Who hard-wired your head?

Two issues ago, in the RN&R cover story called “Love Reno Style,” Michelle Depoali wrote about love and marriage from a modern female perspective. She wrote with great candor about her strong attraction toward marriage, revealing the powerful, primal forces behind a woman’s desires to hitch up with a mate. Her honestly written work showed how even now, new intellectual concepts toward relationships often do battle inside a woman’s head with those tenacious age-old forces, and that many times, those new concepts are no match for the marriage-wiring that rules female hard drives.

It was a terrifying piece of work. Scariest damn thing I’ve seen since Anthony Perkins barged in on Janet Leigh’s shower.

There was something especially bone-chilling in reading Michelle’s account of her and a friend, two intelligent, educated women, getting together and having a grand time discussing all the details of their dream weddings, from the major huge ones down to the little bitty tiny ones. It was a frightful excursion filled with thoughts and sentiments that are completely alien to us menfolk. I mean, planning this stuff is one thing, but having A REALLY GOOD TIME planning it? Creepy.

Yes, I know Michelle did not speak for ALL women, just as I cannot possibly speak for all men. But I strongly suspect that Michelle did speak for a whole bunch of you gals out there, and we males should be grateful for a rare glimpse into this secret realm marked Sisters Only.

All of this wondrous friction between the genders can be boiled down to The Diz and The Hef. The girls got nailed by The Diz in their impressionable youth, zapped with his mind-melting Prince Charming jive from all those insidious movies about Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and Snow White. Those were high-flyin’ set-ups that led to severe reality checks, especially when Prince Charming turned out to be more like Tom Green than Tom Cruise. Many of our fairest females have never fully recovered.

As for us boys, well, we dug The Diz but remained unscathed. These were, after all, FAIRY TALES. Somehow, we sensed that there was another message for us. And, sure enough, at about age 13 or 14, The Messenger showed up with a Molotov-like magazine that he happily heaved into the gas-soaked fire pit of our unsuspecting pants.

Girls, he is the Beast you’re up against in this ancient and honorable struggle to find a mate who will cherish, honor and protect you, even when you become old, wrinkly and semi-crazy. He is the Evil One who gave form to the seething genes that make our jeans seethe. He laughs at Prince Charming, sneers at forever and is currently living as a poster boy for Viagra, daily doses of which enable him to pleasure not one, but seven shapely young blondes who are obviously impervious to the derision and ridicule of the outside world. His name is The Hef, and he is the Dark Yang to The Diz’s Light Yin.

Let the dance continue! (As if it could stop.)