Nolo Contendere

There is a geno-suicidal tragedy going on, in the wealthy and productive nations that might be called “the First World.” It’s an elementary problem – we aren’t bringing forth enough children to replace our numbers. This is especially true of the “best and brightest” – the highly-educated ones, the ambitious ones, the ones you could say are contributing the most to Society (in terms of their career-value to the Future).

The most-praised, the most-admired, the most-privileged of our Society … if ambition and “smarts” were heritable, their children could be the “best and brightest” in their own turn. But, instead, their children won’t even be born – because here is an even greater scarcity of men who are better-educated, higher-status, and “desirable” enough to marry. And those men who DO “pass the checklist” – i.e. they’re tall, attractive, wealthy and well-educated – are interested in younger, prettier women who are less ambitious and more pleasant. And the men who are less-educated, less-privileged, lower-status – but have the disposition to be loving husbands and devoted fathers? They are beneath notice; they carry out their jobs, their duties, their contributions to Society like colorless grey ciphers that aren’t even seen to exist.

And, evidently, it’s all our fault that we aren’t even seen to exist. The women around us see us as infra dignitatem, and they blame us for it. Well, all I can say is that I will not contest the accusation. And that this fault-finding comes too late in my life for me to even care – or, alternatively, that it comes at such a time in my life that I am not disposed to surrender the rest of my life to the indentured servitude of “married life” and a very-possibly-fraudulent assignation of “fatherhood.” (As in, I could give the rest of my life, plus my fortune and my sacred honor, raising the children of another man – or other men.)

What is my “crime against fecundity,” for which I enter my assertion of  “nolo contendere“? Simple: I didn’t get married and don the Golden Yoke of Husband-hood when I was of a suitable age to do so. And I was “conventional” enough that I didn’t get any young woman pregnant “out of wedlock”. I felt honor-bound NOT to do so, and I took the best precautions a man could take (well, the second-best, if you say the “best” is voluntary sterilization i.e. vasectomy) to prevent it. As far as I know, I was successful – meaning I have not, to date, received a Father’s Day card signed “Guess Who!”

This “crime” was aggravated by the fact that I didn’t work my ass off to climb the ladder of fortune and fame. I did “make myself a name,” in an incredibly-tiny niche … but I concentrated on taking care of the mother that raised me, rather than preparing to raise a family of my own.

So, now, there are people – some might hold themselves as “my kin” – who see me as guilty of self-centered refusal to Man Up … decades ago, when I was “eligible” to raise a family. I didn’t have a college degree then, either … I don’t have one now. But somehow I parlayed the knowledge I did develop into a final career of teaching college-grads how to do a necessary job, about which I’d literally “written the book.” A triumph of knowledge over “credentials”.

But it didn’t get me married-off, did it? It didn’t get me to sire children and raise them to be good citizens in their own time, did it?

And now … I regard “now” as “too late.” Way too late.

There is an “adoptive family” in my life, where once there was a family of shared bloodlines. I have one “real’ relative in my life, one last relative whose life is well-and-thoroughly enmeshed with my own, and she is 91 years old … and dementia has set in, unmistakably. There is one cousin of my age who has acknowledged contact with me – and all I can think is “What the hell do I have to offer Becky, as a relative; what earthly good would I bring to her life, that she’s evaded for the last thirty-plus years?”

I would like to believe that I would have been a good partner for some woman of my age, and a good father for her children. Those children might have grown up knowing “Aunt Becky” and “Uncle Johnnie,” and Becky’s children as their cousins. It’s way too late now; I’m almost sixty, and a woman of my age would probably be past menopause. There will be no eggs fertilized from my testicles.

If you say I’m “guilty” of not being-fruitful-and-multiplying, all I can say is “Nolo contendere” – I will not contest your accusation, because it doesn’t matter (especially to you!) why I didn’t get married and give my everything to some woman and, incidentally (and maybe!) to her children.

I’d rather drink myself to death.

______________________________

Why women lose the dating game (Sydney Morning Herald, 21 Apr 2012) is the biggest motive for this article.

