I Moved Your Cheese Read online

  Even the great Hide-and-Seek scandal of 72 – when nasty rumours circulated about Xam’s loincloths having small rents in them, just the kind of rents you would expect to be made if someone took a sharp piece of flint and poked it forcefully against the animal hide, just the kind of rents that might make considerably simpler the astounding feat of tracking an ostrich across a gravel plain while blindfolded with your loincloth – even this scandal did nothing to seriously threaten Xam’s standing in the community.

  And Xam lived long and died happy, or as happy as you can be when you’re dying.

  So what are we to learn from the story of Xam and the ostrich egg? If we but knew it, all the secrets of life are here. For one thing: you don’t need to hunt your desert elephant to make a success of your life. No one needs to run with the bulls or harpoon Moby Dick or shag Mrs Dunstable to lead a fulfilled life – especially not shagging Mrs Dunstable, if what Gary Zephron told us after rugby practice behind the change-rooms is true. The truth is: you don’t actually have to accomplish anything. All you need is to know how to fake it.

  Inside us all there is the secret truth of ourselves – a truth that is hollow, like an eggshell that has spilt its water. We just need to embrace that hollowness, and give people the opportunity to persuade themselves that there is something there. Other people – never forget – are even more insecure and self-doubting than we are. They will fill in the secret for you. If you can pull that off, it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are at anything else. I’m telling you, people, this is the way we want to go: we all need to find our inner ostrich egg.

  3

  Finding Your Mate

  The inner ostrich egg can help us in many situations. Consider love. Or if not love, that hot itchy feeling we tell our partners is love. Everybody wants love, or at least something to make that hot feeling stop itching. Love, indeed, is a many-splendoured thing.

  (As opposed to whiskey, which is a many-blended thing. Love, on the whole, beats whiskey because, um … hang on a minute, I had it written down here somewhere. Oh yes – with whiskey you can sometimes run out of ice, and then you have to go next door and borrow some ice, but sometimes you forget how late it is, because time has no meaning when you are spending quality time with your whiskey, so you thoughtlessly wake up the neighbours and then they shout at you and tell you to bring back that copy of the Sunday newspaper they saw you stealing from their postbox, and then you threaten to burn their house down – because whiskey, bless her fickle charms, sometimes causes you to get your dander up – and then before you know it, things have gotten out of hand. Love does none of these things. Well, some of those things, but it seldom causes your neighbour to shout, unless you are loving too loudly while he is trying to watch the Miss Universe pageant on the television.)

  At any rate, love is good. All the great ones have spoken highly of it. Especially Shakespeare – he was particularly lavish in his praise. Love, he said, is like a red, red nose. Or perhaps I am thinking of someone else. Anyway, at its best, love has many benefical side effects. It discourages us from taking that extra martini before hitting the road; it causes us to brush our teeth before going to bed; sometimes it helps us make slightly less of a fool of ourself at the office Christmas party. Plus, the scientists tell us, being in love causes our cholesterol levels to drop. In my experience, that is usually because my loved ones won’t let me eat fillet steaks with a zesty blue-cheese sauce for breakfast any more, but still …

  (On the down side, love has inspired many of the songs of Celine Dion and most of the public utterances of Michael Jackson, as well as giving rise to divorce lawyers, the suburbs and Valentine’s Day. But let us not dwell on the negative.)

  The big problem with love is the eternal snag of actually finding someone who will let you lie on top of them and whisper your lovin’ mouthfuls in their ear. This has ever been the problem. It is tough enough for women, who traditionally have had to be locked in medieval towers or stand around in front of dragons’ caves or dance in strip clubs while waiting for a knight errant or a wealthy Malaysian businessman to find them and carry them away, but it is no picnic for men either, especially those of us who are not knights errant or wealthy Malaysian businessmen. I, for one, am neither a knight errant nor a wealthy Malaysian businessman, and if you are anything like me – and I think you are – neither are you.

