Before the days of unleaded premium gasoline if you wanted the most expensive stuff at the pump you asked for high test (that was also in the days when someone pumped the gas for you, washed your windshields, and checked the oil while you sat behind the wheel). High test was the gas with the highest octane and many cars used it because back then most of them had V-8 engines and lots of get up and go. High test was the gasoline of champions.
Today I was thinking about high test but it came to me in another train of thought. I met a friend in a coffee shop and she was talking about an ex-husband who had been mean, manipulative, and philandering when they were married, back in her 20's. She ditched him after 2 years which certainly sounded like the right choice. I drifted into a reverie about our 20's and the hormonal excesses we were subject to in those days. We females were constantly complaining about the mood swings, irritability, bloating, and just plain uncomfortable days before, during, and sometimes even after we menstruated. This lament continued as we aged, changing from PMS due to youth, to PMS due to post partum readjustment, and then the worst PMS of all, PMS associated with peri-menopause. If you are a woman you can relate to this. You remember all the conversations that have taken place over the years between you and your female friends, sisters, daughters, and mothers concerning the woes of hormonal fluctuations.
I was wondering if men have these conversations and I realized that was a really stupid thing to wonder about. Of course they don't. Men don't sit around and relate their irritability, competiveness, anger, weight gain, and philandering to hormonal fluctuations. I am inclined to think that men don't even know they have hormones. They know they have penises, which of course, they think about a lot but I don't think they talk to other men about that. Do you know any men intimately who tell you tales about their penises, the names they have for them, their pride in them? yYoung sons will regale you with tales about this stuff but my guess is they don't quit thinking about it they just don't talk about it after a certain point, at least not to other guys. So, the point here is that even though they are very familiar with their equipment they don't tend to understand that underlying not only it's functioning, but also in many case their moods are those ubiquitous hormones. As my friend was discussing her ex-husband of years ago it struck me that that guy had too much high test(osterone). He was afflicted with too much hormone and too little sense.
Would we live in a gentler world if men could acknowledge their hormonal afflictions? Would we be better off if they sat around bending each other's ears with their tales of woe? Could we relate more compassionately to male hormone madness if they could confess their complete lack of control over the surges of high test(osterone)? Any woman will admit to moments of utter insanity brought on by hormonal changes. We know what it's like to feel out of control and irrational and we know what causes it. And knowing what it is makes it easier to talk to other women, and men, about it, to seek rest, solitude, or drugs, or massage to ease it. We know we aren't always mistresses of our own fate. But perhaps the key is that linked to raging male hormone is the desire to dominate, control, and copulate without thought. Face it, when men are in the throes of hormonal excess the last thing they want to do is seek solitude or chat. They want to take on the world.
Fortunately, hormones, both male and female, eventually level out or peter out (no pun intended). That's why those 50 and 60 year old guys seem so much gentler and kinder. And I hope that it's also true of us. The real irony here is that as our estrogen abates we get more high test(osterone). The most obvious manifestation being those chin hairs that appear at the most inopportune times. But of course, being women, we won't be going through this change without relating this new hormonal woe to every friend. As my husband becomes the man I always knew he could be (sweet, gentle, kind) I am looking for new worlds to dominate. I'm looking forward to having a little bit of Tony the Tiger in my tank. So look out world, here I come - and oh by the way fella's - talking really does help to tame the savage beast.