Aussie ‘Professional Women Left Single – Can’t Understand Why  (MGTOW Forums, 21 Apr 2012) cued me in to the Sydney Morning Herald article.

The plow horse and the princess (A Voice For Men, 19 Apr 2012) is a metaphorical exposition of the situation, and a very suitable fairy-tale for any child who you would like to raise in a more male-friendly fashion!

I’ve got a couple more AVfM articles to tout … Mounting The Throne Of Peter, What We Stand For, and VAWA And The War On Men – this is stuff that really needs attention.

And there’s this one, a video from SaveTheMen – The War On Women – that frankly dismisses the concept of that “war” by pointing out what WAR really is. Guess what? WAR means weapons of mass destruction, death dealt out wholesale, artillery and iron bombs and explosives and REAL inhumanity. The pallid “disrespect” that women and their manginatic apologists describe, are no more than “disagreements” compared to the wholesale real-death, real-evisceration, hot-lead slaughter that conscripted men face in the trenches and the IED-strewn killing fields of WAR.  Ladies, how dare you compare your minor discomfiture with the guy who’s left staring at his own bowels strung on a fence of concertina wire?!!

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T Minus …

The phrase “ready to launch,” when I’m in a day-dreamy mood, can slip me back to my childhood – especially to February 20, 1962, when Mrs. Horton trundled a television to the front of the classroom and we all watched in a hush while Mission Control counted down the minutes, then the seconds, for a Project Mercury launch! “Three … two … one … ignition … LIFTOFF!” And the bright fire splashed out from the base of that gleaming Atlas rocket, with the little black “plug” on the top that bore John Glenn up into the USA’s first manned orbital space flight. Even if we were trailing the Russians – my God, those were exciting times!

But the term “launch” has long referred, as well, to the prosaic task of putting a boat into the water (or back into the water). And tomorrow morning, my Bristol 29.9 sloop “Halcyon” will be lifted off its winter perch-poles, where she has sat “on the hard” since November, and trundled over to the lift-well where she will be lowered gently into the Chesapeake Bay.  Then, if all goes well, I will start her little diesel and putt-putt her over to my slip. Maybe I should call it a “Project Mucky” launch; because, in her own way, Halcyon is my own personal “space capsule,” for a voyage that will carry me beyond my own horizons.

I believe I have a cogent argument for regarding the single-handed sailboat as a progenitor of that Project Mercury space-capsule. The first “solo orbit” of Planet Earth took place in the 1890s, when a self-proclaimed Yankee, Joshua Slocum, “tied the knot in his wake” and completed the first solo voyage around the world. It took him years to circle the globe, something that John Glenn, and others after, managed to do in ninety minutes; but Slocum relied on himself, while every single person who has been lofted into Earth orbit managed it only through the efforts of an immense team and a tremendous, dedicated industry of high technology. I would be beyond thrilled if I could follow Gagarin and Glenn into orbit; maybe, if I’d gotten one of the three $210-million winning tickets in the Powerball, I might have spent the $10 million that Baikonur charges for a space-tourist trip out to the ISS. (And maybe they would have said I wasn’t fit enough to go into orbit.)

But I think I might be able to follow Joshua Slocum, or a couple thousand other adventurous souls, and sail around the world.

Halcyon is also my “escape capsule,” a little floating refuge where I can be free from the cares of the shore. Whether I go out for a day, or overnight, or longer, it’s just me and the boat and the wind and the waves. Halcyon is not a large boat – her inside space is something between a small efficiency apartment and a large walk-in closet – but she has, in miniature, all the things that make a house a home, except for a fixed address.  (Aside from the “fixed address” of my dock.) Plus, of course, equipment you wouldn’t find in your house, such as water tanks and a “holding” (septic) tank, a diesel engine and its fuel, sails and sail-handling gear, and an inflatable “rubber ducky” dinghy. I’ve spent several thousand dollars, over the winter, to make Halcyon a stronger, safer, and more comfortable boat.

