Hello, My Name Is...

The lawnmower would not start. I pulled and pulled on the cord, and nothing happened. There is a lawnmower repair shop in Lemon Grove, so I hauled it over there this morning. The guy wants a hundred dollars to get it fixed. Going to take a week. The machine has been used once and I've already fucked it up. It sat for a year, and now the spark plug is probably fouled. I couldn't even bother to pull the spark plug out and look at it. I deserve to get fucked in the ass.

Shit like this makes me feel like a fraction of a man. Worthless. I'm almost fifty-two years old and I can barely wipe my ass. I have to pay someone to look at the lawnmower that has been used once.

I think about my relative status. My socio-economic net worth. My sexual status. It is entirely possible that I will never have sexual relations with a woman for the rest of my life. And I sleep with one every night of the week.

Despite my college degree and long, continuous work history, I feel like I have very few marketable skills. I do have a job, and I must be the lowest slob there. There are people with whom I have worked for months that haven't bothered to learn my name.

I shouldn't say people, I should say women. The other men that I work with learn my name immediately and use it frequently. I believe that another man will want to take my measure right away and figure out his relative status. The women that work there probably believe that because they work the front of the house, that they have de facto higher status than I.

I have struggled with this for years. Sometimes I tell myself that they are just defective people who lack basic social skills. It always comes down to two possible explanations. Either they don't know my name, or they know it, and are unwilling to use it. If they can't be bothered to learn my name, then I feel bad because it confirms my belief that they think I am unimportant. If they are unwilling to use it, then it confirms my belief that women are hostile to men that they think are sexually interested in them.

I wish I had a playful way to inform them that I want to hear my name once in a while. It is nice to be greeted at the start of a shift, and it is nice to hear someone say thanks after their shift. My ego demands so much more, and even that need makes me feel bad, and confirms my lower status. Its like a shit-burger that hurts to choke down.

I believe that the only one who can confer higher status on me, is myself. A real man knows how to take apart an engine, and put it back together. If he can't, he has enough material worth to pay someone who can. Someone who can muster neither is just someone's bitch.