Men Are Like Rats

I’ve just realized that my troubles in dating are due to one deeply rooted belief of mine: men are like rats.

Now before you write me off as another over-angry feminist, let me explain the analogy. Men are like rats. They’re cute, they’re cuddly, they’re fun to play with, and if you watch for a while, they do the darnedest things. Most are quite furry and pettable, though there are hairless varieties for those who prefer them. If they’ve been petted and cuddled enough in their lives, they can be quite tame and affectionate. I love it when they play with my hair. And, alas, they die if you sneeze on them. They’re heartbreakingly fragile. Just when you’ve really gotten attached to one, he up and dies.

Yes, I really like rats. Three years ago, my dear friend Ron, a lifelong rat aficionado, introduced me to his pets, Wolfram, Graham, and Maximillian, three ratty brothers. (Rats are very social creatures, and prefer to live in groups.) I quickly learned to love them. I also learned from Ron that the rats bred to be tamable, personable pets are descended from lab rats, and therein lies their problem: Researchers need pure strains of very similar rats for reproducible test results, and thus their rats are so inbred that any nasty diseases hiding in their genetic code get to pop up all of the time. Pet rats are particularly prone to cancers and one otherwise rare form of pneumonia. Every pet rat who manages to avoid cats, hawks, and other accidents dies of cancer or pneumonia before he is three years old.

Ron and Françoise, his best friend for twenty years and roommate at the time, knew this when they got Wolfram, Graham, and Max. The brothers were the eighth, ninth, and tenth pet rats they’d had during their adult lives. Still, when Graham and Max died of pneumonia eleven days apart, Ron held Wolfram much closer, petting him, coddling him, and jumping at any sign of illness. He told me he knew that it would be most painful when this last rat died, and there’d be no distracting himself with worry for another rat’s comfort. Four months later, when Wolfram gasped his last pneumoniac breath in Ron’s hands, Ron called Françoise to tell her the news. Then, still cradling the furry little body in his hands, he called me for consolation. Next time, he declared, he will get a pet rabbit. Of course he doesn’t love them the way he loves rats, but rabbits are cute enough, and most importantly, they live three times as long.

I feel the same way about people. My best and wisest friend, Rachel, put my problem into clear focus a few days ago when, once again, I was complaining that I only seem to like men who aren’t interested in having a close relationship with me. “Do you think,” asked Rachel, “that you’re avoiding getting close to a man because your dad convinced you that they’re all just going to die on you?”

Well, yes, of course that’s my problem! I’ve known that, to some degree, for a long time. The first major man in my life, my father, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 48. I had just turned 15. What shocked me most was how easily death snuck up on him. At 5’11” and nearly 200 pounds, my father did not look at all delicate. Even to a 15-year-old, he didn’t seem like an old man. He hadn’t had time to slow down. I realized soon after his death, and got into a habit of reminding myself, that when the newspaper says, “He died of natural causes,” a heart attack is what they mean. Looking back up my family tree, I saw that heart attacks had killed every man on both sides, and that they die younger with every generation. My brother noticed, too. Years ago, when he was working full-time as an accountant while attending law school at night and volunteering on political campaigns on weekends, one of our cousins asked him why he was so driven. My brother replied, “Look at our history. Our grandpa was 62 when he died of a heart attack. My dad was 48. I’m 25 years old. At this rate, I could go at any moment. I have to get as much done as I can right now.”

Hearing this, I was supremely grateful to be a woman. No, we’re not immortal either, and heart disease is the biggest killer of women in the United States, too, but statistically, women live significantly longer. In his book Millionaire Women Next Door, economist Thomas Stanley advised women to learn how to handle all of their finances, no matter how helpful their husbands may be, because statistics show that three out of four married women will outlive their husbands. In my particular family tree, the difference between men and women is even more obvious: My father’s Aunt Maisie is 92 this year, living with a border collie for companionship, and in good health. Her sister, Marie, has just turned 82. My grandmother on my mother’s side just stopped breathing one day at the age of 83. The best theory her doctors could come up with was that she got bored and gave up. And yes, my father’s mother died at only 56, but she died of cervical cancer, which is now easily caught and very treatable if found early. If I can keep up with my annual pap smears, it appears that I might live forever.

