I have finally achieved it … male perfection. Okay, that may be a bit of an overstatement but I think I’m better than most of my bretheran… finally. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much since the Y chromosome doesn’t appear to add much of value to the species. Personally, I still can’t do any of those practical things that men are expected to do. You know, things like fix a car or repair a leaky faucet or fend off a grisly bear in the wild. But I am finally good on the one thing that makes men special to most women … I listen to them without expecting anything in return. I’m way better at that now that I am in my dotage … not caring about physical intimacy that is which, in my experience, was never particulary high on the female list of wants. This ability to eschew the usual male predatory role, to be sure, arrived late in life.

Perhaps you find this amusing but I’m serious. There is no greater burden imposed on young men, and by extension young women, than excessive testosterone. Why, you ask or probably not? Lust hits a teen male like a runaway freight train, just as soon as puberty rears its ugly head (bad pun intended). Women do not appear to be afflicted with this crippling affliction. Physical need, to the extent that they experience it at all, creeps up slowly on them, taking years if not decades to arrive.

They have no freaking idea how lucky they are. Okay, they are set upon by their own peculiar array of hormones but I have no idea what they are … other than they cloud the judgment of young females to seek out ‘bad’ boys. On that score, I have no freaking idea why they prefer losers, nor do any of my male peers. On the other hand, they do have these ‘nesting’ hormones in abundance … one kiss and they are off to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for ‘his and hers’ floral towels.

Back to the male animal before I get into even more trouble. You are going along in life as a kid about to embark on your carefree teen years, clueless yet happy, when you wake up one morning as horny as hell. It is all downhill from there, until this enervating condition thankfully passes on a number of decades down the line. On that fateful teen morn, though, you suddenly are reduced to a wimpering excuse of a human being who follows any and all female counterparts around like a hapless puppy dog, hoping against hope that one of them will take pity on you. The things you do in this state … we better not go there.

Alas, in my day, the 1950s, none of them did. They were all Catholics, or so it seemed. I think they all pledged themselves to the Virgin Mary of the Purest Corporeal Vessel or some such nonsense. Chastity and purity became their highest calling. No doubt, they would rather be dipped in a vat of boiling oil than give it up to a horny guy like me, or any horny guy for that matter. Thank God none of my buddies seemed to score. That was a kind of blessing since my ego was never strong and being left behind on the sexual battlefield would have been a crushing blow from which recovery was extremely unlikely. In any case, I recall looking ahead to a long life of celibacy or marriage or, most likely, a marriage that was celibate to all extent and purposes. None of these seemed like palatable alternatives.

It was even worse than that, if you can imagine. After you were shot down some 70 or so times, or was is 700 times, you do lose count after a while, you begin to wonder what women want. You know it is not your body, that’s for damn sure. But what is it, then? Most likely it is some abstraction that you represent … the social status that goes with snaring a guy, protection from being hit on by other male predators, a source of resources (assuming you had some which I didn’t), and other such goodies. You were merely an inconvenient path to things they really valued. Ironically enough, those of the female persuasion complained that men ONLY wanted them for their bodies. Those of the male persuasion would love to be desired JUST for their bodies … if only once. That, by the way, is the lure of mainstream pornography for most males … the illusion of females desiring sex.

If you are blessed by not having any human sensitivities, the male-female game is easy. The rules are expressed in many aphorisms … the woman needs a reason to have sex, the male just needs a place; women seek relationships and wind up liking the sex, male seek sex and wind up liking the relationship (on occasion); and the list goes on.

The point of all this, learned early on, is that men really are from Mars and women are from Venus but from planets NOT in the same solar system, nor even the same galaxy. While both appear to be members of the same species, that is a cruel trick being played by some malevalent divinity. The two genders clearly are driven by very different chemistry and by distinct internal wiring which makes communication difficult and inter-gender understanding vitutally impossible.

The core difference is this. Males are driven by a primitive drive-reduction need while females use sex in a transactional sense … exploiting male need for things they find attractive. Exploiting may be a strong word but I can’t come up with another more acceptable yet accurate. The bottom line is this … men are primitive idiots, females way more complicated. In thinking about the long term survival of the species, women are essential while men are peripheral at best, an outmoded version of something long since rendered useless.

