The
Glove Of A Good Woman is the most vivid imaginary cave picture in
the mind of Cro-Modern Man today. It's the only thing men think
about, if you don't count Exciting Sporting Events. To a man, The
Glove Of A Good Woman is a magical object, like the Holy Grail or a
new credit card, which promises to make his pain go away and keep
him feeling happy inside and safe from harm. In this it also
resembles morphine and organized religion.
Despite the enormous progress in scientific
doubletalk since 1945, men remain very superstitious people. In
their magical way of thinking, The Glove Of A Good Woman is a divine
power fetish, laden with ju-ju, that will somehow
rescue them from their nasty, expensive habits and
self-destructive lifestyles. All by itself.
Wherever men gather, hunting and drinking in the
asphalt jungle, cheering their totemic warrior substitutes at
Exciting Sporting Events, or ingesting Talking Plants with clan
brothers in live/work lofts, you hear them say, "If
I just had The Glove Of A Good Woman, I wouldn't
destroy myself like this. The Glove Of A Good Woman would save
me." At this point on the curve (8.3 drinks or 12:55 a.m.
Mountain Time), the men sincerely believe what they are
saying, or at least, that they are saying it.
In fact, a man obsessed with The Glove Of A Good
Woman can speak of nothing else. He sees it in his dreams each
night. He yearns for it every time a Good Woman enters the room, or
doesn't, as the case may be.
This obsession generates romeopneuronic energy
deep in the man's Everglades. Gathering velocity as it is pumped
into his Middle-Atlantic Region by the warm waters of his Gulf
Stream and the accompanying hot air, The Glove
achieves critical mass confusion on credit and
spontaneously ignites over Long Island Sound, becoming a fiery
incandescent image in his Connecticut Unconscious. The man has A
Burning Glove In His Heart.
The most extraordinary aspect of this pyrocaardiac
fantasy is how the manbehaves after he has finally gotten his hands
on The Glove (typically through stealth or subterfuge sharpened by
thousands of years of hunting animal
brothers and the Good Woman).
He becomes calm. He feels happy and secure. And
successful. He thinks he's got something. He ceases his infantile
self-destructiveness, or at least cuts back somewhat. During this
initial, or courting phase, the man worships his
treasured Glove Object, stroking it, praising it,
promising it things, taking it out all the time and showing it off
to his friends. He gives it sweet little kisses and invents
Imaginary Stories in its honor, some of them very
clever and Romantic.
Women can't wait to give their Glove to a man like
that. Unbelievably, men's crafty ways continue to fool many a Good
Woman, even though their mothers tell them all about it years ahead
of time.
And their mothers are right, too. You can take the
man out of the cave but you can't take the cave out of the man. His
charming behavior is only a temporary warming trend (Interglacial
Romance). Sooner or later the man is
compelled by his sulking Ice Age nature to
mistreat and abuse The Glove he once desired above all other things.
He begins by taking little bites out of it. Then
the bites get bigger. And more frequent. The man's Ice Age
regression accelerates and before long he is walking all over The
Glove, lying on it, and to it, or using it as a dropcloth for one of
his imaginary cave pictures. Sooner or later he buries it in the
yard and forgets where he put it.
When the Good Woman realizes the man has lost her
Glove and can't return it, she takes whatever Glove she has left and
leaves him to his sorry fate. Then the man howls and whines
piteously. He runs around in circles digging holes
all over the yard, desperately seeking The Glove
he has lost, so he can repossess it and be magically saved. All over
again.
This wailing and weeping is nothing but the man's
Ice Age Thermo-Pneurotic Glove Complex venting itself. Eventually
his crying subsides to an occasional whimper and some scratching.
Before you know it, the man is once again attending Exciting
Sporting Events, listening to Talking Plants, painting the cave
walls of his mind, and swearing to his clan brothers that he would
give all of it up in a heartbeat for The Glove Of A Good Woman.
Another one.
Is it any wonder that some people don't believe in
evolution?
Robert Hurley
