Lawnmower Man

The great American writer Henry Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. None more so than men who have lost their passion for life. Haven’t you seen those brooding men shuffling along, the incessant burdens of life weighing heavily on their minds? Haven’t you seen men walking a few respectful paces behind their determined purpose driven wives at the local shopping mall, those aimless, drifting men with dazed looks and hangdog faces?

This little vignette is dedicated to all the Al Bundies out there, whom I shall call the Lawnmower Men. The retired civil servants, the men in grey suits, the insurance salesmen, teachers, bus-drivers and postmen like Clifford in Cheers who live to drink beer and watch sport. The square pegs in round holes, the men who have to face the humiliation of hum-drum careers, dead end jobs and stagnating sex lives.

In a famous episode of “Married with Children”, the harassed shoe-salesman Al Bundy, the world’s foremost loser, anti-hero, under-achiever and dunce, sits down on his couch after a gruelling day at the shop and cries out to no-one in particular with existential anguish: “Am I truly nothing? Could the neighbourhood children be right?” His loud, lazy and domineering wife with her big white-trash hairdo, his pretty but dull as dishwater daughter and his smart sexually obsessed son stare at him with a combination of pity and unmasked disdain.

Their life is dominated by failure but their lives go on. Al Bundy showing true grit even embraces his failures by saying: “Bundy’s are losers not quitters.” Our motto is: “We aint got it!” His wife and children of course blame their miserable life on Al. Al is philosophical. He says: “Life didn’t pass me by, it sat on my head! I never wanted to get married, I got married. Never wanted kids, I have two of them. Why the hell am I here? Why is it that Elvis is dead and I am in hell?”

Al’s wife Peggy does not cook, she loves shopping and having sex with Al. Al’s daughter looks pretty, dates boys and breathes air. Al’s son does not have much luck with the girls so he masturbates frequently and has sex with a blow-up doll called Isis. As for Al, he hates having sex with his wife. For Al his relationship with his wife is summed up by the phrase: “Only one woman, too much time.” He tells her one day: “I’d rather bait a crocodile with my manhood than sleep with you.” On another occasion he says to her: “I’m jealous of everyone not married to you.” To paraphrase Al, we all have to live with our disappointments but poor hapless Al has to sleep with his. He also hates her family, her cooking, the French and the fat-arsed women who harass him in the shoe shop.

For many people there’s something comforting and reassuring about a well tended, manicured, emerald green lawn. It evokes feelings of domestic serenity, success and bucolic bliss. It is a satisfying symbol of well-watered and sometimes well-heeled suburbia. Suburban bliss however comes at a price. Beneath this idyllic picture of contentment and the veneer of urban respectability lies something quite disturbing. It is the death of passion that inevitably comes with domestic routine. It is the terrifying suburbanisation of our souls. As Al Bundy would say: “Something sinister is going on; so I know a woman is behind it.”

Lawnmower man stops having sex with his wife because she is no longer interested in him. Resentment sets in. They live together and tolerate each other purely out of habit. They are too weary to change the status quo. Change requires energy and courage. The powerful motivational force provided by unbridled lust and the wild abandon of spontaneous sex is no longer a feature in his insipid life.

A study some time ago of the productive output of inventors, scientists and physicists, all of them geniuses in their own right showed that they were at the height of their creative powers when they were younger and still trying to woo or impress some young damsel. We all hate to admit our more carnal baser instincts. But they are always there in both sexes lurking somewhere beneath the surface, stewing and marinating beneath the pretence, beneath the civilised veneer. Fucking is a powerful inspirational force, even more so when it is unrestrained by social mores and the straightjacket of conformity and convention.

A recent study of artistic people shows that they have more in common than simple creativity. They also have active sex lives which according to researchers is no coincidence. So if you are a professional artist or poet you’re likely to have about twice as many partners and much more sex than the assistant manager of the paper clips division at the Acme Paper Company. And as the creative output goes up so does the number of sexual partners. Pablo Picasso, Lord Byron and Dylan Thomas to name but a few were immensely creative and had very active sex lives with multiple partners. Anthony Quinn the legendary actor who starred in the leading role in Zorba the Greek had numerous wives and sired many children. Later on in his life he took up painting and in his early eighties just before his death he became a father, grandfather and great-grandfather all in one month.