  (I confess, this chapter is dedicated largely to the men of the world, but you ladies may want to read it too. Because if you don’t, if you skip it and head straight on to the next section, you will finish your book before your partner – who hopefully is lying beside you reading his own personal copy – has even started the final chapter. This book has been carefully measured for a simultaneous finish – I find it more intimate that way – but if you should choose the headstrong, independent route, I can only ask that you don’t spoil the surprise ending for him.)

  When it comes to finding a mate, there has been much advice bandied about over the years, some of it useful.

  “Get yourself a good club and some interesting wallpaintings, and for God’s sake move out of your parents’ cave, already,” they told Australopithecus man.

  “Get yourself a feudal barony and a village full of loyal peasants who have sworn an oath of vassalage, and whose brides you can sleep with on their wedding nights,” they told medieval man.

  (Incidentally, I have always wanted to wear an aftershave called Droit de Seigneur. And I would, only I don’t think anyone makes an aftershave called Droit de Seigneur.)

  “Get yourself a job, a car and a dark-blue suit,” they told men in the 1950s.

  “Get yourself some long hair and drugs,” they told men in the 1960s. (In fact, that drug thing holds true for almost any era between now and forever.)

  “Get yourself some dance moves, some dangling neckjewellery, some assorted varieties of facial hair including sideburns, and a shirt made from a flammable synthetic material,” they told men in the 1970s. “Oh,” they added, “and don’t forget the drugs.”

  “Get yourself a fax machine, a cordless telephone, a gym membership, a job you can’t really explain to anyone in a way that would make sense, a car you can’t afford and, of course, some drugs,” they told men in the 1980s. In fact, let’s just take that “car you can’t afford” as read from now on as well.

  “Get yourself a subscription to a glossy women’s magazine, your own reflexologist, a private gym instructor, a set of face-care products created especially for men, a career that fulfils you, a creative outlet, a cellphone that you don’t always feel the need to answer, the ability to cook at least three dishes that don’t involve pasta or toast, one or more experiments in quirky facial hair, and a drug dealer who delivers to you,” they told men in the 1990s.

  You will notice that the must-have lists have steadily increased over the years. This is not because women have become noticeably more demanding of their men. Indeed, when you look at some of the villains and rotters and generally misshapen detrimentals you see walking about with beautiful women on their arms, you will share my suspicion that women demand almost no standards at all of the men they inexplicably select. No, the list of demands has grown because these are the demands we are putting on ourselves, damn our sorry eyes.

  We are the ones who started saying: “Ooh, you’ve been right all these years: we are shallow, simple, one-dimensional beings. We do need to add colour to our wardrobe and depth to our lifestyles, in order best to bring out the goddess that is you. Look at me, I am cooking with capers and something that involves the word ‘balsamic’ in its name, and yet I am still earning a good salary and going to gym to make my stomach flat! Check it out, I can discuss feng shui, and almost pronounce it correctly! Love me, for I have opinions about interior decoration! See how multidimensional I am! Plus, can I read your copy of Conversations with God when you’re finished?”

  And women went: “Golly.” Because they never expected us to believe all of that. They didn’t even really believe it t
hemselves. It was just an age-old ritual that we all followed, the same way that men don’t always mind stopping and asking for directions – we just feel we have to pretend we do. But of course when confronted with this sudden mass offer to unilaterally disarm, women said: “Okay, dandy.”

  They would have been fools if they hadn’t, and of the vast number of things that women are not, fools is right at the top of the list.

  It would have been like the Russkis phoning up Reagan in the 80s and saying: “Comrade, we have thought about it, and we have decided that keeping these missile systems and nuclear warheads is more trouble than it’s worth. We are going to dismantle them, and drop the parts in the sea near New Zealand. Unless, of course, you have some use for them? We could send our warheads directly over in the next mail, if you like? Carefully swaddled in bubble-wrap, of course, ha ha. You can add them to your arsenal. We’ll even pay for the postage. And we’ll stop drinking vodka, if you think that would be best?”

