Call Me Midiane.

The sun was keeping me warm, but still managing to annoy me. I chose to have my lunch outside.

Soon, two people populated the end of my table and started picking at their plates, like swans with toothpicks. All done rather delicately, so pristine and calculated that it's almost not possible.

The pair was comprised of a well-presented Indian girl in the company of a very meterosexual and porcelain-like Indian guy.

Their conversation was so sluggish and monotonous that I really felt like dropping angel dust into their bare salads. Is this how people talk? Did they miss a phase in their psychological development as adults? I was distracted by that smug thought when I looked up to steal a peek at the people.

The guy sat there transfixed; the only animate activity happening in his existence was the occasional smile or frown that managed somehow to limber the muscles in his face. He was so poised and controlled... His soft edges and immaculate presentation complemented his small physique.

Looking at him and then reading his body language gave me two different readings.

This metero knows how to take care of himself, I thought to myself, going by his looks first. He can go out shopping with girls and not get bored when they're trawling through shoe shops. He probably enjoys and prefers their company over guys'. He seems to be the dream of Elle and Vogue.

His body language revealed something else altogether. He was guarded and cautious. He worked very hard to measure his reactions, calculate his outbursts, and temper his every movement.

Weaving these two readings and images together produced a single icon of confusion.

Is this what a guy is supposed to be? This can't be an improvement. We've just updated the look without changing the internals. 

We shouldn't be surprised at the amount of people who now have addictive personalities. They can't pull themselves away from more TV, more time on social networking sites, more time on the phone, more food, more alcohol, more drugs, and more spending. Consumption is in the air everywhere we look and smell around. We consume other people's thoughts, expertise, mentoring, comedy, and ranting. It seems like we're eternally hungry for other people's food. Has the age passed when we consume what we can internally produce?

I'm reminded of the sole memory I have from a documentary I watched last year: a beautiful and astute scene of a model from Derek Jarman's film Carvaggio. As much as the image was resounding in its aesthetic and technical brilliance, the model himself seemed lifeless. He was a man in form but not in 'content.' I think back to that guy I from earlier and I can see a connection.

I also start to trace back this Indian guy, amongst countless others I've seen and known, to two main sources of causation: the expectations of women, and greater society.

We can shuffle through the different expectations all types of women hold of men.

Men? They're providers of mind-blowing sex, financial support, and rotten spoiling. He should be a bad boy, should keep me excited, intrigued, chasing, but hey, don't worship me or treat me too good. He should be strong, stable, a provider, laugh at my jokes, be interesting, rub my feet when I'm sick of work, love my friends, and respect my family.

He should get me, let me vent, let me freak out, let me be quirky like Tina Fey.

He should let me take the lead, pick up the check sometimes, but still pick the restaurant.

He should talk about his feelings without being sappy or a mess, but listen to mine and understand them so well I don't have to run to my girlfriends. He should be together in terms of his feelings without being cold.

He should talk about sex with candidness. He shouldn't. I can but he can't. He can but I can't. He can only use innuendo and cliché. He shouldn't be blunt because that's just so neanderthal. I want him to be an animal in bed, but then a lamb that actively listens during pillow talk.

Then we, as guys, wait in line to pay for our beer and steak, our only authorized subsistence. We wait in line. Our eyes fall on Maxim, Nuts, GQ, Men's Health, and Sports Illustrated.

Treat them mean, keep them keen.

Know exactly how to turn her on.

Make her turn you on.

Be well dressed but still work up a stink at the gym.

Show her how well you cook on a $1.50 budget.

Be crass, crude, exchange stories of how you humiliated your latest conquest.

Don't pick up their calls. Make them wait. Date them. Don't date them. Date them but date them like you have nothing else to do. Be a player. Follow the Guide.

Pornography is safe and healthy.

Be a king in everything.

There's no room for failure, for humanity, for diversity of character.

Don't be gay.

One prototype fits all. All.

Women's expectations pull us in one direction and contradictions seems to characterize their expectations. Society pulls us in another direction and I would slap on a label of mechanical animalism. Women wants us to be masters of ambiguity and society wants us to be evolved animals who Twitter and become millionaires.

More forces start to inhabit the landscape of the man's mind and life. We try to make sense of our past, thinking about our upbringing and how we turned out. We go to our temples of worship. We pursue our hobbies and interests.

We show off our biceps in the summer and we're gay. We shy away from the gym to pursue our careers and we're slobs. We wait for sex in marriage and we're gay. We go out to play the field and avoid commitment to find ourselves end up as players. We want to settle down; that's not even gay, that's just so sad, dude. We talk about our feelings. Gay. We develop emotional intelligence. Incredibly gay. We shut off. We're not relationship material.

Guys are constrained and shackled by these expectations. When will we be free? I want to do something about the internals of a guy. I said before we've gone through so much labor to just change the look of a guy. But nothing has been addressed at the level of the mind, personality, and anima of a guy.

Guys are unfortunate and misled consumers of expectations. Just like everyone else, we consume and we don't think. And the ones who do think end up getting pushed aside. There's no space for thinkers. Society screams that they need producers and consumers. But actually, we really want more consumers.

I'm a thinker by the way. That's why I'm here writing rather than out consuming. At any moment, I can become a consumer and lose myself. Writing neither makes me any better nor places on me on a moral high ground but at least it shields me.

In case you forgot, call me Midiane. I'm on a long trip to figure out why men are the way they are at present and what we should be instead.

Midiane spends daytime as a technology consultant and night-time as a writer. He also is the editor behind Efmevi (http://www.efmevi.net), a new concept Orthodox magazine.