Man of the House: Every man needs his cave
Men feel nothing on their face — crumbs, cream cheese, small crustaceans. We have no feeling there, due to years of shaving and getting wind-whipped while ice fishing. Or, the urban equivalent, beaten up by cocktail waitresses.
In any case, men’s faces have no functional nerve endings. Ever seen a dude eat a barbecue rib? Men apply barbecue sauce externally, as if exfoliating. Slathering food over ourselves makes us happy, in ways you can trace to the quivery, most feathery parts of the male chromosome.
Same thing with what they call “man caves.” A man cave is a place where a man can go so as not to be disturbed. My buddy Peterman has one in his new house in Pasadena. I haven’t seen it yet, but that hasn’t stopped him from bragging. Like a little Lambeau, he says. The second-most perfect place in the entire world.
Jeesh, just rub my pretty face in it, why don’t you.
I have another buddy — you can never have too many, as it increases your odds of having a good one — who put this great addition on the house, with bedrooms, a master bath and a movie theater that seats a dozen people, its snack bar and “Carrie”-red carpeting like you see in real movie houses.
Know what he’s most proud of? Beneath it all is a rudimentary little basement that is all his. Bunker-like and smelling of freshly poured concrete, it is the kind of place where Hitler died.
Down there, my buddy has his own chair. A little TV. Because there are spiders, no one else in the family wants to visit him. I think he bought the spiders at the spider store, raised them from eggs, just to be sure there would be enough.
Me, the world is my man cave, but I have a little basement for emergencies, such as snoozy Saturday afternoons when I just want to be left alone. Being left alone is almost a fetish for men and, when you consider all the other fetishes we have, perhaps our most endearing.
In his new book, the comedian and social commentator Paul Reiser does a fine bit on guys just wanting a chair of their own — one stinking place to sit in a house full of designer couches and just-the-right-lampshades. It harks to the days when men were kings. About 450 years ago.
The other day, I put a chair out in the park — lousy lawn chair, on sale at Sears. Soon, I was surrounded by people, but that was OK because turns out there was a free concert coming up that night and, obviously, I am drawn to free things of almost zero value: T-shirts, coffee mugs, energy drinks.
On this night, the people I live with brought along this new margarita machine — my Father’s Day gift, which my wife, Posh, purchased at the silent auction at the school fair. It was a nice gesture on Posh’s part, especially considering that I’d addressed her earlier that same day with “Hey, buddy....”
As in, “Hey, buddy, have you seen my sunglasses? ... Oops.”
Incidentally, the “Anything for a Buck” spring fundraiser was a huge success. Once they were able to convince the vice squad that the moms didn’t really mean anything for a buck — that there would be discretion, sort of — things went pretty smoothly and everybody had a good time, though they did lose a few of the fathers at that point.
Incidentally Part 2, the struggles and moral boundaries of a spring fundraiser will be the subject of my new musical, “Don’t Cry for Me, Pasadena,” a sexy farce with heart. Like that? That’s how we’re billing it, “a sexy farce with heart.” Reserve your seats now at Ticketmaster.
“Don’t Cry for Me, Pasadena” has yet to be written, but marketing and promotion are so vital these days that we’re thinking of just skipping the actual play itself. That’s one of the most important things I learned from the spring fair. It doesn’t matter what you sell as long as you create buzz.
You see much the same principle at work in cellphone plans and Oscar telecasts.
One purpose of this column is to help non-men understand men. It’s a hopeless undertaking — the string theory of the sexes.
Eventually, once we have fully not explained men, we will move on to fully not explaining women. Which somehow seems easier. They take care of a lot of that themselves.
In the meantime, another margarita, maestro. I feel a waltz coming on.
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