PREFACE

PREFACE



THE BASTARD BY THE BAY.

Okay, so who am I what makes me such the expert? This is the kind of information typically articulated on jacket covers but there's a lot bigger point to make so here it is in this introductory section.




First of all I'm in no way traditionally qualified to write this book. I'm not a PhD or have any other formal education as it relates to humanity, relationship dynamics, psychology, or psychiatry. The term Doktor was bestowed upon me about ten years ago by a collective of followers, all of whom benefited greatly by the information I possessed as learned throughout my adulthood, but more on that as we go forward.

The great new catch-phrase of the new millennium is "Life is what happens when you're busy doing other things". For me, nothing could be closer to the truth. To a greater degree than most, nothing I've done in this life has been pre-determined. Everything I've done so far though has been obviously pre-destined. Every time I've planned to the left, I was thrown to the right. All too often the best laid plans were derailed well before the train ever left the station. All eventualities have led to this book and it's all been by nothing more than sheer happenstance, or was it?

To reach this particular juncture of life required enorrnous degrees of Common sense, observation and objectivity. I've been married once, have no children and have had no known accidental offspring. My participation in life has been largely without the distractions and responsibilities of home and family. My Common sense quotient has been a psychological struggle of reason, often-times contrary to the academic achievements of others and what we all perceive as reliable information through the written word and the establishment as it exists today. It's the little voice inside us all that whispers, speaks or screams, Bullshit!! The conflict is oftentimes surrendered in the face of sheer mental exhaustion.

Today, there are a million reasons why men and women struggle to get along; this is up from about 800,000 reasons in 1970. Directly or indirectly, I'll be addressing a good 750,000 of them in this book. The rest is up to you.
I'm no different than any other American, I've been down every dirt road a relationship can endure, several relationships actually. The difference between me and most of you is, I've been through several ringers and done it more objectively.
Objectivity in failed relationships? Can't be, right? Right, they weren't objective at the time, none of them were. Each ended with anger, pain, and all the bad behaviors which often prevail, but in retrospect once all the smoke cleared from each one, all the pieces assembled in the bigger picture that has become my very-objective-view on life.

Upon the demise of each relationship, I didn't saddle up to and embrace the pain, I didn't subscribe to victimhood on
any of them. I recovered from them in time and never did I find sole-culpability in the other person because that's rarely ever
the case.

Now, back at the reality-ranch, I've heard myself called a Bastard more times than I could ever begin to count. In jest to my face or in reference to me in the conversations of others at social settings, in arguments, in whispers, in interoffice communications of various means, you name it, the message rang through. At times, depending on the person making the claim or observation as it may be, it's been a bit diffrcult to hear, at others, not so much.

The problem is, I have no mechanism to filter what I'm thinking. Typically, whatever I'm thinking leaves my mouth within a nanosecond of the thought and then I'm sometimes dealing with the aftermath for weeks, months, or even years. This has rarely been a good thing for me and in no way do I consider this anything short of a character flaw.

The honesty part of it is good in this world of Anything But. The Bastard Big mouthed part of me isn't merely a spontaneous burst of eventual regrets-oh no-it gets much worse with any level of pre-meditation as anyone that's ever received a confrontational letter from me will attest in spades of neon and rhinestone. My methodology can seem insensitive to most, extreme and even downright heartless (especially when advocating a cause) but throughout the heart of any matter, there's a titanium bolt of truth holding it together and a tenibly low threshold of impatience driving the message.

This has been an ongoing problem for me as finding a woman that possesses the tenacity to put up with this shit has been a challenge; especially the older I get. Being the seeker of all truths has enlightened me to societal issues the likes of this book and by my stepping back and taking in the whole picture I've managed to become angry at the stupidity of the American-human condition. It's impossible for me to remain quiet about a great many things and here's a prime example of how dating me and my bullshit can become an issue.


I'll call her Sarah for the purposes of this story to protect her true identity. Sarah was the epitome of beauty, style and grace, I guess you could safely say she was my exact opposite. To call us the odd-couple was the insult odd people as she was truly all that. and I was truly all me.

That holiday season I was to accompany her to a social function of several entertainment industry colleagues of hers. All dressed up to kill, we were on our way to the home of the man giving the party and throughout the car-ride Sarah was briefing me on proper etiquette and pleoding with me in every fashion possible to behave just this once, even if it was just this one time all year, to even consider it her Christmas gift! I impatiently nodded as if I were a nine year old being told to wash my hands after using the bathroom.

Once we arrived and not long after the first cocktail, as is often the case at social gatherings, we became separated. I simply took the initiotive to circulate through the crowd and see if there was any truly interesting conversations taking place that I could become a part of. The further from her influences I got, the less conscious I remained of all the damned rules she laid out for me in the car.

