It's The Principle of the Thing

Wouldn't it be nice if doing the right thing was just a little more... rewarding?

And I'll be honest, I'm not talking about a warm righteous glow. I'm not talking about the sleep of the just.

I mean the sleep of the just after.

Wouldn't it be nice to do the right thing... and get laid for it?

But noooooo... Doing the right thing always means that you don'tget laid.

Sometimes not getting laid isthe right thing to do.

Dammit.

Many, many times (it was the 80s and it was necessary) have I brought viciously drunk women back to their home (sometimes having peeled them from the clutches of my less principled acquaintances), and put them to bed.

Alone.

Sometimes they just said thank you, but sometimes they tried to thank me.

No, thank you.

F@#$ me when you're sober, then I'll believe it's me and not Jack Daniels tickling your 'tween.

They never did.

Then again, they never got  date-raped on my watch either.

I didn't even like some of these women as people. But that's no reason to allow them to become one of a series of Polaroids in a fraternity photo album.

Principle is what sustained me on many long walks home.

Alone.

Doing the right thing can be a lonely, miserable experience, because that warm righteous glow barely emits the light and heat of a candle.

But you gotta do what you gotta do. Or, in many cases, notdo what you must notdo.

Dammit.

The beauty of living by your principles is that it frees you up as much as, or more, than it obligates you. Because principle is the only wholly independent, individual foundation that we have. If you do something based on principle, the only person who can make you change your mind, and the only person that can disappoint you...

is you.

It also makes life simple. The reason you do or do not do things is because you choose to do or not do them.

Just because.

Not because of Jesus, Uncle Sam, or rock and roll.

Just because it's the right thing to do for you.

On principle.

That's probably why I'm so fixated on doing things because of principle; I got f@#$ all else to do it for.

But I got me, and that's enough.

Besides, no one else wants me, so I'm stuck with that @sshole.

Seriously (?), as someone who was never over-socialized to begin with, I've come to accept who I am and what I do (and do not do) as necessary and right for me, and social pressure to do or not do certain things has thankfully only pushed me into things a very few times.

I regretted most, if not all of them. I'd rather take the credit andthe blame for what I do.

Credit's all I get anyway. But who knows? Maybe someday, around 10AM on a Sunday, a woman will show up with a bowl of congee, two glasses of milk tea, a hangover and only very cursory clothing, and say "Thanks for taking care of me last night. I've always thought you were really nice, and now that I'm sober I'm going to f#@$ you stupid then feed you congee and read to you until you smarten back up. Is it okay if I wear one of your shirts all day?"

Is that so much to ask???

Apparently so.

'Til Death Do Us Part

Doing the right thing included NOT staying over on a quick trip to Hong Kong in December of 2004 to be able to catch Kung Fu Hustle in local theatres, because I knew that the right thing to do was to go home to my wife for Christmas, even though we were not, how shall I put it, happy.

Unfortunately, we got into a 'discussion,' the cause of which I cannot recall (which means the cause was of course me), and her response to my saying "You're not always easy to love" was to punch me repeatedly in the face (and try to kick me elsewhere) in an attempt to get me to retaliate and therefore give her reason to have mearrested and put in jail for the night, because what I had said was obviously so wrong that I deservedsuch a fate.

That was Christmas Eve. Ho ho ho.

I admit that I never should have married her, and I knew that going into it.

I didn'tknow she would become physically abusive.

I divorced her on principle; I wouldn't do it to her and refused to accept it happening to me.

Was I too hasty, as I have been told? Didn't she deserve a second chance, I have been asked?

Go f@#$ yourself.

Why the f@#$ should I? I've made it through my life not kicking f@#$ out of any number of people who more than deserved it, and all I ever asked was that others afford me the same courtesy.

My wife had problems acknowledging others, except that woman in the mirror.

Sure, it was 'girl punches,' but so what?

If she punched me at Christmas , I could logically fear gunfire by Easter.

I find it interesting how many women have the nerve to say "You must have done more than just say that," or "Well, she lost her temper, what did you expect?"

I'm sure that if I said that to a judge after hitting a woman, he'd understand, Ya-ya brotherhood and all...

Besides, she opened up the space for Worst Thing a Woman Ever Did to Me so much that any new woman in my life will have a pretty hard time even getting close to that point. Maybe I ought to be grateful.

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Hitting people smaller than me is pretty dumb, in my book.

And most of you are.

Hitting women is especially sad. Where's the honor in that? What kind of pathetic piece of sh*t do you have to be to hit a woman?

