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"All
men want to get laid," says Tom Leykis, who found plenty
of female fans in Portland. "That's what men want, period.
Better to be frank and up-front about that than to pretend
it's about something else, because it's not."
The
Tom Leykis show can be heard between 3 and 7 pm Monday through
Friday on KOTK 1080 AM.
Leykis
101--Golden Rules for Men: Never date a single mother.
Leykis
101--Golden Rules for Men: Never tell a woman how much money
you make, although it is OK for her to think you have a
lot.
Ron
Birge never wants kids and says he would only get married
"to lower my car insurance rates."
Leykis
101--Golden Rules for Men: Never answer the phone on the
weekend. It makes you look like you have nothing to do or
no place to go, and if a woman is calling you over the weekend
it means her other plans fell through and you are a backup.
Leykis
101--Golden Rules for Men: Don't speak to women you work
with unless it's related directly to work. Don't date them.
Don't tell them they look nice. Don't comment on anything
except whatever work needs you have, because you're a walking
lawsuit waiting
to happen.
More
than 40 percent of all first marriages end in divorce. In
1970, 3 percent of the adult population was divorced. By
1997 that number had climbed to nearly 10 percent.
Jasmine
Sankoff looks at the Lost Boys and wants to know, "What
are they scared of?"
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The crowd waiting to get into the Bagdad Theater snakes out
along Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Inside the crowded theater,
it feels a lot like a poor man's frat party, easily filled
to its capacity of 723 seats. The air is thick and humid;
you could cut the testosterone with the chainsaw Eminem sings
about on his Marshall Mathers CD. The evening's events
haven't even officially started when an attractive woman with
long, dark hair dressed in a tight miniskirt lifts up her
blouse and flashes her seemingly augmented breasts. Another
woman follows her lead. And another. The audience goes nuts.
One guy nearly falls from the balcony trying to get a better
view, while six others race down the stairs with cameras hoping
to get a picture. You would think they'd never seen breasts
in real life before. Then again, tonight is special, a heady
cocktail mix of the ingredients these guys like best: Tits
and Tom.
On Sept. 29, Portland hosted the world premiere of Blow
Me Up Tom, a documentary about the growing popularity
of nationally syndicated talk-radio host Tom Leykis. It's
a flattering portrait of a 20-year talk-radio veteran who
has, in the past few years, found himself a special niche.
The Tom Leykis Show is No. 1 in Seattle and Los
Angeles. In Portland, the show airs on KOTK radio (1080
AM); its audience is still relatively small, though growing.
Nearly 33,000 people tune in to hear Leykis every day in
the City of Roses. That's a mere 10 percent of the audience
he has in Los Angeles. But the fans he does have in Portland
treat him like
a rock star.
After the screening, one woman after another exposes her
"rack" for Leykis to autograph, while a fresh-faced young
man in line proclaims, "I love you, Tom!" A man who looks
to be in his 40s, with tears running down his cheeks and
dressed like he just came from a Promise Keepers meeting,
approaches Leykis. "Thanks for giving me my balls back,"
he screams.
Every day, "Professor" Leykis--who calls himself a "master
debater" and a "cunning linguist"--holds class on his radio
show. "Leykis 101," as he calls it, teaches men everything
they need to know about women and getting laid.
"Dating is war. Women control how much sex
we get. They also take our money and pretend they're going
to give us sex when they don't intend to. We go into it unprepared."
--Tom Leykis
"There are a lot of women who want the bad boys until they
get married," he says. "Then Joe Shlub--the accountant who
couldn't get a date in high school and beyond--suddenly
looks like great marriage material because he'll show up
from work on time and he'll pay all the bills and be responsible.
If guys just want to get laid, you don't want to be responsible,
you don't want to be a nice guy--you want to be a jerk.
That's how you will get sex. To pretend you'll get a woman
by weeping--who came up with that?"
