The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for September 2007

Women Like Male Sweat

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Sometimes it is good to be a big sweaty man. 😉

Sept. 18, 2007 – Liz Gabor calls the odor “man sweat.” And though she’s loath to admit it, the aromatic scent makes her feel, as she calls it, a little frisky. “My friends think I’m crazy, but I think male sweat is kind of pleasant and, well, kind of hot,” says Gabor, 28, a customer service rep and happily married mother of two young girls.

Actually I think that this story is kind of interesting. Here is one more excerpt:

According to the Rockefeller and Duke researchers, about 70 percent of adult men and women have the genetic capacity to perceive a particular chemical called androstenone in male body odor. To them, the testosterone-laden substance can take on a pleasant bouquet similar to vanilla or other sweet or woodsy scents. Others who have a functional copy of the gene perceive androstenone as less than pleasurable, akin to the aromatic elixir of stale urine. About 30 percent of adult men and women can’t smell androstenone at all, leading researchers to suspect they might be missing the gene responsible for smelling the aroma.

The Importance of Reading

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One of my fans left a few choice words for me on this post.

You are such a maudlin and spineless excuse for a man, Jack. Grow a set of balls and get over it! You’re a disgrace to the gender.

{Shudder}

If you can’t deal, take the noble way out and jump in front of a train or something. Jesus.

Dear Big Shot,

You lifted that verbatim from the Insults for Dummies guidebook. I understand why, because had you bothered to read you would have seen that you tried to insult me over a work of fiction. That post is part of a story I am writing.

Not to mention that you must feel exceptionally powerful laying out such a strong insult from behind that computer screen ANONYMOUS.

Or maybe I should say, not so anonymous Mr. I left my IP address and all sorts of other crap lying around.

Ok, play time is over. Time to go back to work.

The Day After

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Lonely manThis is a continuation of sorts of The Day Joy Left My Life. I don’t like it, but I suppose that I’ll just keep working on it.

I am in hell. The pain I feel is indescribable. It is dull, it is sharp, it is rough, it is brutally cold. It is all I can do not to sit here and wallow in the emptiness. I try not to beat myself up. I try not to assign blame. I try and I fail. Failure is all I can see. Everywhere I look are signs that my life is not the life I want to be living. Everywhere I look I find evidence of someone else’s life. I used to know that person. I used to be that person, or so I think. That was back when I thought that I was happy.

The person who occupied that body is dead. I can’t say when they died, but I know that they did. That is assuming that they ever were really alive. And that is a big question. Were they really alive. Did they really live or were they just kind of getting by.

I am afraid to really ask myself that question. Afraid to admit that maybe I settled. Maybe I took the path of least resistance. The fear is that the answer is yes. The fear is that I am becoming what I hate. The fear is that now that I have known what it means to be alive I will never do so again.

You are/were my air. Every morning I woke up knowing that my best friend would be there. It didn’t matter what we did. I just liked spending time with you. It was a more mature and more complete love than anything I had ever known. And that makes its absence all the more palpable. That makes the loss more devastating because I know that if I can’t have that love, if I can’t be that person I can’t let myself feel.

Already I am working on building a wall. Already the defenses are being erected. I can’t let myself feel so much pain. I can’t stand to feel like such a miserable fool. I can’t let the memories of what we had punish me. It sickens me.

It sickens me to sound like a drama queen. It sickens me to feel. It sickens me to think of not feeling. But I can’t live like this. I can’t stand it. I cannot take the constant ache. The punishment is too great. If you were here I could. If I had some hope I could find the strength.

Want to know what really hurts? It is the idea that one day I might reach a place where the memory of you doesn’t cause me to double over in pain. It is the thought that one day it won’t hurt at all and I’ll wonder why it ever bothered me at all. I’ll scratch my head and think that it must have been nothing more than a bad dream.

Love deserves more than that.