There are some “comforts of home” that aren’t so easy to duplicate on the water, or that demand a lot of complexity – and money – to make them work. Electricity is a prime example; I’ve chosen not to install a shore-power “umbilical cord”, so I’m limited to battery power, and to charging the batteries from the engine’s alternator or the solar panels I’ve installed. That’s not enough to run a refrigerator, but it is enough for lights and some radio use. And my cell phone, tethered to my laptop, will keep me connected to the Web – when I’m in a position to use it, for instance at anchor for the evening.  Part of my process, this year, will be learning to “feel at home” within these limits.

Halcyon is enough boat for the Chesapeake Bay, and possibly beyond. I don’t doubt she could take me all over the Caribbean, and I know of people who have cruised around the world in boats its size, and even smaller. But she’s enough for my current purposes and needs. I’ll spend this year cruising around the Bay, staying aboard for longer and longer periods of time, getting along with what I have aboard Halcyon, and managing my life as much as possible as I would if Halcyon were indeed my home.

It may be vainglorious of me to presume to compare Halcyon with Project Mercury, considering the millions of dollars NASA spent for Alan Shepard’s fifteen minutes of flight! But I cannot presume to “explore for Humanity” as he did, with his successors; I can only presume to explore for myself.

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Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number …

A few weeks ago, my “adopted nephew” Charlie forwarded to me a video of his proposal-of-marriage to his long-time girlfriend, Rikki. (I borrow a name for her from Steely Dan, as reflected in the title of this piece. It may be inappropriate here; so?) Charlie’s choice of venue, together with the cooperation he got from the flight crew of the airliner that was carrying them (and Charlie’s parents) to a faraway holiday, made it a very special (and quite inescapable) event. But the fact of their engagement leaves me conflicted – because I well know, La Donna E Mobile (that song title is from Giuseppe Verdi), and I fear for Charlie as I might fear for any man who sells himself into the Marriage Racket.

Charlie’s parents, and grandparents, are Catholic. They believe utterly in “till death do us part.” Grandma Pat, the last “best friend” of my mother (who proclaimed me as her adopted son at the “celebration of life” I held for Mom when she sent West), had outlived her husband; same with Jack, Charlie’s grandfather, who married Pat and supported my “adoption” (if you can say such about a 48-year-old “orphan” as I was at Mom’s passing). Rikki’s parents are divorced, but she’s friendly with both of them and she seems really happy with Charlie (who is tall, slim, and takes after his Korean mom in the looks department – he could be quite the Player if he weren’t such a decent young man at the core. I’d be proud as a peacock to have such a son!)

What bothers me, of course, about Marriage American Style, is my perception that Charlie will be selling himself into de facto chattel slavery when he stands up before God and the State and plights his troth. That’s just the way the Marriage Racket works, nowadays. My hope, and a thin thread of hope it is in this Society, is that Rikki may choose to take the Catholic viewpoint and decide that her wedding vows, given to God in front of both families and God’s representative, are more important than any “feewings” or “second thoughts” or discontent she might feel in the coming years.

This evening … somehow … this perspective splashed peremptorily into my quiet pool of awareness, and I couldn’t ignore the tidal wave and ripples and sloshing. I found myself ranting at my own perception of Rikki – like this:

Rikki, I’ve seen you with Charlie for a good few years. Now you two are engaged to be married – and I congratulate you, girl; it seems to me that Charlie will be a good husband for you, and a good father for the children you’ll have together.

But I’m worried about YOU. About your commitment to Charlie, the putative father of the children of your marriage. Your children, certainly, by your carrying them to term; but Charlie’s too, as sperm-donor and breadwinner and fellow-nurturer, and most importantly as your husband – and as their Daddy.

Me, I never had a Daddy. Someone donated his sperm, but my Mom raised me without a Daddy. And – you know – it’s a miracle that I turned out as well as I did. And it’s a shame that I arranged my adulthood around my mother’s needs, instead of finding a woman to marry so we could raise our own children.

