Confronting

Where did it go wrong?
The modern man was conceived by Kees van Kooten. He is left-handed, feels a bit intellectual, drives a Volvo and is proud of his clumsiness. Van Kooten displayed himself more emphatically in his pockets as an incredible Rose Water Bottle. At the time, I got that flakily from my fingers. But the Vulva station wagon drivers with Intellectual Aspirations 'Light', just as they were second-hand at the time, enjoyed it.

At least their wives. Because they could put their somewhat silly husbands away in conversations in a friendly and nasty way as in: 'My Dirk-Jan also got his eye on when brushing his teeth. Just like Kees van Kooten wrote in ... "Loser Dik-Jan saw a role model in it ... He laughed sheepishly. The misery had begun.

In imitation of 'Kees het Example', more left-wing sensitive men with an unclear pre-university education or aborted university studies started to feel so silly about themselves. In the somewhat sad hope of putting themselves aside as vulnerable and sensitive in order to marginally increase their low chances of scoring with the opposite sex. Believe me. There can be little else behind it. After all, women are so sensitive to feelings?

But it is no good. It goes, in the deepest essence, against the basic sense of self-worth that every self-respecting mammal has. Where 'Example Kees' might have been thoughtful wayism - after all Kees van Kooten has put down so many characters that he may have forgotten who he is - all Kees Kloons got stuck in such a pissed-off mood that they could not be more than a real woman evoked a mild kind of tender disgust. Something in the sense of endearment for a Very Sweet Puppy with a swelling, fused front leg.

For the time being the saddest case of this kind of ugly snooze had been the main reason for me to walk around the Volkskrant with a wide bow on Saturdays. Wim de Jong is the writer. He himself claims to bring a mildly ironic view of the New Men's life. In my view, the 'New Man' sketched by him is an ideal customer for traveling by public transport: a one-way ticket on the head of an Intercity.

So the modern man. The man who is presented as such in all his sense elements is A) A loser who is only suitable for traveling in public. To know: on the short side of an Intercity. B) A passed-on opportunist who notices that with a few tricks, such as the guilty look of a dog who has pooped on the carpet and a self-pleasingly putting down perspective, he has more scoring opportunities for a certain type of women. The kind of women that also fall for Heel Lieve Puppies with the wrong leg.

For what I have seen over the years, De Jong's approach has a few options:

A) The woman you are with only sees you as a little boy, wants to save you and hug you and take care of everything for you. but will never approach you with respect again. And you can forget about sex.
B) The woman in question throws herself, after five minutes of amazed listening to all your feelings, enthusiastically into the arms of a muscular Polish car mechanic with gnarled hands and a hairy back. And you can forget about sex.
C) While you are still relieved, the woman in question will already have a conversation with her best friend in mind and discuss to be sure to stay with you but to intensify the lessons with her tennis teacher. And you can forget about sex.

I always explicitly add that sex. Because from what I remember about the Modern Man's statements, that is actually his only problem. And then as in 'a felt shortage of'.

That kind of men 2.0 does not seem representative of the kind to which I myself have belonged for years. And I personally know quite a few of them. We are not reluctant to think, to doubt, to feel and to talk. But it should not all become a day's work. And very basically: we use our soft side to sit on.