"Dating is war," says the 43-year-old Leykis during an
interview earlier in the day. "Women control how much sex
we get. They also take our money and pretend they're going
to give us sex when they don't intend to. We go into it
unprepared." Most men, says Leykis, don't have a clue. Instead,
as he likes to say, their balls are kept in a Mason jar
by their wives and girlfriends.
Laugh if you like, but the lifestyle Leykis promotes seems
to be on the upswing--hence his popularity. Unlike shock
jock Howard Stern--whose schtick is more that of the wiseguy
14-year-old who found his dad's collection of porno--Leykis,
like Dr. Laura, has an ideology. If Dr. Laura promotes an
Old Testament version of rectitude and morality, Leykis
is selling something quite different. Men are from Mars.
Women, he likes to say, "need a crack in the ass."
The growing popularity of Tom Leykis, whether you agree
with him or not, is part of a larger picture, a picture
of a newly emerging type of man. It's not a movement in
any traditional sense of the word, but more like a new subculture
of Lost Boys, a steadily increasing number of men--most
between age 25 and 40--who, depending on your point of view,
are either postponing adulthood or are defying the conventions
of what adulthood is supposed to be.
There is no prototypical Lost Boy, no stereotype that can
be used to pick them out of a crowd. You're just as likely
to find one working as a bartender or a bike messenger as
practicing medicine or patrolling the streets in a police
cruiser. They have no clubhouse, no secret handshake, no
dimly lit basements where they beat the crap out of each
other. Lost Boys hang out at strip clubs like Sassy's, work
out at 24-Hour Fitness, burn the midnight oil in Pearl District
offices or admire the latest exhibits at the Portland Art
Museum. They are everywhere.
Or are they?
Other than the occasional sightings at Rollins Band shows
and the complaints of women that there are "no men who want
to get married," what proof is there that Lost Boys really
exist?
Consider this: The United States marriage rate in 1998
hit an all-time low for the 20th century--8.4 marriages
per 1,000 people. According to the Census Bureau, 40 percent
of the adults in the United States--80 million people--are
single. The Census Bureau estimates that 10 percent of them
will never marry. In 1970, 9 percent of men between the
ages of 30 and 34 had never been married. By 1998, the same
number for that age group had reached 29 percent. The percentage
of men who have never been married in other age groups has
also risen considerably during the past three decades.
Glancing at a magazine rack, you can see the telltale signs
of a growing population of single men. Where years ago there
was only a handful of publications like GQ and Esquire,
now magazines like Maxim, Stuff, Gear,
Code, Details, FHM, Ego and
Later fight for space, offering advice on everything
from getting laid to pleasing women to avoiding marriage.
Meanwhile, magazines marketed toward women offer advice
on how to get and keep the guys who read Maxim. Inside
a recent issue of Cosmopolitan, an article on sex
positions tells women how to "narrow your vaginal canal"
for deeper penile penetration, which in turn will "make
any guy's member feel like Moby Dick." With this and 12
other positions, Cosmo promises women they will give
their men an experience "sooo intense and tantalizing he'll
want to tattoo your name on his chest." "Make him your love
slave," one headline boasts. The one thing that seems to
be missing from all the articles is this simple fact: Some
men don't want to be love slaves.
"In today's world, marriage has become a ceremony
for people who feel their personal word of honor isn't good
enough."
--Ron Birge
By day, Ron Birge, a regular Leykis listener, is a 32-year-old
administrative assistant who makes good money. But once
he leaves work, shedding his shirt and tie like a snake
sheds its skin, he becomes a totally different person. Whether
he's clad in leather and tooling around on his motorcycle
or jumping around a stage with his band, you would never
know he works for a major corporation.
Two years ago, Birge had a vasectomy. "My friends thought
I was crazy, or that I hate kids," he says. But he doesn't
hate kids; in fact, he spends as much time as possible with
his young niece and nephew. "I just don't want any [kids]
of my own--and I never will," he says matter-of-factly.
