“If only he would grow some balls,” one friend lamented to me not long ago.
I had grown weary of the refrain, having heard many other acquaintances utter these very same words in the course of my 28 years.
“Urgh,” I once again thought to myself. Once again, balls=being a "man"=doing the "right" thing. Sound lilke an idiotic formula to you? And before I could say “He’s just not that into you,” (Anyone else wish that book was inextricably burned and banned from every bookshelf in every bookstore in the world?) I found myself consoling my friend, “Yes, yes, he’s an a-hole. If only he were man enough…"
Resorting to clichés, I was losing points with my progressive, evolved self by the nanosecond. And yet there I was simplifying the whole emotional attachment my friend had developed by using that age-old pitfall of gender as the excuse. After all, women are never guilty of commitment issues, right?
Getting back to my friend’s problem…
Was it that I didn’t care about her existential crisis? Or was it simply that I was fed up of hearing my friends consistently make generalized excuses/rationalizations for some fleabag not returning their affections and refusing to commit?
And then as I sat listening to my friend, searching for some sort of constructive answer, something novel sprang to mind. We Americans love our clichés and our melodramas as much as we covet our euphemisms. Our culture even has code words for our genitalia. Whether it be something as mock-worthy or inane as “Johnson” and “Big Daddy” or as explicit/graphic (but equally as inane) as “cock,” “pussy,” or “twat” we just can’t bring ourselves to call our body parts by their proper names.
In other words, if we can’t even be forthcoming about the most intimate part of ourselves, how can we be entirely honest with the emotional intricacies of a sexual bond that stems forth from these organs? It’s truly a conundrum.
As my friend pressed on about Mr. Nads, I was suspended in thought for a moment, lost in the whirlwind that my thoughts had evoked.
Article comments
1 - KingMab
A similar cliched phrase, at least around these parts, is to "man up" (a variation on the older "cowboy up" bit). You can counter - or at least expand on - this trend by introducing "woman up," or, instead of "grow some balls," say "grow some ov's." Sounds dumb, but it works in throwing people off their expected platforms.
2 - Sister Ray
I'm not sure I'm following. Is your friend questioning her boyfriend's manliness because he won't commit to her?
Some men would call it the other way - tying one's self to one woman is wimping out.
3 - Scott Butki
This made me smile:
"On a personal note, I myself am thinking of writing a book called Chicken Soup for Eunuchs Who Want to Grow Balls But Are Biologically Disadvantaged."