Men in waiting

File: 50-food-utt

Sec: Food

Subsec: Under the table

Hed:

P/Q: There’s a generation of unmotivated, unemployed men who happily coast through life and have no apologies doing it.

I realised recently I’m the only person in my family that has a full time job. Both my parents are enjoying the glees of retirement and my two youngest siblings are in school. But my middle brother, of prime working age (28), hasn’t held a job in six years.

My parents asked me to have a motivational chat with him. “You know they are going to kick you out of the house soon,” I said over a stupidly expensive dim sum lunch. “How are you planning on stretching your life of leisure?” “I was thinking of applying for business school, that should give me another year, year and a half. An MBA takes another two years,” he said casually. “Are you ever planning to work again?” I asked already knowing his answer. “Nope, not if I can avoid it.”

And there you have it. I pick on my brother, well, because big sisters do that kind of thing, and because he is a slice from a generation of unmotivated, unemployed men who happily coast through life and have no apologies doing it.

In my brother’s case, and my ex’s (Homeless Guy), and many others spanning from Hong Kong to Japan to the European Union, their reasons are valid. They are educated, and they feel entitled to have a dream job that is ethical, powerful and fulfilling while earning a $100k starting salary with ample holiday time. ‘Why settle for a lifetime of grunts and ulcers?’ is the common motto. Life is for travelling, absorbing books, resting the fork in-between bites, and enriching the mind with television, they preach. Office life is so unnatural.

I love their no-worry attitude, but here’s what I discovered months after dating Homeless Guy. He was a bum. A wasted being. An intelligent man with no ambition, like a bird without wings. Worse, he sponged off me.

At a bitchfest feast with my girlfriends, one bought up the topic of divorce –a heavy word for lunch. She no longer sleeps with her husband (surprise there) because she resented him. She complained she paid for the rent, his hobbies, and his lunch. “If he actually worked, then maybe we could afford to buy a place rather than living in a rented box,” she ranted, waving her knife and fork. “I even have to pay for his graduate school. It’s like he left parents, married me so he can be my dependent. I’m with a loser!”

Funny thing is, I’m friends with her husband, mainly because he’s personable and philosophises about dumb things. I found him in a chatroom while writing this. He is there most days.

Me: “What do you do all day long?”

Him: “The day surprising goes by fast.” He explains he works out for two hours (which includes sauna time and reading time at the juice bar); there are episodes of Extras to watch; he is currently reading The 4-hour work week; on the days he’s not at school, he smokes pot and cleans his motorcycle. He shaves right before he picks up his wife in Central for dinner. He feels bad she always pays, but has come to expect it.

Him: “Don’t judge. I see tai tais doing the same thing.”

Me: “What do you plan to do with your English degree?”

Him: “Maybe [wife] will buy me a beach house and I can write a novella.”

Arg. Like my brother, he speaks three languages, he’s the eldest boy in his family and was raised to succeed his father. The pressure of knowing he’ll have to take care of the family when he is old enough was all too much. So he delays growing up, maybe forever. He turns down jobs because he thinks the positions are beneath him. In his prime, age 25-35, he has lived down expectations by dropping out of the work environment. The Japanese have a word for extreme cases of social withdrawal, Hikikomori. The most widely reported cases of hikikomori are from middle and upper middle class families whose sons, are typically the eldest.

Women have been social engineered to think men who don't work or earn a living are worthless. I’m factoring in decades of girls being told to get an education and take care of themselves as men are not always reliable. But what messages have the boys been receiving all this time?

At a bon voyage dinner with my middle brother, who was en route to Beijing for a year of language school, he said he realised work doesn’t have to be eight hours behind a desk. He rhapsodised about the brighter side of working such as having an outlet to meet friends, carry business cards, impress girls, and get the parents off his back. He was too proud to ask for help, but he said he had been out of work for so long that it was impossible to get back in. “They kicked you out of the house yeah?” I said. “Yup,” he added, without skipping a beat.