It would be easy to paint Birge as man trapped at age 18,
chasing women and avoiding responsibility--after all, he
doesn't want kids, and, more important, he doesn't want
to get married. But Birge is quick to point out that he
isn't trying to avoid committed relationships. He admits
to having been in love and wanting to spend the rest of
his life with a woman. But, he's just as quick to point
out, "That happily-ever-after stuff--the fairy-tale endings--those
don't happen in real life. A piece of paper doesn't make
for a meaningful bond.
"In today's world, marriage has become a ceremony for people
who feel their personal word of honor isn't good enough.
If you feel so strongly about someone that you want to spend
the rest of your life with them, then that should be it."
Birge, an atheist, adds that for him, "the religious meaning
behind marriage holds no significance."
"Everybody says when I meet the right girl, that I'll change
my mind about marriage," says Brett Carlson, 30. "I tell
them, I may have already found her, but the problem is:
I don't want to get married." Carlson is a project
leader for a video-game development company. He freely admits,
"I don't see any benefit to growing up at this time." He
also doesn't see what the big deal is about marriage: His
mother and stepfather have been together 27 years without
being married. Carlson believes that too many people--especially
women--confuse the ceremony of a wedding with the commitment
of a marriage. Beyond that, he says, marriage is an outdated
concept, especially given the high percentage of divorces:
"Statistically, getting married is setting yourself up for
failure."
Like those of so many other Lost Boys, Carlson's views
on marriage tend to scare off some women. "I'm not going
to lie," he says. "But you tell a woman you don't want to
get married and it turns her off. The women who are left
are the ones you can deal with."
The Battle of the Sexes can take its toll on many people,
men and women alike, and it often leaves people bitter and
cynical. "Alex" (who asked to remain anonymous) is one of
those bitter cynics. With one exception, which he refers
to as "the one that got away," he says he's has had nothing
but a string of bad relationships since he was a teenager.
At 35, he looks younger than he is--until he cracks a sardonic
smile that reveals the age lines in his face. Suddenly he
looks like one of those young guys who come back from war,
old before their time.
"I would love to settle down for the long haul with the
right woman, if she existed," he says. Then he drops a bomb
many Lost Boys have alluded to but haven't had the nerve
to say: "There's just no women out there worth settling
down with." Alex's words mirror the long-standing complaint
of many women who say there are no quality men to be found.
"Women talk about the lack of quality men--what the hell
does that mean? There's no Prince Charming? No shit! Maybe
if they got out of that fantasy land they live in, we could
deal with them. There are so many women out there that are
completely fucked up, and they don't know they're fucked
up, or they won't admit it. They're everywhere. It's like
walking through a minefield with magnetic shoes on. Just
once I would like to find a woman who doesn't have unresolved
issues with her father."
Exactly who are these lost boys, and where did they come
from? The birth of the Lost Boys began in the late '60s
and '70s, when the divorce rate doubled as millions of American
couples admitted they had screwed up in picking their life
partner and called it quits. The image of a lasting relationship
was shattered for a generation of kids who had to listen
to their mothers say "Daddy is an asshole" and their fathers
counter with "Your mother is a bitch." According to Leykis--who
himself is on wife No. 4--the increasing number of divorces
had an especially profound impact on millions of young men.
"We are the first generation of adult men who were raised
in single-parent households, or in households of two-career
families, where Dad wasn't around, and a lot of guys never
learned how to be guys," Leykis says. "You have to raise
boys to be men, and I think you need a man to do that. [A
lot of guys] tune in, and I tell them there's nothing wrong
with being a man."
But what exactly does "being a man" entail? Some would
argue that being a man means finding a career and sticking
with it, settling down and raising a family. For Leykis,
however, being a man means acknowledging the one inescapable
truth: "All men want to get laid. That's what men want,
period."
"Women are in denial about this," he continues. "Women
think we pick them out at the bar when we're drunk because
we think they look intelligent, that they look nice. No,
we gauge them according to how likely they are to let us
in their panties. Better to be frank and up-front about
that than to pretend it's about something else, because
it's not."
