A Good Man is Hard to Find

The Fiance wants a man. No, not like that. He wants, you know, “a Man”. As in a butler, valet, personal attendant, etc. Like in the olden days when little boys of means grew up to be professional gentleman (which really just sounds like a euphemism for gigolo, if you ask me) and had their own personal Jeeves’. To whom they’d say things like “Bring my buggy ‘round would you, my good Man?” or “Excuse me a moment while my Man here wipes my arse, since I can scarcely be bothered”. Call it what you want, but speaking from experience, a man-servant is little more than a nanny for grown-ups.

This reminds me of the time my parents and I went to see “The Remains of the Day” and afterwards my father proclaimed that he wanted to give up practicing medicine to become Head Butler of a storied estate somewhere in Wales. His idea was to be the Man, not to have one but the fascination was pretty much the same.

A hundred years ago even the most modest middle-class all had their own collection of servants, and perhaps even some of those servants had servants. Nowadays serfdom presents itself in different forms but is hardly less pervasive. Most American households have at one point employed a house-cleaner or gardener. I am waited on every morning by a friendly coffee shop barista, go to the hair-stylist, have my clothes dry-cleaned, my car washed, etc. The service industry has absolutely exploded since the Victorian era. We’ve just outsourced.

With so many conveniences readily available for a nominal fee, what could The Fiance possibly need a Man for? Turns out, he has a lot of ideas: running his errands, keeping his appointments, testing his meals for poison, turning down the covers of his bed, tending the hounds, emptying the chamber pot, ironing shirts to a neat crisp and so on.

“So, basically he’d be living your life for you.”

“Exactly!”

“Then whose life would you be living?”

“I don’t know, someone's much cooler than mine."

I am pretty sure that someone somewhere wants a Man of their very own in order to live a life just as cool as his is right now. Afterall, he already has his very own Woman. One who will gladly test his food for poison, but stop short at the chamber pot thing. God bless indoor plumbing.