MANHOOD
A Junged-out Freudian Couch Analysis
Once there was a man whose mother and father taught him that he should strive for
perfection; that he should be a 'man's man' and always do the very best he could. So he went about trying to
fulfill their life-long ambition. He earned top grades throughout his scholastic career,
that is, after his mother scolded him severely once when he was in the first grade for pulling
a little girl's ponytail and looking up the young teacher's dress. His father couldn't
understand why she would be so unreasonable with such a 'regular guy' as his kid and they fought
long and hard over this, what color the living room drapes should be and other matters of earth-shaking importance for six months and more,
but whose counting? The more the man excelled at scholastic achievement, the prouder and
prouder his mother became of her wonderful son and the more and more distant his father grew,
becoming ever harder for the unfortunate lad to please.
When the man reached the age of puberty more or less, he became somewhat confused about
the nature and purpose of sex. Unfortunately for him and the rest of society, his mother
and father, his friends, his teachers, his society's psychologists, sexual advisors, talk show
hosts, self-help gurus and other assorted mental misfits of sound-bite sophistry, didn't know
one damn bit more about human sexuality than he did---they only pretended to. His minister, who his
mother revered as an upright and Godly man, understood even less than the rest, secretly
working out his own frustrations on certain members of the boys' choir. Even more
unfortunately for this man and in turn, the rest of society, he wasn't aware of this universal
truth of human sexual ignorance, thus he endured many years of tears and frustration, trying
desperately to please everyone and become a true, "man" among men.
Adding to his already significant frustrations of puberty, he began to pay a certain particular attention to
Playboy Magazine, which somehow seemed to end up in one or the other of his friends' lunch-pails nearly
every school day. Thus, he pursued only unattainable blue-eyed blondes of certain defined
proportion, ignoring ninety-nine percent of the eagerly eligible student bodies. They also had
to be 'nice' church girls, as his mother was insistent on this, so the already paired-down field
became even more intolerably narrow. His father was too busy taking advantage of the
seventh day of rest snoring away in the family pew to take much notice and besides, he wasn't all
that thrilled about advising his son regarding matters that his father and his father's father
had failed to address likewise, to him. Like many well-meaning fathers, he just gave his
son the keys to the family car and begged him to try and bring it home in one piece---he figured
his son would discover soon enough what automobiles are mainly used for in high school.
At first, the man was frustrated by such a narrow field of choice, but he soon became
aware of the well-known universal truth that 'nice' church girls (and often their mothers as
well) aspired to alleviate his frustrations of puberty as readily, or as was generally the
case, more readily, than the young 'easy' girls that his mother so seemed to fear. After
discovering this celebrated universal reality for himself, he no longer minded the idea of
church so much, that is, as long as he could invent some excuse to slip out (with one of the
"nice" young girls) sometime before the end of the 'uncool' singing and the beginning of the
infinitely more intolerable preaching. He was careful not to stumble over his sleeping father while
attempting such---not that his father would have particularly minded if his son had missed the
same dreary sermons he himself studiously avoided---but it was just that his father was a
deacon and church folk somehow, always seem to be looking for something new to gossip about and
besides, nothing angered his father more than someone interrupting his usual Sunday
slumber and thus, forcing him to endure a consistently dreadful conscious-searing assault by the
self-righteous, hog-jowled, lard-bottomed preacher of eternal doom.
Upon completion of the mandatory twelve dreary years of tedious regulation learning, the
man obtained a scholarship for Harvard University, where he eventually graduated with honors
from a somewhat loosely associ- ated school of law. After which, he immediately set out to campaign for a seat
in Congress, which of course, only accentuates the well-known universal truth that lawyers and
politicians crawl out together somewhere from under the same slimy rock. Soon after a brief
career of unknown accomplishment and considerably less brilliance, the man was elected Speaker
of the House, wrote a best-selling book of little substance and even less perspective and was
named "Man Of The Year" by a major publication of the United States liberal press media.
