Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #36 🥃

Fifty Shades of Perimenopause and Late Night Urination

QUICK HITTERS:

1. Thanks to my Substack friend Matt Cyr for filling in for an MIA Travis on the SilentPunt Podcast this week. We talked about Philly & Southern food, Hulk Hogan and Pro Wrestling, College Football, and AI in banking. Find it here.

2. Speaking of Travis, he and I have both discussed previously the most despicable people on the planet. No, not Cowboys fans. People who don’t return their shopping carts. We have found our spirit animal….

3. This week’s book recommendation is Weapons Of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O’Neil. If you are as big a dork as I am about AI and algorithms, this may not be the book for you, as there was a lot of stuff in here I’ve read before. So I skimmed a bit, but still found it enjoyable and informative. Right in the SilentPunt wheelhouse.

   

   Maverick is tired in this photo, not sad. I promise.

4. Shout out to Lisa Hides, as her post A Midlife Mom Writes A Porno, was the inspiration for this week’s GOING DEEP. If you haven’t read it do so now! Ok, not literally now, but like later. Definitely later.

GOING DEEP:

He awakes after five hours of mostly pee-interrupted, frigid sleep. She has the temperature in the house all the way down to 63 degrees overnight. Cool enough for her perimenopausal self to sleep soundly, as well as hasten the creeping arthritis in his back and knees. 

Stepping on three jagged dog toys on his way to yet another bladder emptying, he ensures his partner in matrimonial bliss stays happily asleep by using his cell phone to light the way to the bathroom.

All is well until he emits an unintentionally loud, “fu*k,” after stepping on the carcass of yet another half-annihilated dog toy. Pausing for a moment to ensure his Queen’s beauty rest remains intact, he enters the bathroom again for the night’s last urination. 

Or is it the new day’s first? In the fog of his early onset CTE and wafting aroma of Pottery Barn furniture, it is hard to tell.

She may be Queen of this particular domicile. What, with her stylish pumps, killer career, and effervescent personality. However, should it please the court, I ask: “Can she hit a 260-yard draw around a dog-leg left?”

I think not.

Case dismissed.

Next, he is off to deal with the two sleeping canines in the laundry room. Both mother and child love the pooch companions with all of their hearts. Mother even goading father into rescuing the second one with veiled threats of divorce. 

Or worse, celibacy.

It is only right, then, that he is in charge of their morning routine. Which on this day consists of also cleaning the cage of the beagle, who very thoughtfully has puked out the remnants of the sock he stole and devoured from the child’s bedroom last week. 

What with her busy schedule of watching TikTok videos and purchasing used sweat apparel on resale clothing websites, the teenage daughter cannot be concerned with keeping her socks in the proper receptacle.

After the rancid-smelling dog cage and laundry room have been cleaned, the dogs walked and fed, laundry sorted and started, it is off to wake the Princess from her twelve-hour slumber. 

The teenager has two alarm clocks (excluding the one on her phone, which is currently three inches from her head), but cannot be awakened by anything other than her parents.

To whom she growls at upon seeing with her first light of this glorious day.

And these jokes about the child, funny as they may be, are in no way an effort by the father to mask his insecurities. Insecure because this 15-year-old is smarter, kinder, and funnier than he can ever hope to be.

Yeah, well, can she pee standing up?

Upon re-entry to the master bedroom, he finds his wife has finally joined the land of the living. Admiring her sinewy yet glamourously hourglass frame, cattywompous hair, and fuzzy socks, he wonders what he has done to be so lucky.

The day proceeds like most others: 

• Daughter texting her needs from school (where cell phones are prohibited), and father ignoring said texts. 

• Preparation of weekly meals, the majority of which will not be consumed.

• Completing inside and outside chores, including, but not limited to:

  a. Multiple duvet changes. 

  b. Power washing the already clean deck, so that it looks cleaner.

  c. Returning clothing to four different stores (in four different shopping centers), that had been purchased online by wife, but curiously, need to be returned in person.

After the high school day concludes, he is there to pick up the daughter. Never mind his tax dollars, which allow for school buses that could theoretically shuttle her home.

In the infinite wisdom of the local school district the ride to their home, which would be a 10-minute walk, entails a 55-minute trek through the local community before finally delivering the child to the neighborhood.

All of this rendering pointless the purchase of a home for its proximity to schools. The father has been told by his elders that someday his child will be appreciative of things such as these. That all of the moodiness and attitude he is receiving now will be repaid tenfold. 

Maybe he will even be lucky enough to bask in the glory of grandchildren. Who will become moody and entitled teenagers just in time for it to be the last thing he experiences before the sweet release of death.

The rest of the afternoon is filled with dinner preparations, dog wrangling, Uber driving (the free variety), and ignoring text threads varying in degrees of woke-ism, misogynistic undertones, and golf TikToks. 

Thus are the circles that this middle-aged man, who has both liberal and conservative friends, finds himself in. He has toes dipped in multiple rivers, none of which he calls home.

But both of which he will pee in.

Full disclosure: I don’t own a sweater.

Dinner is served as a family for the first time in a week. After being partially consumed, the teenager clears the dishes, as this is one of her three chores. She cheerfully finishes putting the last one into the dishwasher and asks, “Can I go back upstairs now?”

Alas, more TikToks await. 

Wife then whispers to husband in a quiet, sultry voice, “You wanna do it?”

Husband replies: “Totally, I’ll get the peanut oil.”

With that, they proceed to make the homemade popcorn they enjoy several nights a week as they partake in their lone television program of the day. Air-popped, organic kernels, covered with peanut oil and truffle salt.

Truly orgasmic.

Later that evening, the wife is unable to sleep. As her body roasts and pulsates from perimenopausal heat sweats, she slides a foot under her husband’s leg. Comatose from the popcorn-NCIS-whiskey trifecta, he doesn’t budge.

She slides closer, both feet now under his legs, her head nestled close to his. Still, nary a stir from this utterly useless, log of a man. 

She decides to take that log into her own hands. He awakens, dazed and excited, and they are off to the races.

When they finish, she fulfilled and oddly cool, rolls over to bask in six more uninterrupted hours of glorious slumber.

He gets up to pee.

Did you have fun reading this? Click below to refer a friend! You didn’t have fun? Then why the frick are you still here? Go watch a Cowboys game, you hoser.