Isn't That What Makes a Man?

"Mmm....sure that a pair of testicles."

Its feminisms week in Theory class! Sweet. Simone de Beauvoir kicked Sartre's ass, but I got to say Virginia Woolf is not my steez. I like my writings more polysyllabic. Be that as it may, I have solved the flipside of their problem. What makes a man? The crazy thing is that it has nothing to do with dicks or balls or adam's apples or football or anything like that...it has to do with grocery shopping. To explain:

Yesterday I was in HEB–a chain of Texas-sized grocery stores–which is a very traumatic experience for someone of my disposition and it is even worse when there are tons of people. People buying flats of Diet Coke Plus, just because they are on sale. People touching all of the produce. People buying microwavable preservative bombs that will likely give them nut cancer which they will blame on something else. God has left this place. What is more pathetic are the dazed-looking pseudo-hippies with their HEB-brand organic canned beans, wandering about, pretend condescending. Everyone loves a good deal. And then there is the checkout line. The worst part of the check-out line is either the bratty kids who are listening to their iPods while their mothers try to reprimand them, or the magazines, I can't decide. The magazines are always extremely thumbed and leafed around so that they actually look like the foliage to the godless corridor that one has to traverse to pay for the 9-dollar, 4 lbs block of cheese. So I am there, depressed and convinced that I am going to die and be reincarnated as a 40-year-old checker with acne at HEB just because that is how shit goes; and then I look in front of me. Here is this woman, who appears to be talking to her mate, life partner, whatever the hell people call the person that impregnates you nowadays, on the cell phone. I say impregnate because there are quite a few packages of diapers and child-rearing crap on the belt. Come to think of it, there is a lot of crap on the belt. All kinds of first aid stuff–alcohol, neosporin, asprin, that stuff that clears up poison ivy, moleskin–cleaning supplies, food for a year, school supplies, the odd candle, beverages of all sorts, the list goes on. I look at my cart. Sandwich-related accoutrements, estimated to last for 4 days. Too much cheese. I forwent buying a bottle of oil because I am convinced that there is no reason why it should cost 12 dollars. Ill use my roommate's butter. This is really what being a guy is about. Buying the absolute least necessary to survive, hell, having the absolute least necessary to survive. I don't own a vacuum. I have one set of sheets that I wash once every two weeks (or so). Why the crap would I have more? If I get poison ivy, I will endure it until it becomes more than apparent that I am going to kill myself and then I will bike to Walgreens and buy the lotion and STILL BE PISSED. I was thinking that this might also be why guys don't want to get married. Then you have to buy the shit, or at least act like you think it is important to buy the shit. The worst would be to buy the shit before you don't have to, like imagining that someday a girl is going to come over and go, Why don't you have a bread knife? Aren't you a real person? Or maybe we all want the bread knife, but the girl gives us the out to tell our buddies, Oh yeah, my lady wanted to buy that thing, what a drag. In reality we are all, Fuck yeah, bread knife! That is all.