Here’s the thing that worries me more than anything, Rikki: That you might, some day, decide you don’t love Charlie any more. Or that you’re “not in love” with Charlie any more – a subtle difference, but a result that’s equally fatal to matrimonial contentment. And that you might decide that the children you and Charlie conceived together, didn’t need Charlie as a day-in/day-out presence. In short, I worry that you might follow the 50%-plus of American women who choose to divorce.

The thought of that is as cold, as painful, as horrible, as the thought of a knife twisted in my guts. And the thought of what happens to the children of such a severed relationship – is even more chilling, even more frightening, even more angering, because I’ve been there. (Actually, I’ve only been close. I never had Dad around at all. It must be worse for the child who is torn away from Dad.)

I do hope you’ve been paying attention to Charlie’s family … to Grandma Pat and Grandpa Jack, and their “October” marriage that keeps getting stronger … to your future parents-in-law, who work out their conflicts and whose bond stays strong … to your future sister-in-law and her husband, who have kept their own marriage strong and sweet even though they’ve had a lot of “separated time” due to the conflict of their careers. They all regard their pair-bond as being worth more, much more, than their single and separate freedom!

I would feel the same way, if I had ever gotten married.

Rikki, as you are going to be my “niece” I feel a need to be your “Dutch Uncle” in this matter. As I see it, there is only one valid reason for you to marry Charlie – and that is to raise a family, nurture the children (not “yours, Rikki” but “yours BOTH!!!”) and teach them to be upright, rational, capable and productive adults. In our species, the optimum circumstance is to have BOTH parents together, in one household,  loving each other (and the kids), till the kids are grown-up … and the grandkids, and maybe even some great-grandkids who can take this level of love and cooperation as a role-model for the future. In plain, “as long as we both shall live!!!”

Are you ready and willing, even eager, to share your life and your sexuality and your body and your children and your future with Charlie, as long as you both shall live, so help you God???

Rikki, if you AREN’T eager for that, and committed to that … if you don’t think it’s that important, or if “you could have a change of heart,” or if you’re saying “let’s see how it works out,” or you “can foresee a situation that would be a proper reason to divorce” …

PLEASE, for God’s sake and for yours and for Charlie’s, and for the sake of both families (including me but only parenthetically), and ESPECIALLY for the sake of the kids you might bring up otherwise …

If you aren’t ready for “forever” then get out now !!!

I want you both to succeed in living and loving together “till death do us part.” I hope you won’t accuse me of “trying to break things up”. Because – despite my fears and doubts, which are projections of what I would expect for myself in a matrimonial situation – I believe that you and Charlie could have a wonderful future together, a wonderful “forever” together, a future whose wonder and value and happiness would transcend anything you might reach alone!

I hope and I pray that you each, and you both, will work at making your marriage stronger and more satisfying.

From what I’ve seen of others’ marriages, it seems to me that the ones that last and stay happy are the ones where both partners take full responsibility, work to resolve problems, and hold their marriage and their family as more important than themselves. It’s a tall order and I hope Rikki will “woman up” to it.

____________________

A Few Good Links:

Philalethe’s Essays (on the NO MA’AM website) are an excellent grounding in the MGTOW rationale, and the behavior that drives men to MGTOW. A salient quote – “You can have as much freedom as you are willing to be responsible for, but no more.”

Is It Mentoring, Or Enabling? (The Spearhead, 11 Apr 2012) takes a critical look at how the “Big Brothers” program has changed from its origins.

Domestication of the human male (A Voice For Men, 13 Apr 2012) is a much more eloquent statement of what I tried to say in Female limitations, male obligations.

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Book Review: The Art Of Erotic Seduction

During my “archaeological dig” through my Dear Auntie’s house, I came across this book that my mother had given me soon after I’d come of age. I had given it to my cousin Mark, some time after my first (or second) romance, probably in the late 1970s; I don’t know if he ever read it himself, but I hoped at the time that he might find it of use.