"What some men don't understand is that commitment
does not mean marriage." --Jasmine Sankoff
Whatever the reason for the Lost Boys being the way they
are--whether it's a lack of male role models or fluoride
in the water--Jasmine Sankoff is tired of it.
"You can only get kicked in the teeth so many times before
you wake up," she says. In her mid-thirties, she has a well-paying
job as an event coordinator. She's the sort of woman you
can't help but notice when she walks into a room. Her good
looks are complemented by her intelligence and a sharp wit,
making her the "perfect catch." She isn't looking for a
husband. But she's still had a run of bad luck when it comes
to finding men who are willing to make a real commitment.
She describes men who tell her "they want something casual
yet meaningful." Sankoff laughs: "That doesn't exist. What
some men don't understand is that commitment does not mean
marriage."
While some women might lay all the blame on men, Sankoff
feels not enough women share in the blame for men's failure
to step up to the plate. She says women make it too easy
for men by settling for meaningless relationships or having
sex with the belief that it will result in a man falling
in love with them. "You can't blame men for not making a
commitment," she explains. "There are too many women out
there who put out and ask for nothing in return."
The problem, according to women like Margaret Logan, is
that men want to have their cake and eat it too. Logan,
28, works as an administrative assistant. She says the men
who "whine about being free" are deluding themselves.
"Marriage is not the loss of freedom, not if you find the
right person," she says with a tinge of frustration in her
voice. "I've never asked a man to give up his freedom for
me. None of my friends have asked men to give up their freedom.
The 'freedom' these guys are talking about is the freedom
to fuck women and give them nothing in return."
It's no wonder Logan sounds defeated. Like so many other
women, she has had to deal with men who give her the "still-finding-myself,
need-room-to-grow, not-ready-for-marriage" song and dance.
Logan says she's "not afraid of being alone" and that her
"biological clock is not ticking"--but she is tired of men
who act like little boys. "All of these guys just need to
stop being so afraid of growing up, and just become men."
The problem might not be that Lost Boys are afraid to grow
up and become men. The problem could be that they don't
know how.
The Lost Boys are the first generation of men who have
had the luxury of pondering what they want to be when they
grow up. They have not had to feed their children during
the Great Depression. They have not stood up to monsters
like Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. They have not faced attacking
police dogs and fire hoses while fighting for the right
to sit in the front of the bus. They have not battled the
Communist threat in the jungles of Vietnam, or taken a stand
to end such a war. Unlike their fathers and grandfathers,
they've never been forced to make a commitment.
For the first time, there is an entire generation of men
without the traditional sticks to measure their manhood.
The feminist movement gave women the freedom to live lives
without men. Women don't even need a man to father a child
anymore. Men now live in a sociological limbo where they
are no longer required to be the hunter-gatherers. Could
it be that the Lost Boys are just a consequence of the brutal
reality that many guys now feel obsolete?
Tom Leykis laughs at the notion that men are obsolete.
"That only happens if a man lets it happen. I tell guys,
'Just don't give them the cash, and then we'll see how obsolete
we are.'"
Unlike the men's movement of the early 1990s, typified
by Robert Bly and his book Iron John, the Lost Boys--a
group that hardly qualifies as a movement--are not running
around in the woods, clad in loincloths and beating on drums.
Lost Boys are not looking to get back to their caveman roots;
they are looking to find their place in a world where the
rules have drastically changed and the age-old concepts
of manhood have been blurred.
"There's a lot of guys walking around who don't know some
of the basics of being a guy. There's a reason for that
really emotional response we're getting," Leykis says of
the men who listen to his show. "Guys need to start saying
the truth. My saying it is powerful because guys usually
don't do that."
Could it be that the Lost Boys will never grow up to become
men--not because they don't want to, but because they are
what men are becoming?
--David Diaz contributed to this
article.
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