Free Time: Rock, Sex, and Silence

It is a sad day when a Chris Rock joke proves to be providential for you as man. Not Hemmingway, not Patton, not even some move line from the 50s; instead at it turns out, Chris Rock is the only one who understands you.

I remember watching a comedy routine a few years ago by Chris Rock in which he made one of many jokes. He started by asking the audience if they knew what men wanted in life and the audience responded by shouting some indecipherable combination of profanity and sexist insults. He responded simply, “Three things…food, sex, and silence.” That is how I feel right now after girlfriend attended her first Dungeon and Dragons role playing session.

Four of my friends and I have been playing this game every week for about ten years. It isn’t that we don’t want to hang out with women; we just don’t want to hang out with them here. It’s our time to unwind, be misogynistic, and indulge in male-oriented nerddom. Sports would serve the same function if anyone else but I had any interest in them.

It isn’t really her fault. Having a woman here, especially a significant other, destroys the dynamic. It doesn’t matter which guy brings which girl, but having an audience, an outsider who doesn’t understand or engage, collapses the uninhibited atmosphere that we need to run the game properly. Without a girl around, it’s just the guys and the need to show off or to hide your nerdiness doesn’t exist. With a girl around, even a guy’s girlfriend, those urges come roaring back. All of a sudden the players don’t want to participate as much or publicly display their hard earned knowledge of the rules or Mind Raker anatomy.

Beyond ruining the game, another factor has emerged that makes it feel as though I am being nibbled and poked me to death from the inside. Having her here is just another step forward in her goal to worm her way inside every aspect of my life.

When we first started dating, she didn’t have a cell phone. At first, I thought it was odd and inconvenient. I am used to instant gratification in my communications. In the past if I want to speak to girl, I would either IM, text, or call her and then respect an answer or a return message fairly promptly. With this girlfriend, everything needed to be arranged a head of time. Let me tell you, that inconvenience was vastly outweighed by the freedom I enjoyed. Without a phone, she couldn’t text or call me several times a day like every girlfriend I have ever wanted to do and like every girlfriend my friends have ever had still does.

But serenity must end some time and eventually she bought a cell phone. From that point on, I could feel the shackles clack. At first, it was only a call or a text a day, but soon, her feminine impulses couldn’t be controlled and the dam burst. Every day would bring a flood of text messages, phone calls, and whatever else Verizon Wireless could create to torment me.
After the change in phones, she even began to invade my exercise routine. For years, the only exercise on my schedule was a 20-30 minute run every other day or so. Running is the only exercise I know of that provides me with euphoria and energy boost that makes the effort worthwhile. Best of all is how convenient running is; buy a pair of shoes and go. The time doesn’t matter; do it whenever you want. I would run at 5am if I woke up early or 8pm right before I went to the bars. Now of course, she wanted to spend more time together and so couple’s activities. But she doesn’t like to run and instead she prefers exercise classes at the gym with titles like “Sexy Bodies” or “Cat Fighting.” I refuse to do those, but after a while I did join the gym and so now we go together. She goes to the class and I run on the treadmill and workout. In truth, I like the gym a lot, but it still feels like another link on the chain around my neck and balls.

Moving in together had only compounded the problem. We wake up together, shower together, have sex together, take the subway together, have lunch together, go to the gym together, watch Hulu together, and go to sleep together. The togetherness never ends; she is the Siamese twin I never knew I had.

The closeness affects me and sometimes I act closed off. When I do, she can detect it and says, “Why won’t you let me inside?” and while in reality I mumble something and wait for the conversation to go away, I always think “It’s because you want to burrow into my chest, curl up, and live there until the end of my days.” She once even suggested that we buy “Smittens,” but I drew a line there.

The final draw for me might have been the most petty. For the course of our entire relationship, she used AOL instant messenger while I used Google Chat. That difference meant that we had never had a single online conversation a year into our relationship; emails sure, but never an instant message. It was the one place where I didn’t interact with her. But she recently signed up for Google Chat and now my day at work is plagued by messages from her. I always respond because I enjoy talking to her and she is always playful, but the problem remains. I have no space whatsoever for my own; no silence to complement the food and sex.

The thing about great stand up comedians is that they vocalize something that the entire audience knows, but never quite thought about and the comedian does it in a way that is both funny and understated. That understatement is the reason why the joke of food, sex, and silence rings true. The joke narrows down something that I always knew to be true about me in that I like to have my own personal space. I want to eat, have sex, and then be left alone to do whatever it is I do in my free time.

I think most men need that silence; that time where the rest of the world leaves them alone. Their boss at work won’t tell them what to do and they won’t have any errands to run for the house. Nothing will bother them, boss them around, or boggle them down against their. For some men, silence is working on cars and for others its Dungeons and Dragons. Any interference during that time is dangerous and can be interpreted as just another part of the outside world trying to control them.

If it is so bad, you might ask why I stay. Well the answer is simple. She is a wonderful human being and most of the time; her presence makes any bar, road trip, or walk by beach a much better experience. The second reason is also explained by the joke: it’s the sex.

