Manslations (19 page)

But why?!
This is what the dumpee always asks you, right? Boy, if he only knew what your answer might be, I bet he wouldn't ask it. The fact is, I think men ask this one because they are looking for the problem so they can solve it.
Do not give them a solvable problem here.

The fact is, with any breakup, it's never a result of problems. It's always only one problem: You are not the right people for each other. If you were the right people, you'd work out whatever problems you have. If you're not? What difference do the problems or solutions make if you're not the right match?

That's the best, most definitive way to leave a man. Let him know that there's nothing that he could have done differently. It's just that you've decided (not that you're “thinking” or “sort of coming to the conclusion”) that the two of you just don't fit together in the way you want to fit with someone.

In a weird way, there's no reason for a breakup to even get very personal when you're dumping a man. And there's no reason it can't be kind and even friendly. The real truth of any breakup is that no one is really “leaving” the relationship—the relationship just wasn't the right one to begin with. There's no reason to be cruel about the fact that the two of you weren't born to be a match forever and ever, is there? You're just stating the fact—
fact
—that you've come to the conclusion that you two aren't the match that you are looking for.

Now, this isn't to say he's going to agree with you that you're not a match. That's why breakups are sometimes lousy. Sorry about that. Just stick to your story. For his sake and yours. Stick to the fact that you two aren't the right people, and don't get suckered into “softening” it for him. Trust me, this is as easy as you can let him down.

And that's how you have The Talk with a guy. If you can keep this stuff in mind, you can really help make The Talk become less and less of a big freaking ordeal, until, ultimately, you can probably stop capitalizing those words altogether. He won't feel the need to be on guard, and you'll be able to just talk.

__________________

CHAPTER 8

manslating literature, TV, and
the movies, or why nobody
in the real world ends up
with mcdreamy

N
ow we're going to take a look at some of the famous situations that we've all seen in movies and on TV. And okay, we'll look at “literature” as well. When you look at the portrayals of men in popular entertainment, you can see a whole lot about how men think. And how we think we're supposed to think. And how
you
think we think, even though we probably don't think like that. (There's a reason they call this stuff “fiction.”)

As an added bonus, I'd like to think that this investigation will, in some small way, justify all the TV that I watch.

This one is an easy one. A Greek guy and a Trojan guy both like the same woman, Helen, who happens to be the Greek guy's wife. Paris, a hot young guy from Troy, comes to visit Menelaus (the Greek guy). Paris then starts banging Menelaus's wife while he is a guest in their house. Paris and Helen run away together, and Menelaus is pissed off. Menelaus gets some friends to go over and get her back. It results in a crazy, huge war that kills all kinds of folks, including most everyone involved. So what's to manslate?

Warning:
Do not go to Troy with Paris.

Look, I'm not trying to say that Menelaus is a great husband. The man is a Spartan. He's a prick, I'm sure of it. I know that there are a thousand reasons for leaving Menelaus. And I won't refute even one of them. But if you go to Troy, not only will you not get to stay with Paris (he will get bored with you so quickly, you can't possibly imagine it), but Menelaus will bring all the Greeks and kill the hell out of everybody there. It's a nightmare.

Listen, Paris is an idiot. This wasn't about love. Oh, he
thinks
it is. But see, most men love the thrill of getting the impossible gets. And if a guy who loves that also happens to be good-looking, wow, will he be a really great boyfriend. For about a week or so. Loving, attentive, just about as poetical and romantical a man you've ever met. He will promise you the heights of passion and seem to deliver them in a frenzy of secret meetings—late night, early morning, whatever. (See “The Romantic,” page 92.)

How are you to know that you are with a Paris? Well, there are signs. Has he fallen “in love” with you so quickly that, even though you feel incredibly flattered, you're a little skeptical? Follow that impulse. Does it seem like he
needs
to get you into bed and is telling you the most wonderful things in the world toward that end?

Remember the Two Big Questions: Is his behavior designed to get you into bed? Yes, it is. Is it designed to spend more time with you? Well, it might seem so, in a way. After all, it seems like he wants to see you all the time, wants to take you away from your Spartan lord, is unsatisfied with however much time you can have together, wants you to leave this man for him
now now now.
That's all well and good, but that's just
now now now.
As in, it's just during this entirely fabricated emergency situation that he's created for you two. What is the plan once you've broken up with Menelaus? What will your life be like together?

