Handling the Future of the Race

One of my mates (who’s the same age as me) says he’s come to the conclusion that guys never stop wanking. It’s something they feel compelled to do when the need arises and the ideal solution to their sudden itching isn’t available.

I’m not sure how he reached this conclusion, but it’s certainly in line with my own feelings (as well as my own experience).

I was thinking about it this lunchtime when I was frying myself an egg sarnie. I suddenly got the urge for some action down there, but with the frying pan in one hand and the spatula in the other I thought, well, I’ll have to live with it.

It’s tea-time now and, as I’ll be home alone for the next 48 hours, the deed is done. A temporary calm has currently returned.

Having a wank can be a tricky subject for me to discuss as part of my work involves teaching teenagers, mainly lads, and it’s interesting to observe how they change when, as becomes pretty obvious, you recognise that their virginity has now been replaced by the recent experience of ‘the real thing’.

God knows how ghastly this performance actually was, but that’s of minor consequence; the point is, the stiffy stayed resolute right up to the sticky liquid making its appearance. The essential point is that it happened and subsequently, another illusion was shattered.

‘Having it away’ isn’t going to change a young guy from ‘boy’ to ‘man’ – far from it. What’s important though – especially for the lads who, to that point, have seen a shag as a major element within their maturity – is that Mother Nature has had her way. There is renewed hope for the species homo sapien!

It’s fascinating to me how powerful are the promptings of Mother Nature … and how instantly and deeply felt is any reference to your knob. It inclines you to become aware of instinct, and its power. The thinking of the brain and the collection of erudite knowledge which might ultimately

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lead you to a Professorship – even a Nobel Prize – are no competition for the satisfying warmth which you get from having performed a great shag.

OK, when it’s over you probably want a cigarette, drink (and the taxi fare home?), but wherever you are, the aftermath of self confidence which first lingers between your legs and then swells up into the rest of your body, including the heart, is quite incomparable to anything else.

And if you’re capable of digging deep and in touch with your power to Sense, you realise that if there is such a thing as Life having Meaning well, the fact that you’ve the power to help continue the process of Life-Giving provides an inexplicable awareness of purpose.

Forgive me if my mind is beginning to wander; I realise it’s a far cry from having a wank to perpetuating the human species.

Still, it’s nice to know that if push came to shove, the future of mankind is nestled right in your hand.

 

Football’s Suicide Secret

There was an article in a recent issue of the Times relating to the response to Clarke Carlisle’s documentary “Football’s Suicide Secret”, which was aired in August.

The article revealed that, since the programmed aired, five Premier League footballers have sought help to deal with ‘depressive or suicidal thoughts’, and around thirty professional footballers have been in contact with Carlisle – it doesn’t say the reason for their contact but I think it’s safe to assume it was due to their being affected by his programme.

In his autobiography, published recently, Carlisle also reveals the extent to which he has suffered from depression, struggled with alcohol and attempted to take his own life.

So it would seem that professional football is nearing a crisis point when it comes to mental health. And to be honest, I’m not surprised.

In the article, Carlisle gives the opinion (I think taken from his book) that this situation is due to the fact that players are unprepared to seek alternative careers once their time in the game is over. This certainly goes some way to explain the situation, as all roles in sport are a ticking time bomb as injury or simply age – the average age for retirement in football is 35 – can finish a career early in comparison to most other professions.

However, I don’t think this is the main problem. Carlisle also says that “parts of being a footballer are incredibly glamorous. The amounts of money earned at the top end of the game, the sense of success, the commercials…”, and therein, to me, lies the issue.

Successful professional footballers are dropped in to a world of stuff – the measure of a player always seems (in the media at least) to be based on how much they earn or are worth. So you’ve trained for however many years to reach the peak of your game and are told you are worth £80 million, are given a healthy £300,000 a week and yet you’re still not happy.

Well of course not. Anything which is measured in monetary terms is doomed to a reality which is bottomless.

The realisation that obtaining vast amounts of stuff is not life’s purpose must hit these guys like the Titanic. And, if we use the seven year cycle idea favoured in the What Men Do Guide, this realisation will most likely come around age 28 – when the end of their career is already looming and, as in many guys of that age, they’ve only just fully realised that they’re now an adult.

When looked at in this way, it’s no surprise that depression is a major issue in professional football. The closed nature of the game – by which I mean the lack of freedom to talk about anything that might make one seem in any way “unmanly” (whatever that means) – only exasperates the problem (although, by Carlisle’s speaking out, depression is already ahead of homosexuality).