But like the silence part of the joke, the sex part is more complicated as well. Chris Rock didn’t just mean a blowjob or the old in-out, in-out, he was talking about companionship. Men need sex, but they also need the companionship and support that comes with loving, caring, healthy relationships. My girlfriend provides that and so much more. With her, I feel content for the first time. The awkwardness of the past melts away.

Like the man says, all I need is food, sex, and silence.

Buddhist Multiverse

I've heard it said that, at this moment, an infinite number of universes exist, and more appear with each variable; every bump of an atom, very collision of matter, every shift in energy... every choice.

I'm fresh. The waves pour over the Mark I LCM. I look over the faces of my brothers, I can't see anxiety in their faces. We weren't programmed for that. But I feel my own, just an idea. I let my imagination wrap around it, develop it, am I thinking about my girl back home? No. I think about my father, a carpenter, he wanted me to go to college it would never have happened; the war, the time.

Normandy looms ahead, as high as beaches can loom. It comes into focus, first yellow sands, shadows hint at changes in the terrain. As the mark one moves through the water barricades of wood, steel, and barb wire materialize. I hear artillery but it hasn't hit us. Time for one last thought before the landing...I want some pizza.

We land. Gun's were firing before we landed but now the threat is real. Sergeant McCullin is yelling. I turn to look as the bullet screams through my head. I'm floating over my body and I can't see my hair... it was brown, light. I think about the MP's at my mother's door. No, That's the Pizza.

I'm fresh, The waves pour over the walls of the LCM. I know how much time I have. I don't look at my brothers. I'm looking ahead, to the beaches. There's drift wood... I'll go there first... what are those mounds.

The boats land. Everyone follows their program. I have my own. I run to the drift wood. I run to the drift wood over ten times. Sometimes straight to it. Sometimes I take a long bend in. Sometimes I run and sometimes I strafe, and some times... I crawl.

Every time my blood coats the sands of Normandy.

I'm fresh, and my legs don't work. I push the button's; I duck, I lay down, I fire my rifle into Huxley's back. I don't know this until I hear the POPs, and I look up. Shit.

I'm stuck in the groundhog's loop, and the toaster is in the tub.

I should have ordered anchovies, I'm not seeing my girl tonight. Phil keeps seeing his shadow.

The mounds... I'm an idiot, they're bunkers. I move to the drift word, I strafe, aim. I pop two rounds into the slit in the mound. Someone goes down. I duck behind the drift wood. Through my scope I can see them; in the dunes. I take down two krauts. somebody feels sour.

Pop.

I'm floating over my body again. Everything is quiet when I'm up here, I think about the girl. My girl. What would my girl do? She misses me after a day.

I go through it four more times. I'm in the dunes now. Gunfire surrounds me. Pop.

I'm Not fresh anymore. My brothers are programed, so am I. I don't want to survive, I don't want to live, I just do. I know where everyone is. My men, their men. Pop

I'm still fresh, just cocky now. I'm impatient. I run, fire, duck, fire. I move from the shore line to the dunes quick. Huxley is up ahead, others are down, some have the luck of programming. I am being programmed. With each attempt I move forward, but my life ends in a bullet. Always. How much more till the next level; the next purpose; the next challenge.

Dead again.

I'm fresh into the repeat of my life. I shoot, I kill, I am removed from the life I have and become part of a new one. I take time; behind the drift wood, behind the sandbags, inside the bunkers.

I am nothing. The carpenter who raised me, the girl I left at home. None of those things matter. Not even my rank and the I that I see through. I am something larger, and that something knows what happens next. The sublime beauty of mist sprayed into the air as waves smash against the Mark I LCM, no longer exists. It is part of the hope and fear that prevents my ascendancy.

on the beaches of Normandy I hear artillery fire. It won't hit my transport. I know this because something inside of me has been witness to the program. The enemy is programed. I do not know their movements but I know their objective. They will fire at me, at my men. If they knew existance hinged on my success they would cease fire, or they would forget the others and fire at nothing but me. My success passes their time.

nothing matters. only I. the immaterial force inside lets the world blur into a kaleidoscope of motion, solidifying only as I stare down my rifle to watch the impact point of the bullet. I have lost all sense of myself, and am given over to the internal control that tells me when to move and when to fire. When I ascend I will be fresh again; and confused. Like an infant trying to make sense of the new world that will crop up around me I will look around bewildered trying to understand what exists behind a pair of hands, I will stumble and fall and bleed and die as my enemy fires from behind trees and walls. But that is in the future. In the now I am old. Inside of me the soul is old and tells me where to go. until I reach the end of this existence.

Leif's Topic: Free time/downtime

Leif: "well I have given some thought to what the new topic should be. So to make it vague enough that everyone can contribute, the topic is: free-time/downtime.

It could be as short as something as what you prefer to do with your own downtime or something of that nature. This topic has been on my mind lately because I have been spending alot of time gaming, and i wonder if thats good or bad."