards for car insurance, health insurance, dental, gym membership, debit, and grocery.  He may also be porting gift cards, key cards, rental cards and, under certain circumstances, a stack of family photos that makes him walk like Charlie Chaplin and is leading him toward a hip replacement. 

The older man, however, enjoys carrying these cards. Whenever he opens his wallet in the grocery store and a pile of cards tumble out, he feels tough.  The sight of these cards sends an adrenaline rush through his system.  He hopes the younger females of the species will take note and swoon at the sight of his Senior Discount Card from McDonalds.  

Often, when the manopausal male is in league with other older men, he will compare notes, and ask how much they have saved by switching to Geico.  He will calculate how much a senior discount will save him on an oil change at Grease Monkey.

Naturally, there are older men who flaunt their card-carrying status, pointing out that they were just recently accepted into the American Express Club or were given Gold status at Hertz rental car.  Others attempt to trump these accomplishments by mentioning their frequent-flyer miles or by flashing the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance card that paid for their most recent colonoscopy and polyp removal.  And yes, a few older men--but these are just the scum bags--feel obligated to flash their CVS discount cards to prove that they saved $1.95 on their most recent Viagra prescription.

Most older males, however, go about their card-carrying duties with an air of humility.  They realize that a 10% discount card at Home Depot will only take them so far (maybe through a pack of 40-watt bulbs) and after that, they will have to hire help or ask their wives to fix the sink.  They don't flaunt the plastic in their wallets and, in order to save themselves from the air of disapproval, they eat off the Wendy's value menu instead of brandishing a VISA at Applebees. 

Eventually, the manopausal male will pre-plan his own funeral and pay for it by writing a bad check.  He knows it will bounce.  But it beats credit.  And the funeral director will never be able to discuss the matter with the deceased.

    

Mr. Domestic

The traditional American marriage consists of one man at rest and one woman laboring under the burden of housework.  However, as any manopausal male can attest, a woman's expectations rise on the sharp curve of ageing, and once the nest is emptied of children, a man can expect to shoulder far more of the domestic pursuits.  Essentially he will be doing everything around the house in exchange for his wife's salary and the promise of a yearly sexual rendezvous, which usually lasts about three minutes.

The older male becomes adept at cooking, cleaning, scouring, mopping, scrubbing, stacking, shining and vacuuming.  (He does not, however, under any circumstances, wash windows or do laundry.  His wife knows he can wear a single thread of underwear for weeks on end and this will pressure her to do a load.)

As time passes in the empty nest, the manopausal male also begins to clip coupons and create shopping lists.  He watches for meat specials and buys in bulk.  He inspects expiration dates.  And then one day his wife comes home, opens the freezer, and discovers that he has stuffed it with 250 Swanson's Low-Calorie Meatloaf dinners because these were "on special."

It takes four months to eat through this inventory, but the manopausal male doesn't mind.  He enjoys meatloaf and can eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  His wife, on the other hand, craves variety.  She not only enjoys variety in food, but craves a broad array of scents.  So he purchases a Yankee candle (Lavender).

This is when the manopausal male realizes that he has come full-circle.  He is concerned with fresh scents around the house, and can no longer tolerate the odors of kid vomit, fermented teenage T-shirts, or dirty diapers.  He purchases a two-gallon caraf of Old Spice.

In time, he comes to see himself as a Domestic Expert.  He begins to give his wife advice on proper dishwashing technique and he throws a tantrum if she leaves a bowl of cereal on the dining room table.  

Eventually, as the man and woman age, their eyesight becomes so dim they no longer see the dust balls on the floor and they begin to operate under the delusion that they are living with an attractive spouse.  This period is known as "the golden years", and the man can't wait to get there so he can hire a young maid to mop the kitchen floor.