Land of Man

In my work as an office manager at a scooter shop I feel I have entered an alternative universe comprised solely of men. The last few years has been such and still is an education of this place.

In Southern California in the industrial complexes are filled with smart men who are craftsmen and innovators. They make tools and parts and make things faster. They chrome and straighten forks. It may seem dull or silly that I am remarking about this.

It is just such a different from the world I had been from. In the past the offices and most of my co-workers were women. The first job I had was behind a makeup counter at a department store. Most women don’t want to know how things work. We want to pretend that cars are like driving houses and we don’t want to know that things can come apart and all little nuts and bolts and pistons, cylinders that make up an engine.

It is almost as if I have been forced to take a good hard look at the owner’s manual and the exploded view of the parts. I have learned about intake manifolds and performance pipes. Big bore pipes, carbs and gasket kits. At the Vegas rally I listened to a man give me the information of some pipes that can be re-packed. To my horror I knew what he was talking about.

The men I have met have been interesting. They can tune and bore with precision, but none of them can clean or keep paper work organized. By and large they are all Caucasian, not that other ethnic groups are exulted from this world, they just don’t seem to be interested. There are all kinds of schools that can teach anyone how to pull apart a motorcycle engine.

In the last few years, since entering the land of man, it doesn’t make me hate them. I have found a greater understanding of them. The thing about women that only have other women for friends, they never really get men. Women always make things more complicated than it needs to be. Men are really so simple, like a baked potatoes, what you see is what you get. They don’t really change either; woman may spin out of control, in the way the view an argument. To the men it is usually pretty cut and dry. They don’t work hard enough to be complicated. And once something is discussed they don’t obsess about it later, they let it go. They have too much to worry about making money and taking care of things to worry about needy women.

This is just a few of the things I have learned in the land of man. The really good stuff I am saving for a novel.