Secrets Of The Man Cave

Anyone visiting our home can often find Rigel in one of two places: our backyard, performing manly chores such as the whacking of weeds and the crushing of spiders, or in his office, one of the four bedrooms in our home, one which we have appropriately named The Man Cave. (Actually, he got this a few weeks ago, so now you'll frequently find him in our driveway, buffing the leather seats or cleaning the tires with a Q-Tip.)

The Man Cave is an oasis of manliness in a our girl-centric home, a place for him to go after being 'Heather' in a rousing game of Mall Madness or spending four hours assembling Polly Pocket's Pollywood Limo. While every other room is littered with cast-off skirts and jewelry, bottles of nail polish and copies of Vogue magazine, wander in to Rigel's office and you'll find: several guitars and amps, electrical devices of unknown function, an elaborate stereo system, assorted sports gear and a book collection that contains not a single self-help guide or celebrity biography.

The effect is subtle, but even without a flashing Budweiser sign or a taxidermied elk head hanging on the wall the message is loud and clear: Man Cave Ahead. Testicles Recommended.

There are undoubtedly supernatural forces at work in The Man Cave. As if it senses the presence of anything pink or fluffy or that says, "I love you berry much" when squeezed. These things either disappear completely, meeting some tragic end or mysteriously find their way into my office. (You know dark forces are at work when Kira finds her Hello Kitty lipgloss in the -gasp- trash can.) And where my office is home to school projects, six hundred varieties of craft supplies, wrapping paper and vestiges from every holiday imaginable, The Man Cave boasts no obvious traces of family life. That saying, "No man is an island" is missing the last part of the sentence. It should read, "No man is an island, but they all sometimes wish they lived on one."

The sacredness of The Man Cave has its benefits. A couple of months ago my old PowerBook that had become the 'homework' computer sputtered and died. The girls seized this as a chance to infiltrate the hallowed halls of The Man Cave and started using the computer in Rigel's office, spending long stretches of time at his desk, cluttering it with half-drunk juice boxes and tainting his hard drive with downloads of Hilary Duff mp3's and Google searches for NeoPets. When someone left the cap off a Magic Fun Glitter Pen and it left a round, gooey blob on the cover of his new Zeppelin cd, it was the last straw. It's true what they say - it's hard to see a grown man cry. But I got a new computer very quickly, and the girls got my old one, souped up with extra memory and a brand new monitor.

Since breaking ground on The Man Cave many of our friends have followed suit, envious of Rigel's hideaway and monument to testosterone. Some have hung plasma TV's which they watch from the comfort of their regal leather couches, others have soundproofed the walls and set up mini recording studios. This has given me some ideas for a new magazine I plan to launch similar to Real Simple, targeted at men, and called Really Crude. It'll contain helpful how-tos on everything from turning twelve empty beer cans and a pizza box into a table, to fashioning a nifty window cover from old issues of Maxim.

I don't begrudge him his own space. Every man deserves a retreat, a place where they can thump their chests and proclaim to the world, "I don't eat no freakin' quiche." You have to feel for the guy, surrounded by three women, and bossy ones at that. Recently he's been on frantic mission to fix up the garage, and although he never said it out loud, I know he's thinking, "In a few years, when you're all on your periods at the same time, I'll need somewhere to hide."

Unfortunately, this is probably true, since by then The Man Cave will be just a memory. Eventually the girls will want their own bedrooms, and both of our offices will go to them. He and I will move our desks and computers into their room, which we'll share as a workspace. He'll have to suffer through his desk being used as a gift wrapping station, and want to hurt himself when I use his amp cords to tie back the curtains. But maybe, if he's behaving, I'll have mercy on him and let him have the room all to himself once in awhile, so he can crank the stereo way up, have a beer and remember when he was King of The Man Cave. Maybe.

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