In any case, women are a much hardier group than men. Like Ron going from rats to rabbits, I wish I could switch my preferences and settle down with a nice, healthy, long-lived woman, but apparently that really isn’t a conscious choice. Though I see beautiful, bright, healthy women everywhere, I still find myself drawn to men. I fear that my only choices are to live alone or to get used to going to funerals.

Now that Rachel has pointed out how extreme my fear is, I see it seeping into my day-to-day life. Out for drinks with Ron and a few of his buddies, I catch myself, in the middle of a laugh, looking around the table and imagining how each man there is going to meet his early end. Mark has cut back on rock climbing because he sprained his wrist in a mountain-biking crash. Last winter, he wrenched his shoulder when he tried a back flip while snowboarding and fell while he was upside-down. I see him falling on his head, though whether from a rock or a snowdrift, I cannot guess. Aaron has become devoted to yoga in the most driven, macho style available. He has chosen Bikram yoga, characterized by super-humidified, super-heated studios and poses done in rapid succession. On top of that, he’s put himself on an extreme low-fat diet that makes even Ron, a vegetarian, worry. I picture Aaron worn down by malnutrition, if heatstroke doesn’t get him first.

And then I look at Ron, one of my closest friends and favorite men. Ron has traveled the world, gotten sick off of the water in Morocco, nearly drowned while snorkeling in Costa Rica, gone skydiving and rock climbing and river rafting, and has a certificate on his office wall declaring that, on a trip to South Africa, he has touched a live cheetah. Still, I imagine he’ll meet his end right in his own back yard. Ron was once knocked unconscious by a car door blown back in a strong wind. He was knocked out again by a rude movie theater patron who, on her way out of the theater, shoved the door open too quickly while he was coming in. He sustained a mild concussion and a nasty cut on his nose when he leaned too far forward while closing the back hatch of his station wagon. I cannot imagine what freak accident will finally kill Ron, but it will certainly be an interesting one, and it could come at any moment.

I suppose, looking at my friends, that I should add “machismo” to my list of likely killers of men, right under “heart disease.” The main point I’ve absorbed, though, is that, much as I like men, I will most likely have to watch many of them die, and so, the closer I get to any of them, the more pain I’m signing up for. Rachel clarified my problem, but I don’t know an easy solution. My fear that the men I love are far too mortal is not an irrational neurosis. It is a reasonable conclusion based on the evidence available to me. My only hope for happiness, it seems, is to become so enlightened that, like the best Buddhists, I can accept that death is always a heartbeat (or lack thereof) away, and come to be calm about that fact. I’m not hopeful that I’ll ever be that strong, but lacking other solutions, I’ve dusted off my meditation bench and started to flip through books, looking for the right spiritual path to start toddling down.

But then Ron points out by accident that enlightenment might sneak up on us as surely as death does. He still declares that he’s heartbroken over his rats, and won’t get any of his own for a long, long time. Visiting his house, I find him happily setting up a sleeping cage in his living room, and hiding electrical wires to “rat-proof” a play area on the floor. It turns out that Françoise, a stronger woman than I on many accounts, has moved out of Ron’s house to live with her beloved boyfriend. As a couple, they’ve decided to get a group of pet rats. She’s just called Ron for help: The youngest rat is much smaller than the other three, and the big ones are beating him up terribly. He needs another place to stay until he’s finished growing up and is big enough to compete. Would Ron like to keep him for a few months?

Of course he would! Rabbits make more logical sense, but Ron is a born rat-lover. He’s happiest with a rat in his life, even though he knows that he’s going to have to nurse him through hard times and finally watch him die. When the right one comes along, Ron just can’t help but take him in.

And me, I just have a thing for men. Someday, against my best judgment, I’m sure I’ll find one sleeping in my living room again.