So what’s the solution? The same

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as depression elsewhere … fuck knows.

But surely a starting point is to heap a good dollop of Reality in to the game so that, once the glitter stops pouring in, footballers aren’t put in a position where they feel their Purpose has been stripped from them.

Football is just a game. And like any game, these guys need to embrace life outside of it.

And it may also help them to realise that, while they may be a Superman on the pitch, it’s ok to be a regular Clark Kent when they’re off it.

Olly Murs – Man Alone!

In a recent interview for The Sunday Times, the pop singer Olly Murs is quoted as saying, “one thing I do struggle with is not getting enough alone-time”.

Unfortunately he doesn’t elaborate on this, so we don’t get even a hint of why he needs this. It’s intriguing because, as readers of the What Men Do Guide are aware, we’re big supporters of time alone.

One of the curses of living in this Age of Technology is that it provides so many adult toys to add to the

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number of distractions.

The result is that, even when you’ve managed to provide yourself with a couple of hours to ‘think things through’, some gadget springs to life to disturb the solitude.

And this condition is much misunderstood because, from our experience, most guys these days would consider the idea of ‘solitude’ to be a description of something negative, something to avoid if at all possible.

That ‘time alone’ solitude is much favoured by the Guide is because we believe it’s increasingly necessary in order to have the hours to learn to know oneself.

Regularly one hears constant reference to the importance of ‘communication’; indeed, ‘good communication skills’ are now highly valued as a big help towards obtaining employment. This suggests that adolescents spend so much time in the

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gives.

grip of technology that their ‘communication skills’ are greater with some form of technology than with their fellow human beings.

What adds to the interest of his observation is that Olly Murs is now aged 29.

In the Guide there are several references to the idea of Life being broken up into (roughly) 7-year periods with particular reference to the fifth period which begins around age 28. at 21 it’s possible to convince yourself you’re still a teenager but by age 28, well, who’s kidding who?

With the dreaded age 30 looming, all the elements which make you a human being – physically, mentally and sensorially come together (we reckon, lurking in the solar plexus area), clearly indicating that it’s time to perform from a new script.

By that time enough life experience has been lived – or wasted – to indicate that a new perspective is fast becoming a necessity: the question is, based on the time already gone, how well do you know yourself? How close is the ‘appearance’ you’ve been presenting to

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the world via your outer shell to the invisible reality nestled in your heart?

Does the word ‘Friend’ have any meaning for you or is your ‘little black book’ only filled with those you’ve listed to feed your short term ambitions, and the needs of your ego?

Yes; it would have been fascinating to learn the why’s and wherefores of Mr. Murs’ need for alone-time.

‘Poor Me!’ – A Curse Of The Wimp

There’s nothing more un-masculine than self-pity.

It’s a dead giveaway that a guy has lost his way,

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or at least on the brink of it, and needs reminding that to grow means to struggle. I’m writing about this because not only am I witnessing it around me more and more but it’s a creeping paralysis that’s affecting me personally more and more.

I’m over-worked, and because I put so much of my energy in the job (which I enjoy) I find that I get over-tired, then become irritable and, on a really bad day, something approaching peevish which – I’m not sure I dare to admit this – makes me feel like a female.

(Now there’s a bit of prejudice being exposed, inspired by this ‘Poor Me!’ syndrome; it slowly drains away my self respect to the point that I begin to deny to myself who and what I am.)

I become impervious to criticism even though

I’m perfectly aware it’s well meant; fear grips my nuts (I write metaphorically) as I suspect it’s as plain as a pikestaff I’m settling-for-less whereupon a subsequent (pathetic) ‘Poor Me!’ is waiting in the wings.

As a major part of my work is creative it’s relatively easy to get away with something that lacks excellence. Only the artist knows when there’s enough paint on the canvas (so to speak), so it’s easy to settle for mediocrity, seven-out-of-ten, and put the brushes away, but where’s the buzz in that, eh?

I particularly despise guys who are part of what the What Men Do Guide calls the ‘Settle for Less’ Brigade, those who only work on a level that is adequate for the task in hand rather than that at which they feel proud of their work.

There’s also a bit in the Guide that stresses the signs of decay we see everywhere – the dud light bulbs at the bus station; the unsold garments littering the floor of the department store; the inferior sandwich we hurriedly grab at lunchtime and for which we haven’t the time (or the

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energy) to go back and complain.

Conversely, it’s great when you see a guy who’s on top of his job, obviously married to quality and excellence, relishing providing his customers with the best that he can. It happens so rarely these days that, when I witness it, I find it a real turn-on.