The Art Of Erotic Seduction was written by Dr. Albert Ellis, founder in the 1960s of the Institute for Rational Living, and Roger O. Conway, who wrote its first draft as a set of answers to his teenage son’s question, “What’s the best way to make out with a girl?” It may be the first modern book about Game, if we give Ovid and his Ars Amatoria the privilege of being the first classical book on the seductive arts. It dates from 1967, but the world-view that informs the book is that of the USA in the 1940s and 1950s and it takes the coy morality of the 1950s American woman as a given.

Chapter 1, The Morality of Sexual Seduction, opens with the dictionary definition of “seduce,” which lumps together “to persuade to do something disloyal, disobedient, etc.” with “to persuade to engage in unlawful sexual intercourse … to induce to give up chastity” (italics mine). To be fair, it goes on at some length to justify “erotic seduction,” and to present some reasonable ground rules for the game: seek out a partner of “legal age,” be honest about your intentions, take full responsibility for contraception, make sure it’s “good” for her, be considerate toward your present and past partners, and be “consummately kind and courteous” to females you may want to seduce. And keep your trap shut, because Society penalizes a woman who has a reputation as an “easy mark.”

Well, if that’s Game, it’s 1950s Game from a movie with Rock Hudson and Doris Day. But this whole book – a guide to helping a young guy lead a reluctant young gal to ride the Midnight Trampoline – was quite racy for the early 1960s. (A time when condoms were kept behind the pharmacist’s counter, and no “nice girl” would discuss contraception even with her doctor.)

The core assumption is that women are against sex; they have to be led, cozened, persuaded; that you have to “sneak up” on them with the first kiss, the first caress, and on through a chain of escalating events; that you’ve got to “give a lot” to get “a little,” and that even if seduction isn’t “technically wrong” (as they explain in Chapter 1) it is still viewed as somewhat reprehensible in the society of the time. Women can be skittish, coy, reluctant, offended; men have to be courteous, kind, considerate, interesting (and even more interested) – and, most of all, prepared! Prepared to appeal to her hypergamy, to complement, to show yourself as “special” and to help her flatter herself as “even more special,” to regard seduction as a long-term campaign rather than a one-night stand, and to spend a considerable amount of time and resources and attention and energy on the road to this Shangri-La.

Actually, for the time and the morals of 1967, it was all pretty good advice. The authors give detailed and sensible hints for sneaking up with that first kiss … for escalating, from necking to heavy petting … and for gently bringing the girl from rejection, through reluctance, to acceptance and arousal. And I suspect it would still be good advice, in a rational society. But, as the Sixties gave way to the Seventies – after the opening of the Sexual Revolution, its subversion into the War Against Men, and then (and now) the prolonged and ongoing  Feminist Reign of Terror – it seems not merely outdated, but pernicious.

I grew up, after all, in a childhood environment where women of Dr. Ellis’ age were my only role-models. I grew up seeing and hearing their anger and scorn and outward contempt for men who attempted to seduce them as Mr. Conway suggested to his teenage son. I grew mature in a society that faulted men for their sexual interest in women, that defined men’s attentions as “sexual harassment,” and that blamed men for everything. Now, I’m a “reasonably old” man, in a society that is quite forthrightly at war against men. Whether or not this book is “moral” by today’s standards, whether or not its teachings are effective or correct, I personally would fear the consequences – in today’s misandric societal and sexual climate.

Dr. Albert Ellis died in 2007, forty years after the publication of The Art of Erotic Seduction. I wonder if he would have written anything along the lines of this book, if the society of 1967 had been like the society of today?

(The Art Of Erotic Seduction, Dr. Albert Ellis & Roger O. Conway; Ace Books, 1967. © 1967 by The Institute for Rational Living.)

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The Best Laid Plans

The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. 

– Robert Burns

My Florida vacation, which I viewed with such anticipation, got quite eviscerated by time and happenstance. What was going to be two weeks turned into six days, and two of those were on the road. But … we all know “what” happens.

