Gregg Stebben - How To Be a 21st Century Man: The Mans Manual for Daily Survival

Copyright 2008, 2017 by Gregg Stebben

Foreword Copyright 2008, 2017 by Denis Boyles

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Racehorse Publishing, 555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-196-0

E-book ISBN: 978-1-63158-197-7

Cover photograph by iStockphotos

Printed in China

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

First, a word of congratulations. Buying this book was a stroke of genius. Maybe it was even your stroke of genius! Or maybe it was a gift from someone you knowand the chances are very good she was a woman.

If so, she may be sending you a messageand of course, well listen, since, as men, we try to be whatever works, woman-wise. For example, its been four decades since the advent of the New Man. Odious at birth, he was a wimpy Ken to feminisms in-your-face Barbie, a quiet, well-mannered, non-threatening kind of chap with a shaved chest, marinated in estrogen and programmed to stay out of the way. Over the years, he morphed again and again. One day, he was Phil Donahue, the next Alan Alda. More recently, hes the guy with the man-bun. In one guise or another, the New Mans been around so long, hes oldand not in a good way.

Is there a good way to be an Old New Man? As it happens, yes. Because if research is correct, the women of the future are likely to closely resemble women of the distant past. Isnt it just a cruel accounting hoax that would allow the nineteenth century to follow the twentieth? Yet, according to a New York Times story filed by a correspondent at Yale right here in our very own twenty-first century, Many women at the nations most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children [and] play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment. As one particularly alarming Yale professor put it, Women today are, in effect, turning realistic.

Thats the problem with modernity. It gets old very quickly. And this latest thingwell, obviously, its not great for some of us. For a long time now there has been a happy assumption among men that a brave new breed of highly educated, richly employable women were walking the Earth, women who wouldnt dream of putting aside their careers in favor of raising children, when they could just hire somebody who had made a career of raising other peoples children to do it for them.

From a somewhat cynical, perhaps even misogynistic point of view, marrying one of those beautiful breadwinners in order to better buy boats, beer and a BMW made complete sense. Their incomes often exceeded those of the men who pursued them; a winning suitor would take not just the hand of his beloved, but also the purse clutched tightly in that hand. In return, her supportive husband would watch the game on Sunday, pay somebody to mow the yard on Saturday and encourage her to ask for raises. A woman at work meant a man at ease.

No more. Now women have decided to play a traditional role and are therefore turning realistic.

That means new marching orders for us. And thats where the genius of buying this little book comes in. Many realistic women are going to prefer realistic meni.e., a male who can actually function in the realistic world, where boats capsize, tires go flat, ties go wide and where a fellows accomplishments are measured in his ability to help a woman lead the traditional, realistic life she wishes to lead. Goodbye to all that we used to belovable chunks of meat, talking sex objects, bronzed love gods. Hello to what we must now becomea handy man, a traditional guy who can do real stuff.

If youre seeking some reality, this book is the place to start. Hold it in your hand. Feel that heft? Its a real booknot a plastic screen or a txt msg on ur fone or a nifty 6-second Vine video for posting on Twitter. The pages are made from butchered trees once filled with birds nests and every word in it was typed by hand , then arranged neatly on each page in a way that conveys hundreds and hundreds of useful tips, hints, and insights, all of practical value in the real world where those realistic women live. Need to know how to tie a bowline? Its here. Want to check the quality of a suit? Look on . The pilot of your 747 just die in mid-air? Landing instructions are in Chapter 5. This book can make you look exactly like a man who knows what hes doing.

Dont think you can just wait out this unpleasant little reversal in the universal hope of all men to live as cheap, unskilled chattel waiting on the pleasure of the attractive, intelligent women of the future who will keep us in the manner to which we avidly wish to become accustomed. It took forty years for the women at Yale to realize that were happy to take them for granted if they so insist. But its going to take them a lot longer than that to want that kind of guy back again. Hes history.

But this book isnt. Unlike a wide tie or a huge SUV or a New Man, this books for keeps. Shes happy she got it for you. You can thank her by building a bookcase then painting the house.

Denis Boyles

1. Hardware and Machinery

The reason a mans life starts with hardware and machinery is that most mens lives are like complicated machines with plenty of moving parts. Most of the time, life just hums along. But one day, you hear a cough and a sputter, and suddenly theres smoke and fire everywhere. Thats when it pays to know a little about hardware, because once you understand hardware, the only thing standing between you and bliss is finding the right tool for the job.

Hardware

HOW TO PUT TOGETHER ANYTHING

Heres the bad news on that analog 12G5 widget you just had to have: The elbows at the top of pole assemblies 12 and 14 go inverse to the cross-member and motor-mount housing. Who knew?

Well, maybe you knew. But most normal guys would assume that if you reverse those pole assemblies on the 12G5, and then wind her up, what you get is your basic torqued-widget fault, in which the widget-pod, instead of going front to back, goes wonky in a kind of front-to-side-to-upside-down motion, real fast. Cool, huh?

Other more widget-savvy guys hate that stuff, though. Theyll come along behind you with a pair of pliers and straighten out all the pieces you had carefully reengineered to fit the way you thought they were supposed to fit.

You may think the lesson in this little tale is that it always pays to read the directions, but youre wrong. The lesson here is that there are only so many ways to put together anything, and that once these fundamental principles of what we can call civilian engineering have been mastered, there is nothing you cannot join together, no assembly you cannot assemble, no tabs you cannot insert, no slots you cannot fill, no act you cant get together.