  And Reagan thinking about it and going: “Nah, no need for that, pardners. I’d miss having another superpower around. Besides, there are so many areas of our relationship we haven’t even explored yet. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about chemical warfare for a while now, and maybe this is the right time.”

  So you can’t blame them for accepting the offer, but it has resulted in no good for any of us. Because here’s the thing: it doesn’t work. It certainly doesn’t work for men: it is too much effort to improve yourself, especially when deep down your every Y chromosome is yelling out: “This is not an improvement! You were a better man when you had never used an olive-oil atomiser! You were a better man when you thought reiki was an oriental technique for gathering up loose leaves!”

  It is too much effort, and you generally fail at it, which leaves you feeling like a failure, which is never any good f or your sex life. And even if you get it right, the rewards are hardly worth the trouble. We become miserable and unmanly and we sublimate our desires in other, even less attractive ways.

  So instead of spending all Saturday watching rugby, you spend all Sunday watching Formula One motor-racing, and then you pretend you are satisfied.

  Instead of saying, “I don’t feel like talking about our relationship”, you say: “I really want to talk about our relationship, but my bio-rhythmic chart suggests that I am experiencing an emotional peak right now, and I don’t want to cloud what can be such a positive, life-enhancing experience with a tantrum that might lead to my walking out and drinking heavily at a strip club.”

  And women aren’t any happier either. Women, God help them, like men. They have liked us for years, for centuries – forever, in fact – just as we were. I can’t understand it any more than you can. It is one of those facts of life, like how a television works, or whether red and green traffic lights at opposing intersections really are always perfectly synchronised, that just has to be taken as an article of faith. If we stop to question it, chaos ensues. And that is precisely what we have done. We have questioned it. We have set out to be better.

  (Which returns me to a theme: do not set out to be better. It isn’t worth it.)

  And now we are not the men that women have learned to resentfully love and lovingly resent, and that means women are as confused and listless as we are. It is even worse for them, because they have finally got what they want, and it isn’t what they want! They are sitting there thinking: do I really, in the deepest part of me, want to share my life with someone who cares so much about whether Ally McBeal could ever have found true love with Robert Downey Jr? Wouldn’t I maybe, secretly, rather be spending the night with Robert Downey Jr? Sure, he takes a lot of drugs and he’d never be home much, but in a weird sort of way, that’s kinda sexy.

  That is why my advice to the men of the new millennium is simple and pared down, like Norwegian furniture. (And how I wish that the reference to Norwegian furniture were not one that the men of new millennium would be so likely to understand.) It is this: find your inner ostrich egg.

  That’s it: find your inner ostrich egg.

  I realise that you are new at this; you may need more. Remember Xam and his empty ostrich egg? Remember how when he clutched it to himself the others all wondered what his secret was? Remember how they all assumed that he had a secret at all? If the ostrich egg had been filled with water, and Xam had drunk it, or shared it, or even wondered aloud what he should do with it, he would not have become the most powerful man in his tribe. A secret is only powerful when it is still a secret.

  That ostrich egg is inside us all, and if we cherish it, and cradle it, and refuse under any circumstances to explore its inner parts, then others will begin to imagine for themselves what is inside it. Women in particular prefer their own imaginings of who we are – and quite right too, since what they can imagine is infinitely more interesting and attractive than what is really the case.

  So heed what I am saying: instead of trying to improve yourself, reap the benefits of letting others do the improvements for you. Make silence your friend. Cultivate the knowing look, the mysterious smile, the sudden unexplained frown, as though you were remembering words spoken a long time ago by someone very different. As long as you aren’t sitting there slack-jawed and drooling, and as long as you don’t keep laughing at all of their jokes, even the ones they don’t find funny themselves, they will begin to sense depths and dimensions in you that you could scarcely have imagined, let alone conjured up by some misguided programme of self-betterment.

