Maureen Dowd? Is that You?
I think I’m hallucinating. Thumbing through a copy of Are Men Necessary? I can only conclude that the answer is no. Sure, there’s the NBA and men’s college basketball, because no one wants to see the two hand set shot anymore, but, beyond that, changing tires, which is hardly necessary anymore what with the tire innovations lately, maybe by Goodrich or Goodyear, who are men or were before they died, maybe still are for all I know, walking around in lab coats studying polymers; other than that I can’t think of additional uses for men, utilities in modern speak, or modalities as Tom Clancy once said over four thousand times in the last desperate hours of civilization. If you use the word modality in a novel it should be during a sex scene because sex sells although without men I am not sure how true that will prove to be down the road because I can’t quite envision women at a car show wanting to buy an Aston-Martin with a supermodel in a bikini draped over the hood.
Maybe men are necessary if only to sell things to. I can certainly recall going to auto show and seeing an Aston Martin with a supermodel in a bikini draped over the hood and I remember thinking that I’d better buy this car right now before the entire illusion fades, but first, let’s imagine that the model is smiling because she is stunned by your ensemble of green curduroy pants and Yankees teeshirt and she wants to go home with you in your new car and since she’s wearing a bikini she probably wants to go swimming although the high heeled shoes she’s wearing are a contrary indicator because who goes swimming in high heeled shoes? Yeah, that’s right, supermodels do.
Let’s say you’ve got the Aston Martin and you’ve got the supermodel although it is weird driving a car with a woman on the hood but she waves to passersby, she has poise, the weather is cooperating if only in furtherance of the fantasy although a moment of truth you failed to recognize is fast approaching because your pool is an inflatable Fred Flinstone Pool, probably not the sort of pool for high heels and lo and behold someone’s reading a book poolside and all you can do is say, “Maureen Dowd? What are you doing here?”