Lawnmower man has now been reduced to a pale creature with stooped shoulders whose vitality has been spent. A broken man, his life force has been sapped. The marrow sucked out of his bones. Sucked dry by life, wife and daily strife at the office. Lawnmower man no longer has desires. He is a shadow of his former self. He sleeps in a separate bed alongside his wife or even in a separate bedroom. In extreme cases he even sits down on the toilet seat like a woman when he urinates like the memorable character portrayed by Jack Nicholson in “About Schmidt.” Lawnmower man develops an intimate relationship with his lawnmower and looks forward to mowing the lawn and watching cricket. When he’s not involved with these two activities he can be found pottering in the garden shed muttering obscenities to himself.

There is something heartbreaking and tragic watching a defeated looking man wearing tight belted shorts and sandals pushing his lawnmower into the mower shop for a service. I once knew a well travelled businessman who had business interests all over the world who bought himself a self-propelled lawnmower. The type you sit on like a mini-tractor with blades, brakes and a proper steering wheel. No doubt he had his customised. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood they say. He was doubly damned. He lived in Australia and he enjoyed mowing the lawn. He lived on a sprawling estate outside Brisbane and couldn’t wait to get home from his worldly travels so he could mount his motorised chariot and drive it all over his grounds for hours.

Watching cricket and mowing the lawn becomes the last refuge of the post-menopausal eccentric Englishman and his colonial buddies. As someone once observed, cricket was invented to give the Englishmen something to do between bouts of rain.
The former conservative party British Prime Minister John Major was one of the blandest, most uninspiring politicians to occupy the British political landscape and the global stage. His favourite pastime: wearing a white floppy hat and watching cricket. Similarly Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the uber-nerd and sycophant of world politics loves to watch cricket above all else that is when he is not licking George Bush’s arse. The Greeks, French and Italians quite sensibly don’t play the game and spend their time on more amorous pursuits. And real men don’t mow the lawn when their wife stops having sex with them, they get even, they get a mistress. They know that there is nothing to beat the positive power of fucking.

Sprawling estates with rolling lawns are fine if you are a tycoon with slaves running around catering to your every whim. Or if you live in a country with abundant water like New Zealand or you are a goat farmer. For the rest of us suburban grunts it’s just unnecessary hard work best left to a garden service. But not for Lawnmower man. The lawn is his private domain. He is master of his own destiny. The last frontier where he can escape, exert his will and do things his way. Man and machine joined as one to restore order in an otherwise mad, indifferent and unruly world. Lawnmower man likes his grass cut with military precision. He likes neat borders and edges even as his own life teeters precariously on the edge. Lawnmower man likes his picket fence white, his garage neat and the hymen of his daughter intact.

The French of course being an eminently sensible and civilised nation in most matters except urban riots think that this obsession with lawns, lawnmowers and cricket is a silly waste of time. They had kings and queens at the palace Versailles who were into their lawns, gardening and croquet and when they became too troublesome they chopped their heads off. Now they have a Republic and gravel courtyards which are water-wise, maintenance free and softened by lavender hedges and shady chestnut trees. This frees them up to ponder far more important matters like wine, cheese, women and three hour lunches.

The Greeks too with their love for symmetry, given half a chance, will tear up the lawn, pour down acres of concrete or brick paving and build three story wog palaces to accommodate their vast extended families and all their cars. In Greece children grow up playing in asphalt and concrete school playgrounds. As a result they develop a life-long love affair with pavement life. I hear people protest that gravel is neither child nor dog friendly, but then neither is the American occupation of Iraq or the happy meals served at McDonald’s.

Lawnmower man sits in front of his TV sipping his beer, clutching the remote control for dear life while watching the cricket. Lawnmower man would rather be fondled by a Japanese train groper than surrender the remote to his wife. A rare thought goes through Lawnmower man’s troubled mind. Computers and women are ruining the country, he muses but he dare not say so out loud unless like Al Bundy he’s happy not to have sex with his wife for the rest of the year. All he can do is scratch his balls and fart. In this area too he exercises total mastery. He farts for revenge, he farts for freedom, he farts for consolation, he farts without fear but above all, he farts proudly.

Al Bundy cries out: “There’s only one dead guy in the mall and you’re looking at him.” On another occasion he says: “I’m going back to Chicago where I only die a little each day” To all the Al Bundies and Lawnmower men out there I offer the following words of warning by Norman Cousins:

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

So my advice to all the Lawnmower Men out there is; give up the remote control, take up art and fuck your brains out. Life is too short to mow the lawn.

Costa Ayiotis
Hout Bay
3 December 2005