  Let me share with you an anecdote to illustrate the perils of talking too much. My friend Chunko is eternally the optimist when it comes to meeting women. What’s more, he is enterprising. He has spent the best years of his life hanging around laundromats and bowling alleys in the hope of finding an eligible young lady. (Why bowling alleys, you ask? Don’t ask me. Chunko may be enterprising, but that doesn’t make him smart.)

  Last year he put in long hours at his local bookstore, to no avail. “No woman ever browses at the flyfishing department,” he grumbled, “and if you hang around the self-help books, you’re only going to meet the kind of woman who reads self-help books.”

  His most recent wheeze was supermarkets. I scoffed, but he was persuasive. “If you come with me,” he said, “I’ll buy the next round.”

  Our first port of call was the local supermarket on a Sunday morning. “What we need to do,” said Chunko, “is refine some approach lines.”

  I positioned myself at the fresh-produce department. Fruit and vegetables, I fondly imagined, offer a wealth of approach lines. Soon enough, a likely candidate approached. She seemed presentable and her hair had recently been washed. As I lingered, she fingered an avocado, and seemed to smile at me in an encouraging fashion. I thanked my stars. Avocados are approach lines waiting to happen.

  Sauntering closer, I murmured: “Equal volumes of all gases contain the same number of molecules at the same temperature and pressure.” She looked at me levelly, and the warmth in her eyes cooled.

  “I think you are mistaken,” she said. “I think you are trying to use an approach line regarding the avocado, a pearshaped tropical fruit with a leathery green skin, large seed and edible pulp. Instead you are reciting Avogadro’s Rule, an hypothesis named after its originator, the eighteenth-century physicist Amego Avogadro.”

  How do you think I should have responded to that situation? Do you think I should have smiled mysteriously, bowed courteously and withdrawn, leaving the subject to ponder whether I really was making a point involving the constituent properties of gases? Or do you think I should have stood there stammering, saying something along the lines of: “Oh, um, no, I was actually just thinking aloud, and, uh, uh, did he really live in the eighteenth century? I didn’t know that …”

  I leave it to you to guess which option I selected. I am simply the writer of this book; I don’t always learn from it. My small consolation – and it is meagre indeed – is that over at the refrigerated section, Chunko was faring no better. He hovered besid
e the frozen poultry, leering at a severe-looking woman wearing no make-up. As she reached for the drumsticks, he contrived to lean forward so that their hands met above the braai packs.

  The severe-looking woman withdrew her hand sharply. “Um …” said Chunko, “ummm …” Sympathetically, the woman offered him an escape. Holding out a packet of frozen fowl, she said: “Chicken breasts?”

  A happy smile broke across Chunko’s face. I grew cold, but there was nothing I could do. Chunko has never been very good at holding his silence. “No, not at all,” he said, staring at the front of her T-shirt, “I think they’re very attractive.”

  MAINTAINING THE MATE

  Looking back, I can see now that that anecdote didn’t really illustrate much at all. Never mind, too late now. At any rate, if you play your cards right and follow my advice, you will find that before long you have managed to snare yourself a love-partner. Do not relax, my brothers. Harder than winning is holding. Reach inside. Feel the smooth curve of your ostrich egg. Tap it. Hear how it echoes.

  Avoid bringing new lovers to your home too soon. I don’t mean never let them see where you live – that is inviting them to imagine severed heads in your freezer and a small pile of hands in your crisper drawer. Or, worse, a wife.

  But when you do bring them home, make sure everything is neatened up and tidied away. If you must have personal effects as decoration, make sure they are either suitably enigmatic, like a collection of live Venus Flytraps or a stuffed monitor lizard, or teasingly impersonal, like a chess set carved from narwhal ivory.

  Be sure to take down your mounted collection of empty beer cans from around the world, or your very humorous mirror with the joke laws of cricket printed across it, or the five-litre beer mug with “My New Year’s resolution is that I’ll cut down to one drink a day” written on the side. Ditto any photographs of you and your friends taken: