Real Joe

The new issue of The Rake has an interesting piece titled, Should Married Men Go to Strip Clubs? by Stuart Greene.

I agree with most of what he says.

Men are duplicitous scumbags. That doesn�t stop when they get married.

Behaviorly I’m less so than earlier in my marriage, but basically, yeah, my brain still harbors a neanderthal.

Married men know that life is good when they officially play by the rules of the fairer sex. However! This does not mean married men think entirely chaste thoughts or that they don�t have a rich fantasy life or that they don�t bend the rules in private.

Yes on the first two, but I currently don’t “bend the rules” in private. One of my sons asked me a few months ago when’s the last time I went to a strip joint — he’d just been to a couple of them as part of bachelor’s party/stag night. I told him that it’s been about 30 years… I can’t remember if it was before or after I got married, but I do remember that I was in love with Robbie at the time.

Me, I try to avoid it, because I�m a horrible liar and the wife has ESP for this kind of mischief.

This is true for me as well, but there’s more to it. A year or so ago a guy I know said to me that he was getting more and more uncomfortable going to strip clubs because his daughters were now the same age as many of the strippers and it was ruining his fantasies. That’s not quite true for me yet, but there is this troubling thought that does go through my head: these women ARE daughters of men my age and I’d be horrified if my daughter did what they’re doing.

I know in my head that many (most?) of the women are troubled — they’ve likely been sexually and/or physically abused, if not by a relative than by someone they’re currently in a relationship with. So it would feel like I’m egging-on the abusive men for my temporary benefit.

Another troublesome aspect: I know that if I spent money visiting a strip club, I’m basically placing an order in the pipeline — adding money to the economic engine that fuels men to convince more girls and women to participate — which is bad for all involved, not unlike the celebrity babe who buys a coat made from the fur of an endangered species. Of course, this is also true for the porn mag/video industry and I can’t claim innocence here, as I’ve purchased/rented my share of Playboy merchandise over the years.

Now, you�re going to ask why the married man is not satisfied with viewing his own lawfully wedded wife in the buff, and there is no good rational answer to that. All I can say is that more seems to be better.

Yeah, visual variety is compelling. Which is why keeping things ever-changing in the marital romance department is a biggie.

Don and Pete are good, decent, upstanding, sensitive men who make great and loving spouses, and they�re tired of feeling guilty about wanting to see more naked women more of the time. They argue that it really is all about visual stimulation�nothing more�and that it has no real or at least bad effect on their relationships with women.

Maybe. I think the problem is that it becomes too easy to rely on it as a way to get your jollies, rather than putting energy into figuring out how you and your wife can get more jollies with each other.

Case in point? Powerball winner temporarily loses $545,000 outside strip club.

Kent Nerburn’s exchange with a reader of his book Neither Wolf nor Dog: “Thanks for being one of the most astute readers who has ever contacted me in all the years that book has been out.”

Real Live Preacher tipped me off to The World According To Chuck — which looks to be another Real Joe-type blog to follow.

Here’a a sample: “All I know is, my wife has been gone eight days, and knowing she comes home tomorrow has me pretty jazzed. I’ve grown accustomed to the trace of something in the air, and I’ve missed it.”

“I have faced my demons and come to peace with myself… a person my children can love.” – Peter Jaquith

He was once a Wall Street multi-millionaire: From Wall Street to Mean Street.

In Sunday’s NY Times Magazine: Untying the knot: “With the help of a divorce mediator, a couple finally learns what their marriage was all about.”

Another round of low-back trouble the past week. Shit. Now I really have to get better at walking my talk, as this has not only torpedoed my motorcycling and racquetball, but also our family vacation/camping trip, since sitting in a car is no fun. My wife and daughter aren’t exactly thrilled with me, since it was my sporting activities that did me in.

