ASK A MAN #102: ABOUT NAGGING
“How do I make it sound less like nagging and more like reminding?”
“It is of Hebrew origin, and the meaning of Samuel is ‘God heard’. Also possibly as ‘requested of God…’”
While I’m no expert in regards to dude-on-dude relationships, I’m going to assume that your domestic partnership is just like the traditional male-female relationship only with 100% more man parts involved. Actually since monogomy is as mythical and rare as the female orgasm, most relationships have more knobs involved than your typical mosh pit but fewer than a Congressional session.
Since you’re asking the question instead of giving out answers I’m guessing you take on the female role in your partnership so my advice to you is to use your supernatural ability to imagine ways to improve interior decoration schemes, but use this skill to imagine yourself as the dominant partner. Imagine yourself running around and doing things, making decisions, dealing with immediate situations like bear attacks or “bear” attacks, driving well, and staving off the advancement of the French by recreating log traps you saw in that Swiss Robinson movie. I think there were net traps as well, but few things are as satisfying as felling trees and trimming them down to their trunks, then arranging them using your Y chromosome-endowed engineering skills in a precariously balanced heap in order to crush your enemies like so much foie gras! I don’t know for sure what foie gras is, but it sounds as if it’s mushy and French, so that’s what I meant by that last simile.
So anyway, imagine yourself out there doing things like stacking up gigantic logs and suddenly this person who knows everything but can’t stack logs and doesn’t even uderstand why you’re out there stacking logs in the first place, this person comes out to remind you that… Look, it’s like I can’t even imagine what would need to be reminded about because everything that’s important is being dealt with.
So what you should do is bring out a beer or, in your case, a wine cooler, because stacking logs is sweaty work, then praise the progress on the log trap, hand over the wine cooler, and then as your “husband” takes a swig, look with love and longing at the bulge in his plum-smuggler shorts, and then remind him of whatever it is you happen to think is so important that you have to interrupt the all-important task of shoring up domestic defense against the incursion of foreign threats.
And even though this is the best possible way to “make it sound less like nagging,” it’s still nagging and you shouldn’t do it. He heard your request the first time.
© 2011 Anthony Robert Russo