Another Introspective Blog

Okay:

Have any of you seen Lucky Number Slevin? I bought it from Target this weekend for $4.99. It came well-recommended by several trusted friends.

I was not disappointed or wholly impressed either—which, on second thought, was disappointing considering the a-list cast: Josh Harnett, Lucy Lui, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, and Ben Kingsley.

It’s another one of those off-beat gangster movies, essentially a Pulp Fiction rip-off complete with lots of snappy dialogue, a pile of dead bodies, and an implausible yet intriguing plot. Not entirely a waste of time, but life would have gone on had I skipped it.

The highlight of the film is Ben Kinglsey’s performance. He plays a Jewish gangster, affectionately referred to as The Rabbi. In one particularly memorable scene, he is trying to recover a debt from a man who is insisting that he is not the debtor, that The Rabbi has, in fact, mistaken him for someone else. To which the Rabbi replies:

“My father once told me ‘the first time someone calls you a horse, punch them in the mouth. The second time someone calls you a horse, you call them a jerk. The third time someone calls you a horse, it may be time to go shopping for a saddle.’”

I’m coming to the point now.

The other morning an angry woman called me at 9:30am. What was she angry about? I had not returned her phone call the night before. Of course, there’s more to it than that. Essentially, her charge was that I rarely ever call, that she is the one constantly pursuing me, asking me out to dinner, inviting herself over for a drink.

I did not argue with her. I sat and listened. I figured if I tried to turn it into a dialogue then it would only get worse. She laid into me for about five minutes. I wanted to scream at her, “I’m obviously not as interested in you as you are in me. Do I need to sit you down and state this implicitly, or are you going to salvage some of your dignity and take the various hints?”

But I didn’t say that. I listened quietly.

“You are so selfish!” she shouted. “Do you ever think about anyone’s feelings besides your own?”

For some reason, this comment struck a chord. It doesn’t take a licensed clinical therapist to know that I am damaged goods, that once upon a time I was quite the romantic, a hard-loving optimist. And you don’t have to be Miss Cleo to see that a series of bad relationships has sucked the sensitivity out of me. So my position on love and sex now, as logical as it may be, is purely reactionary.

But selfish?

I have never wanted to believe that about myself.

Some of you may remember that I blogged a week or so ago about a young woman who told me, on her way out of the door, “Claude, the only feelings you have are in your dick.”

After I got off the phone with the angry woman, I did what I always do when I am confused. I called my sister for some good old fashioned honesty.

“Hey, sis,” I said. “I just got off the phone with this chick. She called me up at 9:30 in the morning to tell me I’m selfish and I never think about anyone besides myself.”

“Well, she’s right, but I don’t have time to talk to you about it now. Call you later?”

So, if you’ve been counting, that’s three times I’ve been called selfish since New Year’s. Maybe it’s something I should try to work on. Or maybe everyone else should just get over it. I’ve got exactly two people to worry about: my daughter and myself. I don’t expect anyone else to worry about me and I don’t worry about them.

The thing with women is they only fling these kinds of charges at you when you reverse roles on them and force them into the position of the pursuer. It would be perfectly okay, and not necessarily selfish of them, to be aloof and indifferent to your entreaties. As a man, you’d have to shrug your shoulders and put it in the wind. To call a woman and berate her for not reciprocating my advances with equivalent zeal would be laughable, no? But because they’re the ones making the moves and they’re not used to it, you become a selfish asshole in their eyes.

At least that’s my theory.

Or maybe I should see if they also sell saddles at Target.

Thanks for reading.

GOBAMA http://www.barackobama.com

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Innocent Question: After a night of casual sex, I know that it is customary for the man to make a next-day phone call as a matter of respect and chivalry. Would a next-day text suffice?