Category Archives: New Words for SB

New Words For SB: Pinking

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Pinking- Penis thinking

No news here.  We know guys think with their penises, leading us down the road to ruin again and again from the launch of a thousand ships to Weiner’s wiener.  Here’s the thing- Weiner’s approach to penile cogitation is an object lesson- on HOW TO DO IT!  In other words how to avoid sudden bachelorhood notwithstanding the waggish ways of your wiener.

What Weiner did was harmless.  Lying about it was not.  As is so often the case in courtrooms and careers, it’s the lie that does you in, not the act.  So men who are married and being led astray by your wiener?  Try virtual sex.  Openly.  Ideally with spousal permission.  In at least some marriages, if virtual sex substitutes for actual a couple nights a week it may be a welcome respite from nightly sexual expectations from horny husbands?  Or- it may be a good predicate to hot sex, you shop online but you buy at home?  Whatever that saying is.

Will you get spousal permission to have virtual sex?  Probably not, because no one can accept that the wiener will have its way regardless of what we say.  So the alternative- if the choice is between an actual tryst or a virtual one (i.e. you are just another guy with weak will when it comes to the wiener) is the virtual one.  If you get caught, own up immediately.  Is this worse than jerking off with a copy of penthouse?  Yes, but not all that much.  Am I engaging in pinking?  You bet.

New Words for SB: Sogamy

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Sogamy- serial monogamy.

There’s no reason this neword should sound so much like sodomy.  Except maybe that we are all animals.  To quote the immortal words of Bloodhound Gang- only because my son listened to this song so repetitively when he was that age that it’s ingrained in the membrane- You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

In certain (toxic?) bachelor circles, to admit to monogamy as a goal is to admit to something shameful.  What- not be a poon hound when not in wedlock (lock being the operative word for this crowd)?  UnAmerican!  Stop being a- well, word that rhymes with stussy.

But I digress. Again.

Some of us SBs have trouble with the B part of Sudden Bachelor.  We don’t see bachelorhood as a goal but rather as a condition.

The sudden part can suck too, like having your clothes ripped off on a cold night, outside  in the dark, and then someone turns the headlights of their pickup truck right on you and you are surrounded by dozens of your now-former friends and lovers on the high school field, yes, back on the high school field, then the flood lights around the field all go on with a huge noise like a pop as if in preparation for the game, and you are standing butt naked- or is it buck naked?  You are standing there, your breath forming frosty clouds in front of you which you wish would turn into thick smoke so you could vanish.

Well, anyway, bottom line some of us like or need to be in a relationship that lasts longer than a night.  We go for serial monogamy. Continue reading →

New Words For SB: Sailure

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sailure = successful failure

See also dailure (dazzling failure), and the converse concept from a recent missive, cictory (catastrophic victory).

I try to be topical here. But I don’t always succeed. I guess I’m being topical in the sense that some newords have kind of amorphous application, to various points in life and/or history. Yes I’m that delusional and self-aggrandizing. No I don’t really think that. ;)

Maybe the political root canal just past- or possibly just begun? – which we call an election is an example. If you’re of my political persuasion, we snatched defeat in 2010 from the jaws of resounding victory in 2008. And yet, in the mud of defeat potentially sprout the seeds of victory, if the tea party is actually held to some standard of accountability and their emperor’s clothes are exposed for the tattered red white and blue fakery they really are?

That’s about as topical as I can get right now. On a more personal level I speak as someone who has had two marriages end, and whose relationship from college has begun anew, right here in midlife. Also as someone who believes in the chrysalis concept of human life, that the chrysalis we develop in can last through adolescence or it can last through a generation or two of one life. It all depends. There are no rules. Was it a failure not to stay married? Or not to have stayed from college til now with the person who it turns out is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with? Is it that what failed way back then can therefore succeed now?  Or that it’s success to transition from a relationship that isn’t working to one that wasn’t ready to work all those years ago? What is success and what is failure? And is my asking this just another manifestation of the unmooring effect of midlife? Continue reading →

New Words For SB: Miends

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Miends  = Midlife Friends

When you hit midlife whatever that is (40?  50?) and especially if you are divorced, you really find out who your friends are.  And you may come to the alarming realization that your friends are- few and far between!  .

If you became an SB after a prolonged marriage or other disaster (I mean relationship), you may find your attention was simply elsewhere for a bunch of years.  But like I boringly and repetitively quote from Warren Buffett about the financial world- when the tide goes out you know who’se swimming naked, that goes double for friendships.  When the flurry of activity that is marriage, raising kids, career building, slows down or one or more legs of that 3-legged stool start to wobble or become less important, you realize that it’s really a 4 legged stool (at least): friendships are important, and at least for guys, they tend to atrophy with age.

