Friday, March 9, 2012

It's a Y Chromosome Thing

"Why is busting shit up so satisfying....except I mean when you don't mean to?"
My foreman laughed knowingly, but said "I don't know."

I was in Rex's shop, breaking down some of the many, many cardboard boxes that accompany plumbing components. My winter job has been a godsend for learning new things, getting in touch with the trades again, getting the map of the island; for things like wrestling gas bottles, snapping off cast iron drain lines, using a blowtorch to connect pipes AND for rapidly starting the morning fire in the shop stove, cutting and smashing up walls and ceilings to get old pipe out and new pipe in. It's all fundamentally satisfying.

Breaking things, burning stuff, internal combustion, big amplifiers, loud drums, not wanting to ask directions, and especially not wanting advice about what turn was probably the right one after you've gone past it, misinterpreting kindness for romance, thinking communication means a two way exchange of information and emotional experience- and that a few minutes of that is probably plenty, "fixing" things until they're really broken, then blaming it on piss poor design, profanity as a problem solving strategy, beer, football. All of these things and so many others are, in the big picture, equally enjoyable for all chromosome configurations, but may trend toward a predisposition in Y chromers.

So it is with warm weather and the Carhart and pickup truck brigades here on North Haven. A couple of days of warm weather and everybody's got the mantra going. "Time to get gear in the water...Time to get the boat overboard...Got your gear work done yet?" This kind of nature-driven horniness for internal combustion, profanity, beer, the ocean and other basic food groups of the testosterone complex seemed to happen abruptly. Thursday was suddenly warm. That pretty much did it. In addition, the daylight crept in at 5:30 instead of bankers' hours, and I first heard, then saw Canada Geese going overhead.

I of course, being the sophisticated and sensitive fellow am immune....