Daniel Evan Weiss's Blog, page 4

I’m biased, I admit it

A brief article in the news the other day said that a 21-year-old man was stabbed to death by a 61-year-old woman.  They were not acquaintances. She had no criminal record.

My reaction was: He did something foul and got what he deserved. I did not for a moment consider another explanation.

But that’s prejudice! This young man could have been very sweet and cuddly; the woman might have just gotten a nifty knife, maybe as a present, and wanted to try it out. Or she could have been stalking stairways at 4 AM looking to mix it up.

I could not find any more details. She was arrested and charged with murder and weapon possession. She claimed she had acted in self-defense. Who doesn’t?

Now I’m thinking of other scenarios. In that neighborhood, fortune tellers abound. Perhaps after a consultation, Madame Soul foretold headlines in the woman’s future. This was the one I first saw:

Not so bad.  But the following day I saw this one:

That might have pushed her over.  Elderly? “Elderly” women don’t get the best of young men in rumbles.

It’s a shame that she didn’t realize that the New York Post would get it right. Then she might not have done it in the first place.

 

 

 

 

Failure of the gods–clarification

I have been told that my remarks about Michael Jordan were not fair–fifteen years is not so great a disparity in age. That’s true. What particularly bothered me was that Michael Jordan is an intelligent guy, and–not to disparage the intelligence of bikini models–he might have chosen a woman more his match. She’s primally hot, mind you, but his interest in his first wife waned as her youth did, and one can guess what will happen with this one. His lawyer did, and wrote an iron-clad pre-nup.

This basketball player has always exuded class.

Julius Erving (Dr J) was not only a magnificent, dramatic presence on the court, he remains elegant and beautifully spoken.  He also married a beautiful woman, had a number of children (four), and then divorced her.

This is his second wife. What awaits her?

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The greatest white basketball player of our time was Larry Bird.

Conflicts occur on the court, and here is one he had with Dr J.

Could this have been an impromptu chat about attitudes toward women? Could he have been commenting on Dr J’s extra-curricular fertilizations (one of which produced a professional tennis player, who he didn’t publicly acknowledge until she was playing at Wimbledon)?

Larry Bird has a different take on marriage. Here he is with his first and only wife.

Why is he different? In part it is provenance: he is a small-town boy from Indiana, and Michael and Dr J are metropolitan/cosmopolitan (and handsome).

The difference is certainly not about race. Here is very white man Kenny Rogers.

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Then again, Kenny is in show biz, and many men in show biz make asses of themselves this way. They are the epitome of male simplicity.

I would like to post a gallery of the best “May to New Year’s Eve” marriages. Please send names and/or photos. The earlier wives of these men were lucky to escape–which they did with huge divorce settlements. Perhaps not a bad way to go: early life in the limelight, then a very comfortable midlife and thereafter.

Once again, gods fail men

Men desire young women.  They’re the fertile ones, and that’s how we’re wired.

But in middle age, most men would rather have a circumcision than start a family–excruciating for first-timers, and incomprehensibly painful for those who have already been through it.  What they need in a lover is exactly what women their age have to offer–comfort, kindness, sensuality.

Can middle-aged men learn to want the ones they should want? Not without consultation. The Gods of Malehood tell them what to drink, what to wear, where to bank, what to drive–surely they know who to bed and who to wed.

Here, as in most ways, gods fail men. Michael Jordan, the World’s Supreme Athlete, just turned 50. He decided to marry for a second time.  He chose a 35-year-old one-time bikini model from Cuba.

 

His first wife was also a model.  His first divorce cost him $168 million.

If everyone wants to Be Like Mike, what hope is there?

Not sure if you’re middle-aged? Don’t go to England!

 

“Can you feel my pain? Middle-aged women sure can.”

Thus concludes a huge study on age and empathy conducted at University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. It was no surprise that women in their 50s are more empathic than their male peers. They also turn out to be more empathic than men and women both older and younger.  ”Overall, late middle-aged adults reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective of others.”

If the findings were graphed, they would display “an inverted U-shaped pattern of empathy across the adult life span, with younger and older adults reporting less empathy and middle-aged adults reporting more.”

Why? One explanation offered by the authors is that cognitive and emotional function improves during the first half of life, and during the second half it diminishes. Or it could simply be that the subjects of this study came of age during the great social movements of the 1950s and 1960s–and learned from an early age to have compassion for those underfoot.  In twenty years, another study should be able to determine whether the cause is largely nature or nurture.

What fascinates me is that the graph of empathy over the adult lifespan, an inverted U-shape, does not correspond with the happiness curve, which hits its nadir in the 40s, then rises steadily. Which suggests that happiness can involve emotionally resonating with others; or, perhaps, ignoring them.

Women in their 50s have the optimal combination of happiness and empathy. Which is why for men seeking a lover who is both happy and happy to listen, the Magic Generation is a dream come true.

