Alpha-Me!

On New Years Day, driving through streets still buried under the blizzard from the week before, the wife and I got in a conversation about our resolutions. She’s really good about that stuff; writing them down to make them tangible, so they can be mused over, considered and reconsidered… “words that stay” like Gelfling Kara sez in “The Dark Crystal”

Me, I’m not as good at expressing such concrete thoughts. My goals, like everything else in my life, tend to be sort of transient, vague. In my head, I went through my usual litany of hopes and desires; to write, to travel, to get in better shape, find a better job, to be more assertive… yadda yadda yadda. But when I finally opened my mouth to put it out there to someone else, so there would be no shirking it the next day, I said my Resolution for 2007 would be, ”to embrace my inner Alpha Male."

Yeah, she laughed, too. She signs the checks for all our bills, drives, when we’re both in the car, and (occasionally) watches the sports on TV. I, on the other hand, put the kids to bed, fold our laundry with the precision and intensity of a master ninja, and listen to Erasure. With apologies to the GLBT community, she’s the “Butch”, and I’m the “Bitch”.

But still, I have perused my goal with some small successes; I’ve got a little-bit better job, I hit the gym 5 days a week, I’m writing for dollars (Hey! Did I mention I’m freelancing for The Onion? What’s that? “With the same frequency that Emily Elizabeth talks about her big, red dog”, you say? Oh. Sorry. Forget I brought it up.)

One of the things that’s always stood in my way as far as being the ideal male was concerned (besides my love of Erasure, that is) is my tendency toward overall “flightiness”. My friends always joked that the reason for some of my more random, illogical (read: downright stupid) actions was that I was “missing part of my brain”. And the only thing that could calm me down? The one and only substance that could get me to think straight?

Yep… coffee. The stuff didn’t just wake me up… it tightened the screws… made me altogether sharper.

So, now, smack-dab in the middle of the whole self-improvement, self-discovery, and all round self-centeredness kick I’m currently on, I'm diagnosed with ADHD… a fairly acute case of it, as matter of fact. I’m taking a medication called Adderal (which is one more reason for me to resent the fact that my insurance company paid out FIVE GRAND for the piece of crap Scientology Indoctrination Unit I rear-ended).

Adderal is a stimulant. More accurately, Aderall a speed-ball; a veritable crack-house fire sale's worth of uppers. A chemical cocktail which features Benzadrine, the drug that Jack Kerouac took in liberal doses in order to write “On the Road” over the course of a few weeks on a single, continuous scroll over paper.

Which, hey, would explain my last blog entry. This one too, maybe.

But I digress (as I’m known to do… hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and my ADHD won’t be cured overnight.) I have a lifetime of learned behavior that I’ll be trying to undo w/ the help of a therapist. But the meds do focus me. The speed is, generally speaking, good for me.

Make that some speed is good for me. As such, I’m slowing down a bit on the coffee. No, dear readers, not all the way; just enough to ensure that I don’t claw my way up the ceiling at 11 am every morning.

So this blog, which recently has really only ostensibly been about coffee, will probably be even less so now. And to be honest, I haven’t been too inspired to write about the stuff lately anyway. Everybody needs to change up their focus, every now and again. Paul McCartney and Yoko left The Beatles and started “Wings” ; Jerry Seinfeld tossed his whole act a couple years ago, just to stay fresh; even Jack Kirby left Marvel to mix up his Oeuvre. And now it’s my turn.

I’m starting a new feature… say, TUESDAY… where I’ll be exploring what it means to be an “Alpha Male” – what that has meant, traditionally, to us as a culture. As such, I’ll be reviewing the tomes; the literature* of the so-called alpha male. **

Nietzsche? Bah! Hemmingway? Yeah… running FROM the bulls is more like it.

No, I’m talking REAL men. HEROES! Guys who fight evil while with their shirts are in tatters, like on the cover of a romance novel… but there are no women around!

I’m talking Doc. Savage! Tarzan! Conan! Sherlock Holmes! Mack Bolan e Remo Williams, yo!

I’ve been up to my under-muscled chesticles in new-age sensitive guy-isms for most of my life. Get ready to roll with the Ted’s-tosterone!

* That's pronounced "Lit – aw – ra –tchoor", for you plebians.

** Yeah, yeah, I know, it's called COFFEEcrush, right there in the title. But you know what? When I dropped out of high school, I used to work at a store called "Just Pants". And do you know what we sold? Shirts, and belts, and walets. And, oh yeah, pants... Z Cavarichi's and whatnot. But the point is, that wasn't all we did. Why, my whole job was explaining to a bunch of jokester mall-walkers why a store called Just Pants could sell B.U.M Equipment sweatshirts. Remember the boobie grabbing grandpa in Sixteen Candles? Guys like that. You don't wanna be that guy, do you? I didn't think so.