Following a few years of speakering for the house, contracting for America and being
publicly castrated by Sam Donaldson, George Will and various other political pundits of somewhat
dubious philosophy and more-or-less, equally contradictory action, the now much beleaguered man
resigned in utter frustration. Wiling away a year or so playing golf and making
lucrative speeches covering much to do about nothing, he somehow managed to enhance among the party
faithful, his already established reputation of astute economic insight and political genius.
Returning to his old alma mater, Harvard University, he was appointed professor emeritus of
political malfeasance and economic astrology, where his increasingly robust frame severely
over-burdened a chair in the department of political corporate endowment of inhumanities and
injustice for all.
While professoring at Harvard and re-working out his frustrations of an earlier puberty,
the man hastily resigned one day before it could be forced upon him to do so in much utter
disgrace. Having never before actually worked for a living, he decided to try his hand
at being a truck driver, but soon tired of driving lonely big rigs down lonelier roads all day
long and half the night. So, he applied for the more interesting but lesser societal
status job of 'bobtail' city delivery driver, which was easier on him and thus, utterly failed
to please his mother and father. They just could never quite understand why their son
would be happy with a job driving smaller, less romanticized-type trucks that allowed him to
stay in one place, have a little free time in the evenings and, due to the daily physical labor
of unloading cargo which helped offset the mental stress of driving, afforded a conscience such as his
a little more restful sleep at night.
He soon however, grew weary of this mundane task as well and, concluding that truck driving in
the real world of untrained and obnoxious drivers and the economic serfdom of blue-collar
capitalism is not quite as much 'fun' as various and sundry Hollywood films portray it to be,
he decided to pursue employment in the building industry and, after nearly being crushed to
death on a 'scab' high-rise project, he signed on as a "Class-A" union construction laborer. Such
a laborer is theoretically at the bottom of the construction status scale of accomplishment, but
this man found it to be the over-all, best job in the industry he could find---it required a lot
of physical, but little mental strain and, after long days of jack-hammering, ditch digging,
concrete raking and three-quarter inch plywood shuffling, it afforded even more peaceful rest
for his troubled conscience.
One day while toiling in a profession he was at last relatively content with, the man
hurriedly bent over to pick up a pile of lumber, felt an excruciating pain in his lower back and had to be carried
off the job in a stretcher. After which, he was forced to endure a couple of months
sitting in a chair, viewing a variety of experts on Oprah and Geraldo talk about sexual and
various and sundry other dysfunction---a seemingly endless parade as it were, of social,
psychological, spiritual and self-appointed self-help gurus explaining how, if people would
only listen to their totally unique and earth-shattering insights of and their cures for, the
entire erstwhile human condition, if we would think positively and if we would try real
hard to apply their unique and specific mind-empowering formulas, we would then all be
physically and mentally well, every one would get along with each other, pollution, war and
rush-hour traffic would be nightmares of a long forgotten past and we would all together,
experience nirvana, inner-peace, world peace and Katmandu simultaneously. Why, we may grow up some day to
be a famous educator, philosopher and author of a best-selling, self-help videotape collection
promoted nationwide in a thirty-minute infomercial. Better yet, if we are young enough,
attractive enough, rich enough and immoral enough and, if we work very, very hard at getting
rid of every nuance of conscience, morality and integrity we may inadvertently possess, we
might even one day become President of the United States or even, Speaker of the House.
Since the man in our story had already reached the somewhat dubiously defined societal
pinnacle of success by having previously attained the ultimate grandiose position of congressional
chicanery, Speaker of the House, he finally decided that enough is more than enough and, from
that day forward, he determined in his heart that he would never again try and please anyone else
or listen anymore to anyone's supposedly sound advice. This man had always liked being
around people, or at least people of the young and female persuasion, so he located a pizza
parlor near a cluster of small universities and applied for a job as delivery person,
box folder, dishwasher and floor mopper-upper. He is now, not very happy in this
new-found profession of the food service servile industry, but nevertheless, he is more content than he
has ever been previously, engaged in a profession he more or less half-way enjoys some of the time and
something that his mother and father would never be proud of in a million years or more, but who's
counting?