It makes me envious, and I feel guilty, not that I’m ripping off my employer, but ripping off myself.

Ok, I realise this probably reads like a personal gripe, but it’s more than that as I have a sense that it’s spreading. A lack of self-respect is the bottom line of what’s at stake, and that’s not good.

Whatever Happened To The Heroes?

I realise that the subject of Heroes was discussed in our last blog, but Life – as it seems to have a habit of doing when an idea is in the ether – has thrown up a set of circumstances that has led me to want to cover similar ground to that which one of my co-writers wandered on last week.

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Last Monday saw the funeral of the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. A certain News channel – I say “certain” not to avoid naming names but simply because I don’t know which one it was – showed live footage of his funeral. So far, so honourable.

I know this because one of my Friends happened to be standing in line at the bank – Barclays if it makes any difference (see, I do have the Balls to name names) – at the time it was on.

However, this live – I say that again, live – footage of the funeral of “the greatest Irish poet since Yeats” (not my words) was interrupted on this particular News channel to show live footage of another ‘breaking news’ story. Cut to Gareth Bale playing kick-ups on the pitch at the Bernabéu. (That’s Real Madrid’s home stadium for those who don’t follow sportsball.)

Now I’m not here to discuss the current financial culture of the world of professional football – that has been talked about more than enough over the past couple of weeks. (Although, in passing, it might be interesting to learn that the small Youth Charity for which I work could run for around three and a half years on the same amount of money that Gareth Bale earns in a single week.)

Nor am I aiming criticism at the News channel who decided that footage of Gareth Bale playing kick-ups was more important than Seamus Heaney’s funeral. To be fair on them, I suspect that the majority of the all important 18-35 year old demographic – of which I am a card carrying member before you accuse me of being an old fart – know (and care?) far more about Gareth Bale than they do about Seamus Heaney.

But it does raise the question of ‘where are the modern heroes?’. If we look at the tale I have just told then it would suggest that, to those who control our daily dose of News at least, a twenty-four year old who kicks an inflated pig’s bladder into a net is far more deserving of our idolisation than a recently deceased former Nobel Prize for Literature winner.

I realise this sounds like an anti-football rant, and I’ll be honest and admit that it probably is. I accept the fact that football and poetry achieve similar outcomes in that they are both escapist exercises which provide entertainment and joy to many people. I’m not even trying to claim that Seamus Heaney is a hero – he certainly isn’t one of my select few of personal heroes (a list which I won’t publish here as they are just that, personal).

But I find it easier to accept that Seamus Heaney could be a hero to many as much of his poetry provided escapism during a horrible period of time for many people – the Irish ‘Troubles’. His fellow Irish writer Colm Tóibín eulogised that “In a time of burnings and bombings Heaney used poetry to offer an alternative world”. Does playing football for £15.6m a year really deserve to trump that?

Not only that, but Seamus Heaney had just died whereas Gareth Bale had merely moved jobs.

As I say, I’m not trying to label either of these men as heroes; I just thought the priorities of the media seemed skewed in this instance. But this train of thought added fuel to the flame in my mind that can’t help but think we are lacking in any recognisable heroes for the modern age.

And, more importantly, what does it mean to be a hero in 2013?

 

 

 

The Curse Of The Familiar

One of the unexpected elements we came upon whilst compiling the ‘What Men Do’ Guide was the difficulty of writing the section we’ve called ‘The Tribe of Heroes’.

This covers the area in which we try to make clear that there are ‘Heroes’ – in the sense of guys who refuse to be other than themselves – all over the world (not only in Yorkshire).

When you consider this subject alongside others we’ve covered you wouldn’t think it would be an area that was all that difficult. With some of the others we had what you might term, ‘a little local difficulty’.

With ‘Sex’ – which we headed simply ‘Sex’ in order to make the point that we didn’t think it was a subject that should treated other than seriously – the first hassle (as I recall it) was which of the three of us was to write it. With my vast experience of the subject, I was clearly the front runner of choice (although my co-writers seemed to find this claim hilarious). However, who ‘won’ the job must remain an unknown to comply with our basic ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’.

The section on being gay, which we headed ‘Different Folks, Different Strokes’ was quite tricky, as was that on mothers which we headed ‘Your Greatest Debt’ as (surprise, surprise) not one of us is a mother himself.

The basic difficulty writing ‘The Tribe of Heroes’ was that it presents a situation which requires of the reader a considerable dollop of Trust. As a guy in his late teens/early twenties, his lack if life experience represents a practical limitation on the range of guys he is likely to have met up with this far.

