By Claude Mills, Staff ReporterIma hit it once, I know I can do betta
She look good but I know she after my cheddar
She tryna get in my pockets, homie
And I ain't gonna let her
- Wanksta 50 CENTS
THERE COMES a point in every man's life when he gets tired of The Game.
After all, it's tough being a guy - and unless you are a soul-less creature just in it for the time records and the relentless sexual interludes - you burn out pretty quickly.
Check it: you spend your teenage years with a low-grade fever for the opposite sex. You joke with your friends that when you get to your early 20s, you hope to become a porn director, or spend time sleeping with skanky hos.
But as soon as you get to age 18, you are told that women only want men with nine-inch penises and oodles of stamina, men with expensive cars, and lots of cash. So right then and there, you start off the Game with a doubt because no matter who you are, there is always somebody with a bigger penis, a bigger car and more cash than you.
The Game is rigged against you because you already have a complex which affects your self-esteem.
But you overcome that. You are a male. You are resourceful. So you dedicate your hours breathlessly pursuing women not because you want to really KNOW them, but rather to conquer, cajole, or coerce them into doing the nasty with you. You pretend to listen to their poems, their little stories, and you tolerate their eccentricities and neuroses.
You set goals for yourself. You tell yourself you want to be with beautiful women, but you're a little intimidated by them. So in order to be with beautiful women, you practise, practise, practise on the not-so-beautiful women.
You sift through the morass of 6s and 7s, and sometimes oh horror the low 4s, trying to find your comfort zone, and of course, to pad your strikes (confirmed kills) so that you can compete with the vaunted skills of your other male friends. Pretty soon, you spend all your time chasing the wrong kind of woman, and skirting the ones you really want to date.
After a while, you get experienced enough to develop a Method. Now, is THE time to start going after the women you think you like. You've learned which buttons to press, and what things to say to get her to like you, or sleep with you or not. You know that women are always intrigued by a challenge, so you morph into whatever that challenge is perceived to be. And always the chameleon, you hardly ever get the chance to be yourself.
But now, you are too experienced, you don't know if she likes you for YOU, or just because you have been able to re-invent yourself into What She Wants.
BAD EXPERIENCES
Over the years, I have had some bad personal experiences, but I hardly ever break up with girls, I just do The Drift, i.e, when she still thinks there is a relationship, but there really isn't.
There was Janelle, a chatty 21-year-old who totally weirded me out by the critical date #3 with her over-exuberance. Hanging out with her was like being stuck in an elevator with an eight-year-old kid with ADD (attention deficit disorder) who had just wolfed down a pound of sugar. Still, I weathered the storm until I got the critical 'kill', then I did The Drift.
There was that real estate agent Michelle who I dated for three months. She grew up in a middle-class family, but acquired "airs" as she grew up. She was a stunner, but a complete neat-freak, and a first-class nag. One night, while in the middle of the act, she asks me: "Do you have to perspire quite so much?"
I paused mid-stroke, and snapped: "If I didn't sweat, I'd die in five minutes, bitch."
We finished in silence. I never went back to her house again. Eventually, she got the message.
I've dated girls who only want you to be "Joe", or the "independent" ones who diss you up-front by saying they want you to impregnate them, but "yu don't have to support the child". What's up with that?
Along the way, there were girls who wanted you to pay their rent, but couldn't cook, sew, wash, or iron, and of course, you encounter the Mercs who wanted x amount of money for y amount of sex. The Game is wicked.
Still, there were others who I gave up on early like "Ifrica", a rail-thin Afrocentric "daughter", whose bony structure gave me a terrible poke in a sensitive area during a gropefest at the back of the Portmore Mall.
There was Natiesha, who was oodles of fun, but I BAILED on her after I had to bail her from the Hunts Bay lock-up after she lost her temper, and beat another girl senseless with her C & W Nokia phone one night.
It's a pressure-cooker situation being a man. For most of your life, you search for the woman who completes you, the woman who has that other rib that the Man Upstairs saw fit to take from you.
But when you finally meet her, you are so jaded you find yourself asking the inevitable question: "Is this it?" You figure you've been duped so you get pulled back into The Game again.
Men, by virtue of how they are socialised, are perpetually unsatisfied creatures. Women have a better time of it, you all have childbirth, periods and shopping to act as diversions. All we have is pro sports, and still we yearn for more. We get bored easily, and we find ourselves chasing new skirts, even when we don't want to, just to gain some perspective on our empty, testosterone-driven lives.
It's just The Game, but hey, I wouldn't have it any other way.
What's your take on it?
You can e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
