A recent news program concerning the growing use of steroids among teenagers sent me to bed with a disturbing image stuck in my mind, and judging from the manner in which I later found myself entangled with my blankets, I would guess that my dreams that night had been rather disturbing as well.<\/p>\n
The image in my head as I wound down to sleep was of an adolescent girl \u2013 who couldn\u2019t have been more than 90 pounds dripping wet \u2013 flexing a bicep which appeared to have been destined for a middle-weight boxer but ended up on her shoulder in some sort of genetic miscue.\u00a0 It seemed wholly out of place on that body, for none of her other muscle systems were developed proportionally.\u00a0 My first impression conjured up scenes from Popeye cartoons where, after downing the can of spinach, Popeye\u2019s arm would explode to gargantuan size, which leads, of course, to the inevitable pummeling of Brutus or some other bad guy.<\/p>\n
Only, the look on this girl\u2019s face wasn\u2019t that of Popeye going \u201cYuk yuk yuk\u201d as he sends Brutus to the moon.\u00a0 Oh no, this look was one of an almost mean determination, square into the camera with not even a hint of humor about it.\u00a0 This was a look you\u2019d expect from Brutus had he ever gotten to the spinach first.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know exactly what happened during my dream, but when I awoke, swaddled in covers drenched with sweat, I felt as though it was I who had just been to the moon \u2013 and back.\u00a0 Visions of that arm launching a fist into my face kept stabbing me awake.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t get back to sleep, wondering why was she punching me?\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t done anything bad to her, had I?<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes, attempting to relax, and began a comprehensive review of my entire life…ravaging my mind, searching for anything in the past which may have precipitated hostility towards me, trying desperately to recall each and every lousy thing I may have done to anyone, ransacking blindly through closets of consciousness my conscience had hidden and, in the process, exposing a part of me previously unknown.\u00a0 This disturbed me.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t relax, so I rolled over face first into my pillow and tried to clear my head.\u00a0 The air came hard.\u00a0 After a while, I began to feel a bit dizzy.<\/p>\n
It was then, as though brought forth by some strange presence, that I felt the slow creep of latent guilt amassed from centuries of tyranny visit me through channels of ancestry I knew little about.\u00a0 I saw my forefathers performing evil acts upon those not like them, forefathers related to me only through anatomy and hue, but forefathers who\u2019ve ruled the helm since long before the Caesars; and forefathers, who in the chronicles of this country, have taken everything, calling it theirs.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s face it, we homeboys of the lighter complexion are long overdue for a stomping by those we\u2019ve historically oppressed.\u00a0 The Indians had their Little Bighorn, but we\u2019ve got the land and they\u2019re on the reservation.\u00a0 The slaves were emancipated over a century ago, but we still hold the keys to the big house.\u00a0 However, these persecutions have fallen in our favor only because \u201cwe\u201d had the numbers on \u201cthem.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m afraid with women it\u2019s going to be different.\u00a0 This time they\u2019ve got the majority \u2013 no doubt because we\u2019ve had to traditionally hunt game, fight wars and do all the other dirty work of civilization while they stayed at home, bonding with one another and strengthening those X-chromosomes.<\/p>\n
But please, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019m not anti-feminist, never have been.\u00a0 I know a losing battle when I see one.\u00a0 I had no complaints in the \u201860s when women began burning their bras and stopped shaving their legs and underarms, and I was all for their entry into the corporate workforce during the \u201870s and \u201880s.\u00a0 Hell, I even page through Ms. <\/em>magazine while waiting in the dentist\u2019s office, and I don\u2019t care who sees me.\u00a0 But now it\u2019s the \u201890s and I\u2019m afraid a new age is dawning, and this era is going to be spelled ERA.\u00a0 They\u2019ve come a long way, baby, from the Garden of Eden, and the guilt is long gone from Eve\u2019s original sin.\u00a0 Behold, the sisters of the late 20th<\/sup> Century:\u00a0 They\u2019re liberated, they\u2019re fit and they have an awfully good memory.\u00a0 I just want to go someplace and hide.<\/p>\n Aw, maybe I shouldn\u2019t get so worked up.\u00a0 I\u2019ll bet I\u2019m exaggerating this whole thing in my mind.\u00a0 That girl most likely didn\u2019t do that to her arm so she could bash guys like me.\u00a0 It was probably just an act of vanity, or perhaps some form of juvenile role reversal.\u00a0 Maybe she\u2019s just another consumer of the \u2018bigger is better\u2019 philosophy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Yet, I still have this creepy feeling that someday I\u2019m going to get smeared, and not for anything I did but just for being what I am, the product of impudent ancestry.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got to get my karma fixed.\u00a0 This sort of thing just ain’t fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A recent news program concerning the growing use of steroids among teenagers sent me to bed with a disturbing image stuck in my mind, and judging from the manner in which I later found myself entangled with my blankets, I would guess that my dreams that night had been rather disturbing as well. The image […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[69,68,67],"class_list":["post-1286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-ethnic-guilt","tag-gender-war","tag-teen-steroid-abuse"],"yoast_head":"\n