Yet the adult in you still needs friends.  And you may find that as midlife progresses, they are in shorter and shorter supply.

So you are divorced and doing some online dating but that leaves the other 2 hours a week (jk- say the other 5 days.  You reach out to friends, the old friends you had when friends were important.  You find to your chagrin that neglect of those friendships while you were engrossed in all that stuff, kid-rearing, getting divorced, getting remarried, living abroad, living in various parts of the U.S., pushing on the career front- has caused them to wither like unwatered plants and now, you can count on one hand the friends you can really hang out with.  And they are very busy.

So what do you do?  I need to flag, first, a sex role difference in friendship.  Men suck at later life friendship.  Women excel at it.  Why?  IDK.  Maybe for women it’s an extension of the nesting instinct, having good friends is protective and comforting in the same way as do having a great house and a reliable provider as a husband (even if you have a career yourself)?  Maybe women are more capable of sharing emotional intimacy hence having deeper more enduring friendships?  Comparing conversations- like having two youtube feeds side by side (note to webmaster- can we do that?) is instructive.  Without having done this empirically, from the bits of conversation I have caught over the years from my exes and now my gf talking with their friends, their convos tend to go toward gossip, which can seem trivial and even vindictive but it’s about what’s happening to real people, in their lives or in other people’s lives, it’s about people and what they do, their kids, their friends, themselves. Continue reading →

New Words For SB: Geed (Part 1)

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Geed = Good Weed

Part I

Let’s say you are a SB, alone on a Friday night.  And let’s say you decide to roll a blunt and relax.  But I repeat myself…

Weed is not what is used to be.  It’s more prevalent, stronger, and more insidious than during the early age of the now-middle-aged.  And how we react to it is telling, like a Rorschach test.  Me- I react in the most un-mellow way.  Like curled up in the fetal position under a desk un-mellow.  The best payoff of smoking weed, the ability to take a step back, see things for what they are, distort things for what they aren’t allow yourself a  blurry-eyed helicopter-view of life instead of the focused street-level view of the competitor in this race we all run, can also be the worst result of smoking weed if you, like me, have a streak of anxiety running through you like lightning through your synapses.  That’s a long m-f-ing sentence!

When I used to take that weed-induced step back in my early teens, the 60s still in sharp relief in the near rearview (we didn’t even know they were over!), my friends and I would sit in someone’s attic, black light on and posters glowing, the Dead on the turntable, and just waste time wasted, laughing over nothing, obsessing over everything, lost in the comfortable cocoon of suburban adolescent life.

Now- the cocoon is not so comfortable, especially as an SB.  There’s kids to raise, mortgages to pay, jobs which are ever less secure, ex-wives to deal with and pay, the ever-increasing obligations of midlife sticking to us like dust to Pig Pen in Charlie Brown.  And what getting high does for yours truly, on the exceedingly rare times I have allowed by judgment to be swayed by some misguided nostalgic impulse, is to make me look down. Continue reading →

New Words For SB: Sandora

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Sandora = Sexual Pandora

Let’s say you are a SB, in a bar on a Friday night.  You have been divorced for, let’s say, 1 year.  You’ve been out on some dates, had some wild one or two night rides with women met online, or on line (like at a supermarket- people say supermarkets are good places to pick people up but I’m not buying it).  And a several-month diversion with a MILF 5 years older and definitely dirtier than anyone you had ever had before, though ultimately looking for a father figure to slot in to the missing part of the family picture which was not where you needed to be at that juncture of your existence.

And now, you find yourself standing near a woman surrounded by a gaggle of friends, giggling, laughing, lovely, girlish, wearing glasses that are just stylish enough, she keeps pushing loose strands of streaked dirty blond hair out of her face.  You are a little drunk, your friend is chatting up one of her  friends, you are feeling a little at loose ends and having a fight or flight moment wondering whether to call it a night, but you can’t stop looking at her.  You don’t know her, but yet something in you feels like you do, déjà vu of some vague sort. But you are not going to use that hackneyed line.  You hear her remark to the nearest friend who herself is not hard to look at with low cut jeans which just reveal her lacy black thong, and  jet black hair to her waist and a serpent tattoo slithering up her all but naked back, “I need some you know what tonight.” And she licks her lips in a lascivious way that could launch a thousand- ships or fantasies.

And then, you wake up.   No, actually this is real life.  And then you manage, uncharacteristically, to say, “What are you drinking?  It’s really green.”