It bothers me that one of those 'get to know me' questions has sometimes been "Have you ever hit a woman?"

What kind of sh*t is that? What kind of a world do we live in that women need to ask such things? What's wrongwith people???

The idea is so repugnant to me that I wouldn't even joke about it.

At the same time, I can't stand stupid. As dumb as hitting smaller people is, so is needlessly and stupidly aggravating bigger people.

No (sober) man smaller than me has ever seriously tried to start trouble with me. Why? Because he's a man, and I'm bigger than he is. Basic jungle law. Not even drunks were that stupid very often.

But I've had it with women who honestly, seriously say totally ignorant sh*t like "I'm not scared of you. I'll kick your ass..."

And they're notjoking.

And they get mad when you laugh at them and try to change the subject.

I don't even tell them to go watch Charlie's Angels again...

They usually weigh about 30% of what I do and appear to me like the little chicken-hawk from Foghorn Leghorn:

Left: Me (note similar beard) Right: Hypothetical Power Grrl

I'm not trying to be a sexist pig, I'm just being realistic; you really don't scare me either.

So please, don't try to bust tough with me.

I tell them, any time you feel ready, you go ahead and start. Otherwise, please, shut the f@#$ up.

I've had convicted felons, prison inmates, say they wouldn't f@#$ with me (their words, not mine); why on earth would I take someone who weighs one of my legs seriously?

You think you can kick my ass? Come on ahead. You try and seriously hit me, don't cry when you wake up. You brought that sh*t on yourself. A man does it, he knows that's the consequence. That's why he doesn't do it. Don't look so f@#$ing surprised...

So please, I'm all for empowerment. But I'm not letting some woman punch up her self-esteem on me any more than I would let a man, or do it myself on anyone, much less a woman.

I don't walk up to NFL linemen and tell them I'm not scared of them.

I'm not thatf@#$ing stupid.

Nobodyshould be.

Let me attempt to assuage any fear or resentment by making a somewhat funny but totally serious stipulation.

There are some women I won't f@#$ with, and they're a lot smaller than me.

One of them is my god-daughter's mom.

Angie is a wushu champion and a police officer.

She'd kick my ass.

So would Jeeja Yanin.

But you know what? They wouldn't talk sh*t.

And I wouldn't startit with them. I never do.

I don't start sh*t with anybody.

On principle.

A lot of people say I'm kind-hearted, I'm overly sensitive, etc. etc.

They never f@#$me because of these marvelous traits, but I suppose I can believe them anyway...

Well, one reason I'm that way is because I feel it is the right thing to do, the right way to be.

The other reason is because God gave me the potential to be the nightmarish opposite: If I wanted to be an @sshole, I could be really good at it in a lot of ways. I could make a lot of people's lives miserable, painful, and/or shorter.

Maybe I try to make the world a better place simply by not making it worse, because I could really do that well.

I don't hit people because if I did, it would be a lot worse than when they hit me, with a few exceptions.

And I am smart enough to know those exceptions and not be stupidenough to cross those lines.

I told a colleague once that nothing would make me happier than to see some idiot hit his wife in public. That's a Free Ass Whipping card. Hell, that's a full house!

I'd do three months in jail for assault. And they'd be a LOT easier than his three months, I can tell you that.

Wife-beaters don't fare well in prison; it's one of the nice things about the environment.

I'm really not complaining about women. I'm complaining about stupid.

I'm complaining about shitty.

Do you realize how much better the world would be if people simply didn't do the things they know they shouldn't do?

Why can't people just treat each other with a little f@#$ing decency?

Because you don't want me treating people the way I am treated: Next jerkoff who pushes me in the train is going out the door. Hey, I just pushed back. I wasn't being mean or abusive. He was being f@#$ing stupid.

Maybe I get so frustrated by women doing dumb things to me because I know that if a man did the same thing, I could pop him in the mouth, and he'd be mad, but he'd know I was right, that he deserved it.

The rules are different for women.

We're not allowed to hit them.

Ideally, we shouldn't have to, and would never want to. I've never wanted to hit a woman.

Shake some sense into her, maybe.

But do you know why women aggravate us so much?

Because we adoreyou.

The only thing worse than having a woman who aggravates you,

is not having a woman.

Who knows? Maybe it's my stupid biological clock (you should have seen thattypo before I corrected it), but the last few years I have become what I can only describe as joyously heterosexual.

Women are the greatest thing since... women.

Principle conveys grace, and I need all of it I can get.