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Nontuition



“The only way to say I love you is not to
The only way that my heart beats is by beating
The only way for you to see is to seek
My love is not for the birds
Words carried into the air, light as feathers
My love will slap you on the cheek
It is hot and ardent, beating as fists beat
On naked skins
Leaving no mark, except in the heart
I love you
I beat you
My love beats for you
Beating you
Beating hard and hot
On naked skins
So that you may know
So that your heart feels what the birds cannot.”


We, men, are united by a common cause, a common grievance: maldita wives and bossy girlfriends who rule our lives with an iron fist. Is there anything we can do about it? Is there a way for us to fight back? Of course! But if my nontuition (the male equivalent of a woman’s intuition) is correct, all our plans have been doomed from the start.

To endure sacrifice in the name of love is one thing. To endure a cold shoulder and the possibility of a lonely weekend all because one somehow made a mistake of not texting her when you got home because, a) you used up all your load on a previous spat, and b) your mom won’t let you borrow her phone because you’re 26 years old and you have a job (read: “Asa man diay na padung imung sweldo, ‘dong?”). Or worse: she calls you the office, overhears your opportunistic officemates teasing you over the nonexistent resident hottie (it’s true! I swear!! There is "no" resident office hottie!), and calmly warns that you don’t visit the house for the next thirty days, or else.

It’s a war of the sexes out here and the men are losing! What do you do if your better half (see!? But I’ll let that go, this one time...) asks you what you think of, say, her friends. Which do you choose? The truth, or the truth according the handbook on "Trying to Guess What’s Really Going On In That Manipulative Yet Adorable Little Mind of Hers?" Would you agree that women always have something up their sleeves? That a question is never a question, but a series of interlinked, step-by-step interrogative statements designed for the evisceration of your ego and humanity, leaving you with nothing but the clothes on your back and the gnawing feeling that somebody did a Hannibal on you and served it up with a side order of mashed potatoes (KFC rules!!!!). No one wins against a woman. A knife fight out in the alley is simpler and less complicated.

I believe it’s because of that danged sixth sense (and even 7th and 8th senses --- ack!) of theirs! I believe that, at times, their intuition becomes so highly attuned that it literally finds fault where there is none! We men are far more fortuitous because we have nontuition: If it doesn’t concern us, we don’t care. Even if it does concern us, it still has to be reviewed before action is taken. Review in this case would be sitting in front of the PS2, battling the evil entities and other nasty things in Rygar.

I think most women would like nothing more than to nip anything that can be nipped, at the bud, so to speak (L. Bobbit may or may not fall under this category, depending on which side of the coin you prefer). They will make you promise to come home immediately after work. If you say the travel time is forty minutes, to her it means you’ll be there exactly forty minutes after 5PM.

And if you are going to think about arguing that JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was simply based on the Bible and not the antithesis of the Bible, don’t. Spawn of Satan would be the weakest curse they’ll hurl at you. And what’s the deal with them being able to go just about anywhere without having to tell us, but we, men, can’t?! I&^%#@$(*T$(*Q#T*(^%#@!

Emi, our office resident psychotherapist and defender of women’s rights and lefts, once told me that the reason women are acerbic is because they want “pamarayeg,” --- roughly put, they like to be doted on.

Ooookay... and I’m long-lost fifth member of the Teletubbies who just returned from a spiritual voyage to the Amazon.

It is a hotly contested topic among macho superfreaks, rock ‘n’ roll gods, woman-whipped men, Mr. Swabes, and men who fawn and swoon over women like they are God’s gift to Mankind, and not a pain in the side (we will call them, the Masochists.). Buy a girl a box of sweets and she’ll ask why you’re two minutes late. Try surprising her with take-out and she’ll blame you for making her break her diet. Whisper sweet nothings in her ear, and she’ll ask what gives, what are you suddenly sweet to her. I admit, we may have our own little faults, but making an issue out of being late for two minutes is not my definition of a spat --- it’s absurd! Then again, it could only be me. I mean, not all Macho Superfreaks, Rock ‘n’ Roll Gods, Woman-whipped Men, Mr. Swabes, and men who fawn and swoon over women like they are God’s gift to Mankind, and not a pain in the side (yep, we still call them, the Masochists), would agree with my view but --- who cares?!!

The fact of the matter is there is no other love than that of a woman. Not just some succulent sylvan-shaped, sweet and innocent silly little girl in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit! We go gaga over full and mature svelte-bodied, intelligent and witty, patient and understanding, and LOVING, women. And we go gaga over women who know what they want and are not afraid to ask for it --- and this specifically refers to wanting us for the rest of their lives.

I hate to admit it, but I’m whipped.

(Sigh...) I’m sucker for happy endings.