He doesn't know the answer to those questions. That's a warning. I'm not saying that Paris was lying to Helen. Not as such. He was lying to himself. He's not saying, “I am so in love with this woman, I don't even care that taking her home will start a war that will destroy everything I have ever known. I just have to have her.” This is not true at all. No, he's saying, “Hurry up and run around with me like an idiot, before we figure out what a dumb idea it really is!” There's a difference between being a “crazy, passionate romantic” and just a “guy who doesn't think about stuff before doing it.”

The point is that Paris doesn't love Helen. Neither, for that matter, does Menelaus. Paris is in love with the sound of his own voice telling her how in love he is. Menelaus is in love with owning Helen. So when Paris cons Helen into leaving, Menelaus is so pissed off that he has to go and kick some ass. The whole thing could have been avoided had Helen just dumped Menelaus and then said to Paris, “Oh, for Christ's sake, grow up, will you?”

Possibly the most famous romance in the history of everything. God knows why—it's between two teenagers, and it ends up with them offing themselves. Good plan, guys.

The manslation of this story is that men will go through anything when they're horny. Romeo's most important characteristic is that he's young. Young enough that he's still just getting used to hormones. Why does he climb up that balcony, even though her family will kill him for it? Literally, I'm saying—this isn't where her dad's going to tell his dad, and he'll get grounded or something. I'm talking about literally being stabbed. And yet there he is, staring up at her, making up poetry on the spot, risking disembowelment.

Men who do this do it for one of two reasons. Either they are too young to be able to fight the hormones—under the age of twenty-one or so—or they think it will turn you on. Men know that women want to be romanced. And even though we don't totally get it, some men realize, “Hey, if I act like a total romantic moron, those panties will drop so fast it'll be terrifying!”

In this sense, it's the same story as Paris in
The Iliad.
He didn't think it through.

There have been many shows on TV. For example, there was
MASH,
to name but one. That was a show about how funny the Korean War really was. (My information is that they were, in some episodes, exaggerating that aspect of the war.)

There was also
Knight Rider.
And
Baywatch.
And
Baywatch Nights.
But we are not going to manslate those Hasselhoffers. We don't need to. The Hoff needs no manslation. He could stand a gentle nudge away from his singing career, but we'll let that pass for now.

But let's take a look at some popular TV shows and films throughout the ages and see if we can't analyze some of the male characters and their behavior.

Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer on the tee-vee, and this will be the longest day of his life. Bong! Bing! Bong! Bing!

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the Jack Bauer Principle can help explain how your man might think of himself. But there's more that
24
can teach us. See, lucky for us, for all the expertise that Jack exhibits in torturing, assaulting, or generally punching people, Jack Bauer's greatest challenges are in relationships. He can stop nuclear terrorism, biological warfare, international incidents, and just about anything else that CTU might come across over the course of your average twenty-four-hour period. But that doesn't seem to help much in selecting the women that he chooses to surround himself with.

Background: Jack is a tortured soul. Probably from all the actual torturing that he has done in his life. The man is a killer. Literally. He is the epitome of badass, at an expert level, with a master's degree in Badass-ery. An MBA. (I never knew what that stood for until now.) He has done some really awful things. He has gotten himself hooked on heroin for an undercover assignment. He has tortured and killed people. He once ate a whole baby, just so he could understand what baby cannibalism was like. (Okay, they never actually said that in those words, per se, but it's in there if you look closely.)

The bottom line is that this is a haunted man. He is dark, dark, dark. No sense of humor. No real facility for anything but punching and shooting. As a result, it doesn't matter what might be going on in his personal life; he will drop it the second something happens that threatens national security.

Now, Jack Bauer has surrounded himself with some real idiots for lady friends. I mean, I am sure they're nice. But they all have clearly had it up to here with Jack's penchant for leaving the house in the middle of the night at the behest of the president. (We went into this tendency a little in “Having ‘The Talk’.”) They simply do not understand why he can't just say, “No, Mr. President. I cannot come out to stop a biological weapons attack that will kill millions. Not at 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. No. No. I'm sorry, Mr. President, but it is meat loaf night, and we have a rule in the house that no one is allowed to miss meat loaf night. I understand, sir. Yes, sir, I am sure that it is important. See, the problem is that there's this meat loaf…”