A Guy Who Folds His Arms for the Camera

Here’s the deal: A man doesn’t need a personality if he can stand sideways towards a camera, or toward a crowd, or toward his plumber, and fold his arms in a pose that suggests someone being asked to rake the leaves but who would rather stare at a marble statue of Vince McMahon. Then, to increase the personality quotient without having to resort to his inept conversational skills, he can wear dark, menacing sunglasses, as if under the delusion that Mr. Smith from The Matrix will at any moment appear to fight him in slow motion; and if that still leaves him a few points shy of being perceived as an interesting raconteur, he can grow the goatee – not a goatee, the goatee -- thus giving him the Holy Trinity of male personality props: The Folded Arms, The Sunglasses and The Goatee.

You see, ladies, I take the Folded Arms as human sentience idea to levels that would stimulate the brain of hot lady professor of American Studies, or Organic Chemistry, or Abe Lincoln Endocrinology.  Imagine that we are seated at an outdoor café, and you are reading The New York Times. You raise your eyes from the Book Review section, and say, “Honey, it turns out that Sartre believed that the carbon atom is an illusion.” Sure I could reply that Sartre had been made of carbon atoms, which would have made him an illusion professing his own illusionary status, but that would require an education and a scintillating wit. Instead I drop the shades over my eyes and fold my arms and hope to hell that THE goatee is capable of offering you a decent rejoinder, or at least the illusion that such a silent, mysterious man such as myself has no need to comment on a French philosopher who was so lacking in personality that he had never even thought about getting a thorn branch tattoo around his biceps.

Would you not desire a man who is so busy folding his arms in a permanent pose of self-importance that he allows old ladies to hold open doors for him? That he would rather let a child drown in a river than break his American Chopper character? That the only time he makes haste is to rush in front of someone taking a picture of their friends so to give them a digital reminder of my bad-ass pose?

But I am here for you, girls, to help you lose weight and stay fit. How? By letting you do all the work in bed while I do my thing with the folded arms and the cold stare. I will even twist my torso so that, while going down on me, you can view my tough-guy pose at a brooding angle, which, of course, will only increase your oral ardor.

Remember, in today’s world of romance, image is everything – as a picture of your boyfriend arrayed in the Holy Trinity of The Folded Arms, The Sunglasses and The Goatee trumps a good conversation and having a door held for you as you enter a hockey game. It is more important that your friends marvel at the pic of your pseudo-thuggish mate on your Facebook profile than it is for us to engage in an actual relationship involving intimacy and me telling you that your eyes shine like a million suns.

So line up, girls, and I will fold my arms and nod to the girl of my choice.