A crème de menthe actually.  A sensual throwback, you realize, to a former girlfriend, or as you now refer to her, girlfiend, who had a predilection for those disgusting things.  The blond looks at the raven haired girl, and you can see without actually registering that a lot hangs in the balance in that moment, a word of ridicule will seal your fate for the evening.  The blond then turns to you and says “What do you have against green?  It’s the color of money.”  And smiles.

Five hours later.  You walk out of the bar with the black haired girl who has a name, it’s Alice, the blond having long ago disappeared with some guy wearing a white collar striped shirt and suspenders from Wall Street circa 1985 central casting.  She has her arm in yours, and you are heading downtown, to the East Village , to her place. Continue reading →

New Words For SB: Bife

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Bife = Beware Midlife

Tim Robbins and Susan Saranden- longterm relationship r.i.p.  Using a lemonade out of
lemons approach it’s the occasion for a new word- bife, beware midlife and
the roads that lead to becoming a midlife SB.

http://www.popeater.com/2010/07/18/tim-robbins/?sms_ss=email

Tim is at that ripe age, just past five-oh, which is a sweetspot of midlife
havoc.  Since I don’t do things halfway, I took the occasions of both 40 and
50 to engage in midlife meltdowns/ resurrections.  Whichever age you choose-
which may depend on your actuarial expectations and skills, midlife at 40
implying longevity of 80, midlife at 50, well you can do the math- my advice
is to take a step back and watch out for telltale signs of the midlife
talking instead of your inner compass.

What the #%*&$ does that mean?  Some people hit midlife like a boxer hits
the canvas- hard and not pleasantly.  You look around, especially you look
forward, and you see the time horizon more clearly than you did at say 30 or
20, when it seemed like the ocean on the horizon- infinite.  Now you lost
the “in” and it’s finite, and you’ve accomplished what you have, so far, and
you have the relationship you have, so far, and the kids are growing, often
by this age they are teenagers, i.e. within shooting range of intolerable.
You have climbed some sort of mountain to get to this age, probably worked a
long time navigating some sort of career.  You have gotten more and more
over the initial powerful pangs of love for your partner, and now perhaps
the initial pangs of boredom, conflict, annoyance are creeping in like a
tide, gradually but relentlessly.  You are seeing the end, and in your
darkest moods that’s like seeing a coffin lid closing.  So what do you do?

Run like hell.  Some of us run like hell and don’t think much about where we
are going or where we have been.  We find some young thing at the office who
makes us lose a decade or two in the time it takes to rip off her blouse.
We drop our lucrative career for some myth in our mind from college, that we
are actually a writer, a painter, that it’s actually possible to wring fame
and fortune from something really fun to do.  We change our gender.  Wait-
hold on, we don’t change our gender.  We relocate, to the vacation house off
Massachusetts without thinking so hard about how the mortgage will be paid
while living in a town the main economy of which is based on- people like
you who made substantial livings somewhere where there actually IS an
economy!  If you’re Tim Robbins, for redemption, you escape from the prison
of your career and relationship by living your childhood dream of making an
album.  And your beautiful wife becomes like Louise- don’t know who Thelma
is, maybe Glenn Close based on proximity?-  driving her Mercedes convertible
out of Bedford into- Manhattan .  But that’s them.

In other words you do damn fool things just to run away from the inevitable
fact of mortality and the toll time takes on relationships and careers.
Continue reading →

New Words For SB: Cevorce

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Cevorce = Celebrity Divorce.

But I am being redundant.

Divorce sucks.  Celebrity divorce probably sucks even worse.  First- I don’t have statistics but I’m going to go out on a limb and say celebrity marriages are more doomed from the start than regular old marriages.

Why?

1. Celebrities live in public.  I submit that magnifies the problems normal couples have.  Even if they don’t become Brangelina type tabloid fodder, the false moves a couple will inevitably make play out in public and that just adds insult to injury when things go wrong.

2. Celebrities are more attractive as a group than ordinary gnomes.  That means they get hit on more, and/or at least are more likely to score if they hit on someone.  Love conquers all but all too often sex conquers love.  And see #1 above about the fun results of that.

3. Celebrities are more likely to marry each other for the wrong reasons.  Like- marrying a playboy bunny because you can, but what makes you think that’s any indication of anything besides how good she looks in a bunny suit, or none at all?  Or marrying a star because, well, he’s a star?  Once the allure of that wears off, with the hundredth pair of underwear left on the bedroom floor or, worst case, the third or hundredth affair, the payoff of divorce can start looking pretty good.

4. Celebrities have more money than normal people, and when you add that to any or all of 1 through 3 above, you have an added motive for the less-moneyed party to bail.

How?

That question doesn’t make sense.

Who?  I just said!  Celebrities!

What can be done?

Nothing.  It’s one of the “buts” which immediately follow- Being rich and famous is so cool!