What becomes exposed by the lack of variety in their worldly perspective is that the prejudices familiar from their growth from childhood naturally expose themselves. All the bullshit absorbed from those who ‘have your best interests at heart’ rush to the surface as a kind of psychological defence force, aimed at protecting you from the big bad world.

‘Bad’ much

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of it is, but not all of it. But how to explain that there are guys out there – everywhere – who, like yourself, are only too anxious to support and enrich your life as well as their own.

And whilst the spread of technology has increased our basic knowledge of the wider world, for most guys this is only the surface facts of the Thinking Man. It cuts much less ice in the worlds of Feeling and Sensing. The rawness with which these exist below our human exterior rather suggest to us that most guys are still marooned within what is familiar to them and find it difficult to shrug off their fear of the unknown.

A guy doesn’t need persuading that there are ‘Heroes’ elsewhere when his excursion into the desert turns life threatening by a sudden sandstorm, whereupon a dark skinned bearded Bedouin looms out of the grainy gloom and offers him a skinful of water and the joint shelter of his camel.

Why doesn’t he inspire fear?

Or fit the image of the movies or the news?

Can there really be ‘Heroes’ outside of Yorkshire?

Men Are Sculptors

Artisans and

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Craftsmen look away now, for I am about to butcher the definitions of your Art, but please know my intentions are good… if a little ignorant.

A mold predetermines the shape, size and substance of something. Before the process of actually creating what comes out of the mold, the decisions have been made; the outcome is known.

Sculpting on the other hand is not a science. The outcome is gradually revealed through the choices of the sculptor, using his instinct, experience and vision to craft something he has in mind (if he has a plan or a subject).

Humans are a mix of both. Initially we have to be molded by our parents, “Don’t do that. Use your knife and fork. Look both ways. Put your coat on.” But then gradually, the balance shifts in favour of sculpting, as we begin to try things. Maybe the football team dad enrolled you in isn’t for you anymore, you’re more of a comic book kind of guy… maybe you chose to go vegetarian… listen to Pantera… study French not German.

There is a queue of brands and institutions ready to take over the molding process from your parents. And unlike mummy and daddy, they don’t have your best interests at heart. The adolescent anxieties over ‘fitting in’ is the plumpest cash cow in the yard and marketers will milk it dry daily.

It’s therefor vital to your authenticity as an individual and the potency of your balls that you remain a sculptor. And in order to sculpt, you need a vision, even just a vague, abstract direction. Having something to aim for helps you make the decisions now, in sculpting terms, to make the right imprints here, and the slight shaving there.

To use a cliché, imagine an astronaut. They didn’t just get popped out from a mold and

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rolled into a rocket. That person had to make decisions, years (maybe decades) in advance that would ultimately lead them to today.

If you think of yourself as a sculptor, then every decision, from what you eat, to what you do with your time this evening forms part of a bigger picture (sculpture?). No one is expecting you to have made your mind up about who you plan to become, and even if you have, it will likely change along the way. But if you don’t make the decisions, someone else will.

Bosses will happily take the malleable you and put you to work for them, girlfriends love a guy they can shape into the perfect boyfriend, and which father wouldn’t want, ‘a chip of the old block’.

Men don’t let outside forces determine who they become. They maintain the fight to control their size, shape and substance.

Is It All Over For Commitment?

I can hardly credit it, but in the very same week two of my mates have both been ditched by their girlfriends. Dare I believe they were a rotten shag, or what?

Sometimes I wonder if women these days have forgotten 1. how important they are to us, and 2. how pathetic we are at thanking them for it ….. and no thanks to the male ego for getting way out of line during the fourth 7-year cycle beginning around age 21, methinks.

Why are women so important? Forget the shagging, I reckon it’s because they help us to become what we’re capable of becoming. As the wise man pointed out, ‘a man’s reach has to exceed his grasp’, and the fact that sometimes we reach it and hold on to it is the result of having that special female alongside.

Prior to the outbreak of ‘women’s lib’ in the 1970’s, thanks to writers like Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer (with her amazing ‘The Female Eunuch’), an unwillingness to commit to a relationship – one which in all probability would lead to marriage – was perceived as a male issue. Guys newly released from the strictures of parental control were reluctant to get ‘tied down’ with what for most of them meant mortgages, monogamous sex and the subsequent ‘patter of tiny feet’.

This fear remains in the early twenties, but what’s changed is that when the fifth 7-year cycle begins around age 28, and guys begin to see life from a different perspective, they’re now not as firmly in the driving seat as in the past. We seem to have reached a stage when the male gender is ready to commit but the females are having second thoughts.

