If your boss tells you that his wife’s name is Katrina, then the correct response is to remark on her pretty name, and not say, “Makes sense, she looks like a natural disaster.”
In caveman days, men were all about physical superiority. It was pretty much all we had going for us. But this natural advantage has become increasingly obsolete ever since we stopped making everything from boulders.
The idea of what it means to be a man is always changing. In the fifties it meant smacking family members who disagreed with you, and in the nineteenth century it was all about wearing a hat. But there are four main principles that have remained throughout, defining the most desirable qualities in manly men.
It is the nature of disgusting habits that sometimes you didn’t realise you were doing them until someone pointed and went, “Eeerrrghhh!” That’s your first clue that you’re doing something long since abolished in the civilised world.
A constant danger of being in public places is the public element of it. How terrible that being outside has to be spoilt by other people enjoying it. Even worse is the threat of walking into someone you know, societal pressures forcing you to make some meaningless exchange: How are you doing? How’s your work going? Why are you holding pomegranates?
When a man calls a lady’s honour into question, the accuracy of his comments is unimportant (in fact, defending the dishonourable ladies is often more fruitful than the proper, frigid ladies)
You may even have yourself a modern day Oscar Wilde, spouting gems with biting hilarity, only to have them fall on your shirtfront, alongside the rest of the spittle from their contorted mouth.