When I was a young man, primed by excess testosterone, I figured out the game. You promised love to get sexual release. Simple rules, really. I had a guy I roomed with once. I thought he was an amiable loser, always high on something and not going anywhere in life. However, he was very successful with the females. He even used my life story one nght in a bar to score with a gorgeous blond … he used MY life! Damn it, that never worked for me.

Then again, I was handicapped by a sense of right and wrong plus tons of amorphous guilt. Damn Cahtolic upbringing! Jimmy Joe (that was his name) was not better looking than me, he was definitely not as smart or interesting as I (in my humble opinion), and nowhere near as funny. But, in the end, he knew how the game was played. Play it he did and without any reservations. I doubt anyone was fooled, not even once, on either side of the gender gap. I would look on in amazement thinking ‘no woman could possibly fall for his line of BS.’ But they did, or at least appeared to, with regularity and predictability. Amazing!

The odd thing always was, and is, I always liked females. I found them more interesting than males in many respects. Sure, it was easy to chat with guys about sports and politics and things out there. But females were better attuned to the inside things where you never went with your buddies. Talk about feelings? Are you freaking kidding? Try that and you risked getting beat up or ridiculed at least. But you could go there with women and that was nice.

I never set out to do this this consciously but, over time, I realized my closest acquaintances and work colleagues often were women, especially in later years when I had more choices. The professional connections are easy to explain. Women are better organized and focused … attributes I missed when God was handing them out. They corrected for my obvious deficiencies.

In the early years, though, my gender dance was pathetic. I would be with a female who had not immediately told me she had to wash the dog that night (again!), or who intimated that she expected her aunt to die for the 6th time and had to get ready for the sad event. It would have been kinder if she had told me outright that she would rather die alone on a desert island than spend any more time with me.

There were times when said female might even be giving out the signals by touching her hair, by long looks into my eyes, by laughing at my stupid jokes, and by touching my arm or (gasp) my leg. Suddenly, even as the illusion that I might score was laid before me, I would be seized up with a dastardly thought … I don’t want to be just another typical male. I never wanted to play the usual game, the one that superficial Jimmy Joe played so well. I didn’t want to trade emotional comfort for physical release, no matter the need on my part.

I wanted to tell the woman opposite me in that moment that we could just talk and I would listen; we could share inner secrets and I would commiserate; we might even be emotionally connected but I would never send her a sexual invoice or come to collect the usual bill where she felt obligated to ‘put out.’ That is, I would not ask for payback in the currency of physical intimacy. I would be different, if freaking frustrated! I never wanted to be the typical predatory male.

Sometimes that magic worked, sometimes it didn’t and then I wound up being oh,so typical. I hated that. Decades go by, you do get girlfriends and lovers (somehow). You even come across responsive females whose orgasms seemed more powerful than yours, a mystery that yet requires an explanation. You get married (in my case very happily). And you do grow older. But, in the end, you grow no wiser. That other species called the female remains as mysterious as ever, beyond any form of comprehension or understanding for us hopeless and hapless males.

But here is the small miracle. One day you wake up and realize your testosterone level has diminsished … by a lot. You are not even sure when this miracle happened, the process being glacial. Sure, you still check out women but by habit, not need. And they still studiously avoid any eye contact with you. Some things never change. On the other hand, you realize that you have changed, slowly and imperceptibly. You are now a qualitiatively different man without appreciating how or when the change occurred. It is only apparent in retrospect.

The difference! Well, for me, it is this. I used to struggle to be this non-predatory male, with being what women wanted in a male without asking them to pay the usual price. Now, finally, it was easy. I was no longer interested in the expected price to be paid. I was still the same person who liked to listen and share and explore things. All that was the same but without any of the inconvenient strings attached. I just wanted companionship, coupled with some occasional suggestion of minor affection … something along the lines that they knew I was alive or just in the same room.

Oh boy! Oh liberation! I am finally the perfect man.

Okay, stop laughing now. I am still not rich (just comfortable). And if a woman is looking for protection, she is better off calling 911. And if she wants something fixed, I will still hand her the phone and suggest a handyman or handywoman she might call. But I ain’t bad. And all it took was simply surviving to old age. Who knew!