In fact for some of them – those who married early in their late teens or early twenties – they’re now looking for a divorce and a re-think of what commitment to a male is all about.

And maybe this unwillingness to commit reflects a deeper human problem; our growing inability to handle time. Perhaps the effect of ‘women’s lib’ as a source of social change has now run its course and technology and genetics are now ‘calling the shots’ on how to live.

Most people for either gender seem to bemoan the current pace of life and the impotence they feel to ‘slow it down’. But what does this complaint actually reflect? That we’re attempting to achieve too much? That we’re afraid we’re ‘missing out’ on what we suspect might be going-on on the other side of the hill? That we don’t have the time to ‘dig deep’, at least enough to find out how others really tick below the surface? Does commitment imply taking up too much of our precious time?

And if so … where on earth do we think that we’re heading?

Getting Enough

I’ve had a bout of worry that I’m not getting enough.

In what you might call a very general way, this has been in my head off and on for as long as I can remember, but it’s been a constant this past month.

That’s since the drink I had with my mate Dave, who’s really, really worried he’s not getting enough.

Conversely, Jimmy (the guy he works with) – who Dave reckons is the big “swinging dick” in their office – claims that if he has to cope with getting any more than he’s already getting he’ll have a heart attack.

Apparently when they were discussing this (that’s Dave and Jimmy) Jimmy began to laugh, presumably about coping with all that he was getting. Dave said that he began to laugh as well, at least for the first ten seconds, but this then came to a halt when he realized 1) he didn’t know what was so funny and 2) he suddenly realized that unlike Jimmy, he wasn’t getting enough. At least, he didn’t think he was.

When I asked Dave why, when, where and how he’d suddenly reached the conclusion he wasn’t getting enough, he suddenly clammed up like he didn’t want to talk about it.

I was a bit pissed off at his reaction; after all, he was the one who first brought up the subject when he told me about having a drink with a Jimmy. What had prompted their discussion about whether each of them was getting enough he didn’t explain, nor why Jimmy had started to laugh.

According to Dave, Jimmy was laughing almost uncontrollably for two or three minutes. I hadn’t realized how much this whole subject had been lurking in my mind until last week when I stopped for a drink with Phil, one of my work colleagues. As we walked into the bar we use occasionally, I was aware of a couple of guys laughing their heads off. Quick as a flash, I wondered if they laughing because they were getting more than they could handle.

However, having raised the issue two days ago with my cousin Lionel

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(who’s a doctor), I’ve come to the conclusion that whether you’re getting too little or too much isn’t a medical condition, but a male curse rooted less in your erotic itching than in your state of mind.

When I told Lionel about my current worries, all seven years at medical school could offer was “join the club.”

No Escape

There’s really no escaping the horror of discovering your first grey pubic hair.

Man, you’re getting old-er

Okay, it’s not as serious as your left ball falling off. That’s just a short term issue.

My big issue with that first faded fucker is that it brings with it a daily reminder that finding yourself in a state of rest is now only reasonable if you’re either at a point of total exhaustion or enjoying a moment of self-indulgence.

There’s a reminder in the What Men Do Guide of Willy Loman, the hero of Arthur Miller’s play, “Death of a Salesman,” who, in seeking to explain the importance of purpose as a fundamental drive in a man’s life, says “a man can’t go out the way he came in; a man has to add up to something.”

A brilliant line revealing a poignant truth, particularly depressing when you’re holding that first grey little fucker between your thumb and forefinger.

That’s why I speak of your “lost ball” as a short-term issue. You get used to it and make the other one work doubly hard.

But you don’t need me to remind you of the once-a-day scenario following the discovery that there’s another one lurking in your bush.

A new constant has entered your life and it ain’t gonna go away. It’s like the memory of that first embarrassing shag when you lost not only your underwear (hey, it happens) but also your self-respect. Well, fleetingly. In passing, it’s okay for these erudite philosophers to preach the virtues to be gained from life experience, the heightened perceptions we will ultimately enjoy from having the

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courage to expose our weaknesses, but we’re the ones left with the sweaty wake-ups, and the realization that one more day has simply “vamooshed,” seemingly without much purpose.

But you’re right-I’m being very negative about this. The daily discovery could be interpreted as yet another hairy treasure that just happened to have lost its original colour, come to remind you that time is ever fleeting-especially yours-and if you have any fancy ideas about leaving what they call these days, a “lasting legacy,” you’d better placate any tensions prompted by your nether regions and shift your ass.