It didn't take long and I happened upon a growing number of party-goers crowding around a woman who I came to find out was preaching the gospel of Female Superiority. The group was pretty much evenly split between men and women all taking in the half-lecture, half-maniacal rant of this woman, who I never actually met and have no idea who she was even to this very day. As it turns out, this was my very first indoctrination into societal emasculation although I had no idea at the time that's how one would define it. It was an interesting sight. The body language fascinated and disgusted me all at the same time. All the women took up a posture as though they were ready, willing and able to go into an all out battle and many of the men became loose, shoulders down, heads often hanging with eyes to the floor. None of the men in attendance presented any challenge to this man-hating Gloria Steinem wannabe, not a single, solitary one. I found myself mysteriously drqwn to her as I scooched in closer and closer, shoulder to shoulder, not wanting to miss out on a single sentence this woman uttered.

As one might expect, my bullshit meter was awakening the sleeping bastard, the little devil jumped up on my right shoulder a little before the angel appeared on my left. It wasn't long before the first shots were fired in the ongoing internal war of wills, each battle always being settled by the bastard. As the angel pitched visions of the grace of Sarah from her beauty and brains to her in black laced teddy and all the fantasies of a future; the devil countered with the masturbatory hand references and spoke the loud and clear Iogic the bastard lives and dies by. "Just how long do you really think you'll be able to maintain a girl like that in a relationship anyway? " That particular logic was enough to propel me to the front row position in this virtual theater of nonsense and stand guard over the masculine virtues of the Americqn Male; nobody else in the hell was. I was so close to this woman I could feel the heot of her verbal horseshit where the devil-upon dominant ground-fired the fatal shot. "Look how badly she's taking down the brotherhood!" Thoughts of Sarah became so distant at that very moment she could have been in an entirely dffirent dimension.

Ms Female Superiority then proclaimed how she's on the very verge of attacking Corporate America with every intention of obliterating-by legal means if necessary-the "Glass Ceiling" of which keeps women at lower levels of management and lower pay than men. Suddenly, one of those nanoseconds passed that I spoke of earlier as I blurted out how it will require a Hysterectomy to justify such a measure in Corporate America.

Mere words can't describe the voracity of her demeanor as her entire being focused upon me (and only me) as she stopped millimeters short of a complete utter implosion. It's impossible to remember all the details of this exchange as it happened so many years ago, suffice it to say, security was summoned to intervene and being well down the guest list of importance, I was escorted to the door, without Sarah.

This was undoubtedly the nicest place I had ever been thrown out of, there was no question of it. I roamed around outside and found a nice little heated gazebo with cushioned seats and hung out until I was discovered by that special someone that I came there with. When she eventually found me-as one might well imagine-her enthusiasm with being my date was less than stellar. It wasn't long after this particular evening that she broke up with me citing that particular occurrence among several as the reasons why.

So you see, the devil turned out to be right! I stood my ground and did intellectual battle for all American Mankind until I was in mid-summation being ushered out to the front yard.

In a nutshell, this is me.

So now, here I stand amongst the leagues of professionals, many that have written scores of books before me. A concrete truth I've discovered on countless occasions is how we Americans are educated, trained, taught, etc, etc, conditioned to believe andlor perform to a particular level in most instances a strictly controlled outcome. Metaphorically speaking, educated into a Box. In the vast majority of cases, professionals possess an arrogance of unfounded superiority whereby their degree displaces any common sense to any contrary occrurence and the ability to consider any altemative methodology is vehemently denied with a passion.

My experiences and observations in the mental health fields with almost all American traditions, is to pursue the dollar above all else. As long as that's the prime motivator, believe me, your best interests are not being served. There's a hell of a lot of new conditions being discovered/invented all the time to appeal to the ever growing American hypochondriac that come complete with a drug to treat the symptoms and years of therapy to perpetuate the treatment.

I firmly believe that pretty much anything short of the clinically insane can be diagnosed in a maximum of three days and cured in twenty-eight. The diagnosis is simple in the majority of the cases because most people suffer from a small variety of common dysfunctions, then the behavior modifications require 28 days, as the mental health community has already proven. This all could be accomplished drug-free for $995.00, but that wouldn't be cost-effective for them, nor would it be acceptable for many of you. Too many of you prefer a dysfunctional label rather than accept or even embrace your differences.

The American mind has largely sunken to the depths of the need for excuses and victim hood. We all honestly believe it has to be more complicated and it gives us all time to plan whether or not we ever want to discard that excuse we've embraced for all these many years. For many, it's much easier to live with the excuse than to live without it.

If ever you get to know mental health professionals that happen to have interpersonal relationship difficulties, it's interesting to watch them try to deal with their own problems in the same fashion they treat others. Many of the behavioral changes they are convinced are key to the ailing relationship as outlined in a textbook are nonsense and it's not until they're on the same field playing the same game as their patients do they realize it's nonsense, well the smart ones do anyway. Then they often times wind up in worse shape than any of us ever dreamed of trying to override the worsening symptoms with new versions of the same nonsense to the point one or the other of the two grabs a rifle and climbs a clock tower.

As I've mentioned, there's relatively few dysfunctional traits that affect us. We all think we're unique and we're treated as unique for fun and profit, but we're not. We're no different than every other Tom, Dick and Harriet on the block and the truth of this matter comes to light when discussed within our peer group. It's the simplicity of basic instincts that is the real impetus of this book and it's my intention to illustrate how very few of us are living our lives along the lines of this instinct. It's been a fascinating journey to learn, a fascination I'm confident you'll share with an open mind.