 

 

 

“Let the lady dance around you”

When I heard this line, I assumed it was about the demographic difference between men and women in midlife: gentleman, you don’t have to do the dancing; you can let the lady dance around you.

It turned out to be quite different.  During a Christmas party in England last year, a 46-year-old man did his rendition of the Gangnam Style dance (seen over a billion times on youtube). Then, in front of his wife and colleagues, he had a heart attack and dropped dead.

A cardiologist at Newcastle University recommended that men not throw themselves “into violent exertion without due preparation.”  However, since the dance has been performed by many public figures, including Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, the doctor allowed that the Gangnam dance cannot be considered a threat to public safety.  ”The chance that you’ll come to grief is very small. But as with any form of untypical exercise that you’re not used to taking, be somewhat measured. Let the lady dance around you.”

Ultimately the advice is about gender difference.  It is rare for a middle-aged woman to die of a heart attack from exertion.  And of course women are less likely to try to impress their friends by riding an Air Horse.

One never knows

While gestating a book, many writers seal it off from the world as carefully as if it were a fetus in a womb; exposed prematurely, a book can be snuffed even by an innocent offhand remark. However, after a long incubation–in this case nine years–you deliver a hothouse product into a cold world. You hope that readers will read what you think you’ve written; but you don’t know until they tell you.

Yesterday this review was posted on amazon.com. She is just one reader, but at least to her I conveyed exactly what I had hoped. Until then I was not sure.

In an Evolving World….

By Samantha (Manhattan, New York USA)

While reading about the wild sexual/romantic journey of several middle-aged women in Daniel Weiss’ latest book, I wondered whom the book was ultimately intended for, women? Men? Both? As a middle-aged woman myself, I was engrossed with the stories; they and the author’s observations made me deeply reflect on my own journey. Men may find themselves jealous of the great opportunities and freedoms the author enjoys. It would be better if they could learn ways to better entice the G spot to respond (there’s a lesson in there!). Or, better yet, to turn around their view of middle-aged women (if lacking).

The brilliant, revolutionary (and evolutionary) insight in this book, in the author’s words, “the survival of our species no longer depends on our ability to find a fit, fertile partner,” is surely welcome and needed, and Mr. Weiss makes a favorable case for it.

The author is transformed throughout the course of his research and relationships with the women in the stories, and, almost paradoxically, while seemingly stepping away from his biology (the drive for young, fertile women to reproduce with), he embraces it instead by unleashing his animality in newly found freedom.

All this told in superb, punchy prose, filled with acute insights on relationships and people, and oozing love for women.

 

Look who is judging you

Health Magazine (online) has an article entitled “11 Mistakes Women Make in Middle Age.”  It begins:

Let’s not kid ourselves. Getting older is a drag, and middle age is particularly fraught with tension.

Do the sexy clothes you wore in the past now seem just plain wrong? Will smoky eye makeup that looks great on 19-year-olds make you appear just plain crazy?

Part of the problem is that aging often requires change, but most women don’t want to move to a frumpy town called Middle Age, where sensible shoes and boring clothes are de rigueur…

If you choose, you can click through eleven pages and be insulted eleven ways.  Your mistakes include:

– Not realizing you have to change

– Ignoring your teeth

– Wearing the wrong bra

– Settling for a boring sex life

Who is the sage shining the Light of Truth into all of our lives?

Ashley Macha is a 20-something journalist and photographer with double bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and Nutrition Communication from Arizona State University.

Case closed.

 

The Orgasm Gap

Like most Facebook users, I am often amazed at the things some people choose to post. For example:

Somebody had to go into a coal mine and dig up a few chunks to generate enough electricity to propagate this around cyberspace.

But this one is worse:

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The Orgasm Gap: The Real Reason Women Get Off Less Often Than Men and How to Fix It

When John Kennedy was running for President, he blared warnings of the “missile gap” between the US and the USSR, and the mortal danger the country had been put in by incompetent politicians. The truth was that the US had many times more missiles than  the USSR. This was pure fear-mongering, and achieved nothing but millions of sleepless nights (and the presidency for Kennedy).

What I found during my scores of interviews (and in the reputable literature) was that among those of us old enough to remember the “missile gap,” the orgasm gap is just as great–and is also the reverse of the headlines. Women’s sexual capabilities grow dramatically over time, and men’s wane. If there ever is a shooting war between the sexes, men don’t stand a chance.

 

 

Personal magic — I finally got this done

Thirty-two years ago I began a novel, which would not be published in these United States for fifteen years. One more perceptive than I might have gotten the message: You should go to business school.

The narrator of this novel, a roach who grew up in the Bible, and absorbed its content along with its binding paste (much to the detriment of him and his colony), has stayed with me all this time. Just as I often used to wonder how little details of daily life looked to my young daughter (when she was young), I still think about how they would look to him: part insect, part prophet, and wholly disgusted. Finally, after many years, I’m letting him loose in a blog: The Roaches Have No King.