Some people now think that this man is an utter failure in life, but this man believes in
his heart that he is probably as much of a success as any other man he has had the misfortune
to stumble across. Actually, he is kind of proud of himself in his own way, as he is the
only man he has ever met who truly understands that neither his mother or father nor the vast
assortment of educators, preachers, self-help, beyond help, far-out, tripped-out and otherwise,
way-off informational-type gurus and pretenders to the salvational throne of health and
happiness who insist on polluting our already greatly overburdened fable-inundated society,
know one damn bit more about universal truth or any other truth than he does. And,
though he would never have the courage to openly say so, he believes way down deep in his heart
that he is probably wiser than the majority, in that he now realizes how very little everybody,
including himself, actually knows about life in general and human sexuality in
particular.* He would like to believe that comprehending this little known universal truth
about our vain and self-contradicting species makes him to some extent a success in life,
but possessing such rare knowledge so far appears to have gained him nothing except a colossal
and permanent ongoing migraine headache and a totally incurable mental disease of complete,
utter and lasting depression.
There is a lesson here somewhere, for the wise and the savvy, but this man generally calls
up Jim Beam and does his best to forget it.
Assist International
Missionaries of
Charity
Please
Support: Sr. Nirmala, MC, Missionaries of Charity, 54A
Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose
Road / Calcutta 700 016, India
DEDICATED TO: Joseph Carey Merrick, also known
as "The Elephant Man", a true man among mere children and
to Mother Teresa of
Calcutta, who seems to have had more courage than
all of the men in America of her generation combined.
*FootNote: Socrates is reported to have said that he considered himself wiser than most
people because he alone it seemed, understood how very little he actually knew. It is kind of
hard to fool a man like Socrates and all of the common people all of the time, though our modern
preachers, educators and self-appointed, self-help maharishies of confusion's delusion go right on trying anyway.
Regarding self-help gurus, preachers and priests for profit and similar frauds, if they really
knew what is good and best for humanity, then they would give their excess to the poor. It
is very wise not to trust those who earn huge fortunes by providing advice and supposed cures
for life's problems, rather than working with their hands contributing like the majority---in
particular if they maintain extravagant lifestyles at the expense of those they are supposedly
helping. It is one thing to become wealthy by inventing, producing or promoting something
that everyone wants or can use, such as someone successful in business, or to become wealthy
because one is good at what one does, such as a motion picture star or professional
athlete. It is quite a different thing indeed to become wealthy by claiming to have the
'answer' to humanity's problems. Charlatans who claim to have a cure and yet, continue to
live in lavish abundance from the toil and sweat contributions of others, the wise man or woman
will seek to separate themselves from as far as the East is from the West.
If one wishes to judge the positive value of some newly proclaimed 'gospel' of whatever or
the worthiness for our contributions of an organization promoting such, one need look no farther
than the money trail. Individuals who have walked on our planet who truly promoted good
news for humanity invariably earned the same or less than the average common person; i.e., Jesus,
Schweitzer, Gandhi, Mother Teresa and similar. Other individuals, regardless of how
wealthy, who volunteer their excess, talent and/or time for various charitable causes, are to be
commended and not condemned. As the Biblical author Paul, who worked with his hands to
support himself and taught that sincere promoters of the truth should do likewise, also wrote
that the hand can not say it has no need of the foot and as Mother Teresa echoed, "you can do
some things and I can do some things", i.e., we all have a talent, a place and our chance in
life to make a positive difference. There are positive contributions that benefit we the
people of Planet Earth and there is the ever-growing cowpie tower of Babylonian ignorance---the
difference can invariably be separated by the money trail, for as a truly wise man once said,
who some claim actually did heal the sick and raise the dead, "where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also."
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