What I’ve learned from men’s magazines:

Men are autonomous individuals. 

It is essential to know how to administer a close shave. It is essential to know how to cook a steak medium rare. It is essential to know how to make a martini or, at the very least, the delicate art of pouring a bourbon on the rocks. 

Vice should be regularly indulged, as long as one exercises discipline. If only to practice one’s mastery of animal needs and urges. 

Women are people too. Women are objects. Women are to be cherished. Women are to be tolerated. Women are sluts. Women are ladies. Women are women. 

Party joke: Why did the feminist cross the road? To suck my cock. 

A woman’s coccyx consists of three to five individual bones, not easily broken. 

It is fine to behave like a rogue or a rake, but one must clean up nicely in time for supper. 

Foods that men eat: fish tacos, burgers, oysters, steak, grilled anything, anything that can be cooked outdoors, anything they can catch and manhandle themselves. Cuisines men are partial to: English, Mexican, American, German. 

Foods that men do not eat: quiche, cupcakes, ladyfingers. With the exception of chili, he will likely not eat soup. These rules do not hold true in the presence of a lady. Then they will eat anything.  

Men are more than their jobs. They are better than their fathers. 

People to know in this world: your local butcher, your local bartender, your local wisdom-spouting bum, your local drug dealer, your local cobbler.

Don’t say threesome. Say ménage à trois. Say it right. Say it with accents. Say it with your high-school-French accent. 

Life is easy and effortless. Things will fall through. They have to, they just have to. 

-Ling Ma