So the plan is to do an at-home vacation for five days over the Labor Day weekend, unplugging from our normal routines and treating our own house like a bed and breakfast, doing day trips to spots within a hour’s drive. Maybe we’ll discover that some of these tips actually work.

I’m thrilled to be able to link to Kent Nerburn’s weblog with regularity. And now I’ve discovered another guy’s weblog that looks to be top-notch: Real Live Preacher. He’s an anonymous minister “… in South Texas who started a blog as a sort of personal refuge from his church–a confessional place where he could voice some of the doubt and confusion in his life…” — that, from radio interviewer and blogger Christopher Lydon who interviewed the preacher recently and blogged it. Some snips from the Preacher’s blog:

“My friend Tom called to tell me his life is falling apart… He’s a Baptist pastor in a town near mine. His wife came home recently and told him she wanted a divorce. They have three children, and he has to leave the house. He lost his family and his home in just a few hours. It gets worse. Most Baptist churches do not want a divorced person to be their pastor. Pastors can be greedy, manipulating sons-of-bitches, but they better not be divorced. It’s hypocritical and stupid, but that’s the way it is.”

And:

“… lots of people come to church hoping to find an easy way out of chaos. They want to know the future or make sense of the past. They hope that preachers like me will speak a mighty word and bring order out of the mess. I got news for you. I ain’t God. I’m just a guy with a bad haircut bouncing a ball around the sanctuary and talking to himself.”

So that makes two Real Joe-type bloggers to link to. Let me know if you find others.

For my own tastes, it is the person who continuously makes the small caring gesture in the course of daily affairs who is the most worthy footsoldier in the army of the spirit. Such people are doing simple good for the world, and shaping their spirits by outward action. – from Kent Nerburn’s Aug. 13 blog.

Alas, I’m not this kind of person. Once in a while, maybe, but not continuously. At times I think I should work harder to be more caring, and at other times I just figure, what the hell, I’m not like that, so quit trying. Currently, I’m in the middle, trying to be a little more regularly thoughtful and going out of my way but nothing drastic. One example: I’ve been house-tending for my friend Bruce while he and his wife are on vacation. They live a few miles out of town on a hobby farm and have two dogs, two horses and a swimming pool. My daughter and I go out there twice a day to do the chores. I’m kind of enjoying it, even though I’m busy. But the main thing is that I’m going out of my way for a friend, something I don’t usually do. Good boy.

Today’s the anniversary of Woodstock. I like the idea of dying on this day, 66 years from now, its 100th anniversary. I’ll be 119.

However, at the rate I’m going, I’m not likely to get there in the kind of condition that’ll make it much fun. After spending weeks preparing for our motorcycle club’s big two-day trial last weekend, I pinched a nerve in my lower back the morning of the event and had to drop out. Aaarrrgggh. I couldn’t even sit down to be able to drive myself home until a guy gave me a Vicodin. And then I was pretty much flat on my back or in a fetal position for 4 days. And then scrambling like mad to catch up on work since then.

It’s my own damn fault, of course. The last time this happened (several months ago), I started doing back exercises to prevent its recurrence. I even bought the book Backache: What Exercises Work and started telling others about it. I felt so great after three weeks or so that I quit doing them. Duh.

I guess my body’s trying to teach me something: either get more fit or quit these these sports in favor of others that are less punishing. I choose the former, of course, which is why I just ordered the book Wear and Tear: Stop the Pain and Put the Spring Back in your Body. But I’d better shit or get off this pot.

I continue to get more attention for helping small businesses and other small organizations set up and maintain weblogs on their web sites — one aspect of my Wigley and Associates business. So this week I decided to document what my clients and I have learned and make it available to others.

Small Business Blogging: Why and How to Do It is the current working title and web site.

I’ve long thought about writing a Real Joe book of some sort. But I’ve got to get to a much higher level of knowledge and skill to do that, methinks… whereas, a how-to book on small business weblogs seems more managable. I figure that what I learn doing this book will serve me well come time to do a Real Joe book.