The Other Bad Boy

It was my father who taught me how to cook. Sure, my mother and grandmother contributed, but the bulk of my culinary memories involve my father. There was a reason for this, certainly. This came out one night, after my mother and father had a...discussion. My father took my G n' R Lies CD and was playing the song I Used to Love Her over and over again. As we were making the meal, my father was explaining to me the divinity of cooking and the most important reason for me to learn how to do it.

"So you'll never need a fucking woman," he said.

There has been a joke over the years, with several friends, acquaintances, and otherwise; that I can cook, clean, I get my groceries, and do the laundry, one day, I'd make someone a wonderful wife. The only things I cannot do is sew, and I've yet to master ironing, but that would require me to have an article of clothing that needed ironing in the first place. Another joke is I have been doing metrosexual years before it was cool. Whatever. I just see it as the way it is. Why some of the cats I know think it's a big deal is a bit of mystery.

I'm not intimidating. Anyone who says different is either daft or trying to sell something. Still, sometimes I get lucky, and pull off the spooky moment. There has also been the rare occasion of not even trying.

An example of this was some years ago; there was this girl I was kind of sweet on. Thankfully, she was a little sweet back, because one-way love/lust affairs just suck. At one point, she told me I scared her. Of course, I asked her why.

"Because you're a bad boy," she replied.

After I got done laughing, I told her that was bunch of who shot john. Lee, who was at the pinnacle of man-whore ways back then was a bad boy, complete with punk rock attitude. That stereotypical rockabilly boy we'd seen a night before was a bad boy.

Me? No, I'm not the nice guy. I know me too well, I'm the worst kind of bastard with the morals of an alley cat. Be that as it may, I sure as fuck was not a bad boy.

"No, not like that," she said. "You're not a bad boy in the sense of needing the love of a good woman or needing to be fixed. You couldn't do the typical if you tried. You're a bad boy because of knowing how to cook and because you can take care of yourself. You don't need anyone, and half the time, it doesn't seem like you want anyone."

Interesting. Really. Someone I knew once sighted in the social construct of reality females will sometimes be suckered for playing the role of caregiver and nurturer. And here I take umbrage to the idea of being molly-coddled.

"I don't get to have you," a girl once said to me.

"That's because I don't belong to nobody," I told her, I think there was a growl in voice at the time. The idea of being anyone's property or territory has always made me uneasy.

It's true, though. I decide who I give myself to, and just how much. And just as I giveth, I can taketh away. That's more for my own self-preservation than anything else. These days, I have given completely myself to a girl who was just wacky enough to jump off the twilight end of the world with me.

When I think of bad boys, I think of Lee, at the pinnacle of man-whore ways back then, complete with the punk rock attitude, or that stereotypical rockabilly boy. I kind of chuckle when I think of the women that love them. Suckers. And of course, the nice guys, trying to save the poor hapless girls from those bad boys who will never change.

I remember that one girl saying I was scary. Because my father taught me things so I wouldn't need a fucking woman, I was some sort of dysfunctional bad boy. To this day, that whole conversation makes me laugh. Although, I confess, I sometimes wonder if there's not some sort of weird truth it.

Hmmm. The thought of me being the other bad boy? Or would it be the other white meat? Maybe it's all one and the same.