Men are assholes OR Men or Assholes

I think there are two types of men – Men (with a capital M) and Assholes (with a capital A).

I’m lucky to have a number of Men in my life to balance out the Assholes, although some weeks, the Assholes, no matter how few in number, seem to win.

This is one of those weeks.

There are two captial M Men in my life who have recently (or maybe not so recently) become capital A Assholes. Details are not necessary. Those of you who need to know the details already know them. Suffice to say, it’s made me go, what was I thinking, inviting these Men… ooops… Assholes into my life. Say what you want, I was the one who opened the door and went, “Hey, here’s my heart, just in case you’d like to take it out and throw it on the ground and stomp all over it. Oh, and by the way, if you take a left at the heart, you’ll find my self-esteem and self-respect. You might want to take that around the block a time or two, just so I don’t get too comfortable having it where I can find it and maybe, oh, I don’t know, put it to some use. You go ahead, beat it to death and then put its shattered carcass back where you found it.”

The problem is twofold. They didn’t start out with a capital A. Both started out as extremely capital M kind of men. I guess they wouldn’t have gotten in the door if they wore the scarlet A stuck to their foreheads, although I don’t think men ever caught that fashion. Maybe it should be required by state law now. If you present yourself as a Man and you’re really an Asshole, you must have a capital A highly visible somewhere on your person, truth in advertising and all that. Then at least we could sue, saying, “You know, he advertised as a capital M kind of man but he was really a capital Asshole.” Forget alimony, Asshole payments could take the place of that archaic system.

It makes me look at the capital M Men around me now and wonder if my Asshole radar isn’t working. Which one of them am I going to be blogging about a year from now, going, “Damn, I thought he had a capital M but I guess I misread the letter on his chest. I should get glasses.”

The other part of the problem is that I can’t seem to not let the Assholes in. I draw them like a magnet. If there is an Asshole within 30 paces, he must be involved in some integral way in my life so that when he cuts his M in half and turns it into a disfigured A, he does the maximum amount of damage to me. And I let him. I see the Exacto blade come out, aiming for the bridge of the M to slice and dice it neatly into an A. And I stand there, going, “Wow, that’s a really sharp knife. I wonder what he’s going to use that for.” Duh. How did I not see that coming?

Because I want all the men in my life to be capital M type of Men. I look past their obvious, red-flagged, screaming out loud A’s and go, “But there’s a capital M in there somewhere, I’m sure of it.” And even if I have to find a dozen of misshapen A’s and force them together to create an M type of man, damn it, I’ll invest a lot of time doing that and then wonder why my teeth are kicked in and my ego has been shattered like glass when the A’s just don’t hold together as an M.

Maybe there’s a Learning Annex course in how to identify and deflect the A’s but I have a feeling they’ll kind find their way in, like the shapeshifters in “Ghost Story.” They keep shifting their shape so you can’t decide if that’s an A or an M on their sleeve. By the time you figure it out, it’s far too late.

So be warned, you capital M guys, if I even begin to see the start of an A forming on your person, I’m throwing you out of the car and leaving you on the side of the road. I don’t care if it is your car. And I’ll be gone faster than you can say, “I really care about you. No, really I do.”