Consider this an incredibly unscientific and unsubstantiated caution flag for celebrity SBs, or celebrities who don’t want to become one!  And while you’re at it- check out some Grammer for SBs elsewhere on the site!

New Words For SB: Fex

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Fex = Free Sex

For all you SBs who have one thing on the brain (i.e. all of you)- It has been said that the only difference between free sex and the sex you pay for is- the free sex is much more expensive. True or false? Another paraphrase- sex is the most healthy, life affirming experience money can buy. Well let’s do some math. Free sex- that’s the kind that comes mostly when you’re single, mostly when you’re young, and therefore it’s the kind that is most likely to lead to harder stuff. No not animals and hanging yourself while masturbating. (B.t.w. what’s up with that? I mean, how good does an orgasm need to be that you would risk a self-lynching to make it REALLY good???) I mean, the M word. Suffice it to say- once you follow the tractor beam of free and easy sex to what nearly every single woman ultimately wants- the pot at the end of the rainbow, first comes love, then comes… Once you get there, say buh-buy to free and easy and hullo to buy buy baby.

Because- as I tend to point out to anyone or any inanimate object that will listen- marriage is an ANTI-aphrodisiac. And once the precepts you entered into it with- free and easy sex, passion, love, devotion, vanish as the umbilical cord of your lovely child is snipped- sooner or later, for half of us, ultimately comes the cold financial and emotional shower that divorce is in this country. Out of the hot tub and into the shower you go!

It’s like a Mastercard commercial. Wedding: $100,000. Cost of raising 2 children to age 22: $1,000,000. Divorce: priceless. So- when you feel the tug of that tractor beam which few of us can resist, at least make an attempt to heed that small, quiet voice in the back of your head repeating that saying from- maybe the Great Depression? There ain’t no such thing as a free- sex.

New Words For SB: Lartner

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518756lifepartner

Lartner = Life Partner

All you sudden bachelors who couldn’t resist the hankering to be attached to a woman of the opposite sex. But for whatever reason, you’re not getting hitched. Yet.

Go on thesaurus.com. Look under spouse. But- you protest- I’m not married! And-I don’t necessarily want to be. But I am with someone. Possibly I’m divorced and with my- new person in my life. What am I going to call my other person? The fact that you went to look under spouse to find the right name is a good signifier of the problem- what the hell do you call the significant other in your life without calling them ‘significant other’. Or partner, redolent of law firms and business relationships. Or girlfriend, which- coming from a sixty year old for example, sounds- well, ridiculous.

Back to thesaurus.com under spouse. Synonyms: better half, bride, groom helpmate, husband, man, mate, partner, roommate, wife, woman…

So you see my problem. I’m with the person who I want to be and who is for all intents and purposes my spouse and life partner- but spouse doesn’t apply because we’re not married, and life partner requires two words and is clumsy sounding.

Maybe in French or some other language there’s a term- like sometimes Yiddish comes to your aid when no other words describe something or someone- like schmuck?

But stranded here in English- what is the term for longterm monogamous lovers living together like a married couple who are not married?

On thesaurus.com- look under boyfriend or girlfriend. You are avoiding the use of this term for the above-mentioned reason of ridiculousness. The term seems to have evolved from elementary school to cover middle- and high school, then ultimately college, opposite sex relationships. It translates awkwardly at best to middle age

So you try on “love” for size. Like my love. Meet my love, John. Or my beau. TMI. The problem with most other synonyms for spouse or girlfriend is TMI. You don’t want to be getting all misty eyed and slobbering and stuff when you describe your- significant other. ‘Husband’ or ‘wife’ doesn’t say a bunch about how much sex you have, what degree of besottedness you are laboring under, how wonderful they are or aren’t… Any qualifier that signifies more than that this is the permanent male (at least he thinks so) in my life is likely to evoke an internal wince from the hearer, even if unconscious.

So let’s go back to synonyms- under boyfriend: admirer, beau, companion, confidant, date, escort, fiancé, flame, follower, friend, intimate, partner, soul mate, steady, suitor, swain, sweetheart, young man.

Are you serious? Young man? Who calls their boyfriend ‘young man?’ unless it’s a 90 year old with one of those creepy old people lovers or maybe an illicit student teacher relationship or one of those kinky role playing things? Admirer? My admirer? Swain? Let’s go back to Victorian times, shall we?

I’m telling you- there’s a serious gap in the marketplace for the word to describe the modern live-in lover. And no- it’s not ‘live-in lover’! TMI!!

I’m starting with lartner- but it’s a horrible ugly sounding word, you can do better, I can do better. All of you (two people?) out there- give me something to work with!