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Authors: George Saunders
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it? Did I complain? Did I whine? Did I expect
activist judges to step in on my behalf, manipulating the system to
accommodate my peculiarity?
No,
I did not.
What
I did was I changed. I undertook what I like to think of as a classic
American project of self-improvement. I made videos of myself
talking, and studied these, and in time succeeded in training myself
to speak more slowly, while almost never moving my hands. Now, if you
ever meet me, you will observe that I always speak in an extremely
slow and manly and almost painfully deliberate way, with my hands
either driven deep into my pockets or held stock-still at the ends of
my arms, which are bent slightly at the elbows, as if I were ready to
respond to the slightest provocation by punching you in the face. As
for my opinions, they are very firm. I rarely change them. When I
feel like skipping, I absolutely do not skip. As for my long
beautiful hair—well, I am lucky, in that I am rapidly going
bald. Every month, when I recalculate my ranking on the Manly Scale,
I find myself becoming more and more Manly, as my hair gets thinner
and my girth increases, thickening my once lithe, almost girlish
physique, thus insuring the continuing morality and legality of my
marriage to "P."
My
point is simply this: If I was able to effect these tremendous
positive changes in my life, to avoid finding myself in the
moral/legal quagmire of a Samish-Sex Marriage, why can't "K,"
"S," "L," "H," "T," and "O"
do the same?
I
implore any of my readers who find themselves in a Samish-Sex
Marriage: Change. If you are a feminine man, become more manly. If
you are a masculine woman, become more feminine. If you are a woman
and are thick-necked or lumbering, or have ever had the slightest
feeling of attraction to a man who is somewhat pale and fey, deny
these feelings and, in a spirit of self-correction, try to become
more thin-necked and light-footed, while, if you find it helpful,
watching videos of naked masculine men, to sort of retrain yourself
in the proper mode of attraction. If you are a man and, upon seeing a
thick-waisted, athletic young woman walking with a quasi-mannish gait
through your local grocery, you imagine yourself in a passionate
embrace with her, in your car, a car that is parked just outside, and
which is suddenly, in your imagination, full of the smell of her
fresh young breath—well, stop thinking that! Are you a man or
not?
I,
for one, am sick and tired of this creeping national tendency to let
certain types of people take advantage of our national good nature by
marrying individuals who are essentially of their own gender. If this
trend continues, before long our towns and cities will be full of
people like "K," "S," "L," "H,"
"T," and "O" "asserting their rights"
by dating, falling in love with, marrying, and spending the rest of
their lives with whomever they please.
I,
for one, am not about to stand by and let that happen.
Because
then what will we have? A nation ruled by the anarchy of
unconstrained desire. A nation of willful human hearts, each lurching
this way and that and reaching out for whatever it spontaneously
desires, trying desperately to find some comforting temporary shred
of warmth in a mostly cold world, totally unconcerned about the
external form in which that other, long-desired heart is embodied.
That
is not the kind of world in which I wish to live.
I,
for one, intend to become ever more firmly male, enjoying my golden
years, while watching P become ever more female, each of us vigilant
for any hint of ambiguity in the other.
And
as our children grow, should they begin to show the slightest hint of
some lingering residue of the opposite gender, P and I will lovingly
pull them aside and list all the particulars by which we were able to
identify their unintentional deficiency.
Then,
together, we will devise a suitable correction.
And in this way, the
race will go on.
Sincerely,
Ken Byron
115 Delton Way
Leadville, PA 13246
the
red
activist judges to step in on my behalf, manipulating the system to
accommodate my peculiarity?
No,
I did not.
What
I did was I changed. I undertook what I like to think of as a classic
American project of self-improvement. I made videos of myself
talking, and studied these, and in time succeeded in training myself
to speak more slowly, while almost never moving my hands. Now, if you
ever meet me, you will observe that I always speak in an extremely
slow and manly and almost painfully deliberate way, with my hands
either driven deep into my pockets or held stock-still at the ends of
my arms, which are bent slightly at the elbows, as if I were ready to
respond to the slightest provocation by punching you in the face. As
for my opinions, they are very firm. I rarely change them. When I
feel like skipping, I absolutely do not skip. As for my long
beautiful hair—well, I am lucky, in that I am rapidly going
bald. Every month, when I recalculate my ranking on the Manly Scale,
I find myself becoming more and more Manly, as my hair gets thinner
and my girth increases, thickening my once lithe, almost girlish
physique, thus insuring the continuing morality and legality of my
marriage to "P."
My
point is simply this: If I was able to effect these tremendous
positive changes in my life, to avoid finding myself in the
moral/legal quagmire of a Samish-Sex Marriage, why can't "K,"
"S," "L," "H," "T," and "O"
do the same?
I
implore any of my readers who find themselves in a Samish-Sex
Marriage: Change. If you are a feminine man, become more manly. If
you are a masculine woman, become more feminine. If you are a woman
and are thick-necked or lumbering, or have ever had the slightest
feeling of attraction to a man who is somewhat pale and fey, deny
these feelings and, in a spirit of self-correction, try to become
more thin-necked and light-footed, while, if you find it helpful,
watching videos of naked masculine men, to sort of retrain yourself
in the proper mode of attraction. If you are a man and, upon seeing a
thick-waisted, athletic young woman walking with a quasi-mannish gait
through your local grocery, you imagine yourself in a passionate
embrace with her, in your car, a car that is parked just outside, and
which is suddenly, in your imagination, full of the smell of her
fresh young breath—well, stop thinking that! Are you a man or
not?
I,
for one, am sick and tired of this creeping national tendency to let
certain types of people take advantage of our national good nature by
marrying individuals who are essentially of their own gender. If this
trend continues, before long our towns and cities will be full of
people like "K," "S," "L," "H,"
"T," and "O" "asserting their rights"
by dating, falling in love with, marrying, and spending the rest of
their lives with whomever they please.
I,
for one, am not about to stand by and let that happen.
Because
then what will we have? A nation ruled by the anarchy of
unconstrained desire. A nation of willful human hearts, each lurching
this way and that and reaching out for whatever it spontaneously
desires, trying desperately to find some comforting temporary shred
of warmth in a mostly cold world, totally unconcerned about the
external form in which that other, long-desired heart is embodied.
That
is not the kind of world in which I wish to live.
I,
for one, intend to become ever more firmly male, enjoying my golden
years, while watching P become ever more female, each of us vigilant
for any hint of ambiguity in the other.
And
as our children grow, should they begin to show the slightest hint of
some lingering residue of the opposite gender, P and I will lovingly
pull them aside and list all the particulars by which we were able to
identify their unintentional deficiency.
Then,
together, we will devise a suitable correction.
And in this way, the
race will go on.
Sincerely,
Ken Byron
115 Delton Way
Leadville, PA 13246
the
red
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