When I got home with Bossa Nova, I found that one wheel hub was quite warm – and after I published Holiday, that afternoon, I started worrying about it. By the next morning, I decided I’d better take the trailer (boat and all) over to George’s Auto Hospital and find out what’s going on. Took a few hours, but finally I backed the trailer into his shop bay – and found the problem was a dragging brake on that wheel. George called a trailer-repair place nearby, and we found they could get the new calipers “by tomorrow.” Fine, that’s only a day off my plans.

Uh … no. The next afternoon, I got a call from George’s receptionist: “They didn’t ship the whole order. They will get the rest of it to us tomorrow.” So now it’s two days off of my plans – and I wouldn’t get to Florida in time for even the last day of the Sun’N’Fun fly-in.  But there was an alternate destination I’d considered before, Lake Marion in South Carolina – half the road time, and wouldn’t it be a nice place to go sailing for a week or so?

Thursday afternoon, the parts came in – but the job couldn’t be done until Friday. George picked me up Friday afternoon and brought me to his shop, where I “settled up” and drove Bossa Nova back home. It was late enough that I decided to leave Saturday morning. (Three days lost. But I reminded myself – “most people have plans, whereas sailors have intentions.” Besides, there were some troubles with my trailer’s side-marker lights; I fixed them Friday evening.)

And it wasn’t till Saturday morning – after I’d put my clothes and my supplies aboard Bossa Nova – that I tried starting up its motor, a Honda outboard, to see if it would run. Bad news. It was hard to get it started, and it ran really rough. So I drove over to the marina where Halcyon waits to be launched … maybe I’d have to have them work on the engine. But when I set up the “rabbit-ears” to run the water cooling on a hose, I was able to “play” the engine till it was running reasonably smooth; enough so that I decided I could trust it for my trip. And I had everything packed – so I headed south.

I got to Lake Marion Sunday noon, after spending Saturday night in “travel trailer mode” at the Lumberton, NC WalMart. (More on this in a future post.) Found a place to launch and to leave the trailer and tow-beast while I went sailing … and I must admit that the labor of raising Bossa Nova’s mast had me considering a quicker schedule for selling that boat! But I did a few hours of sailing after the launch … and I brought Bossa Nova back to a snug little “hidey-hole,” back up past that “home base” marina, where I lay at anchor for the next three nights.

Lake Marion is a wide and beautiful lake, but it is much better for fishing than it is for sailing. There are wide areas of old standing timber that have broken off just below the surface of the water; wonderful “structure” for the underwater natives, but I ran up on a couple of snags while I was sailing. (No damage, though, thanks to the design of Bossa Nova – all ballast inside the hull, a light fiberglass swing-up centerboard, and pop-up rudders.) I learned to stay close to the marked channel, but the sailing was still good.

Monday was boisterous at first, quite an exciting sail, but the wind completely died about 2 PM when I turned for “home” … and the engine started misbehaving again, by the time I got back to my hidey-hole. Tuesday morning, the winds were higher – even on the creek, I could see the treetops being lashed about; I decided to spend the day at anchor, and used it for some time-consuming and finicky tasks that I’d put off for a long while. (That actually was quite satisfying!) I also took the dinghy ashore, back to the marina/campground where I was keeping the trailer, and had dinner at their restaurant.

The weather report on Wednesday morning was … let me put it delicately … not so encouraging; and I was worried about the motor’s poor performance Monday afternoon. So I got Bossa Nova back on her trailer, with a little help; I brought her back to a good parking-space, lowered the mast and stowed it for trailering, rolled up the dinghy, and headed for home.

I got back to my marina on Thursday afternoon, after coping with a couple more problems on the way – one with my trailer’s lights, and a worse (or at least, more disgusting) problem with Bossa Nova’s porta-potty head.  I also managed to put off the fullness of the problem with Bossa Nova’s motor, until I got her back home. (I’ll get it fixed in the coming weeks, but now my most pressing intention is to get Halcyon back on the water.)

Ya know what, though? I had a full measure of fun in those few days. I will say that I had a lot more “learning” than “fun,” but that’s how it goes, sometimes. And “the best-laid plans” are not superior to a sailing-man’s “intentions.”

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