THE MYSTERIOUS MEN OF EARTH-2

The ad for the new futuristic TV series Earth 2 said all you need to know about the present status of masculinity in America.
In the ad a handsome, tough-looking young woman, clad in a spotless orange jump-suit appropriate to a garage servicing fine foreign automobiles, sits relaxed on the floor. Between her legs reclines a wan boy, his arms and legs and chest appended with machines to help him walk and move and breathe.
That’s it. No dark-visaged dude looms in the background, threatening good and/or evil. No vacant-smiled hunk, shirt half-undone. Not even a buffoon, a la Married with Children, to provide some comedic release.
No-man. In the projected future there is no-man to balance the power of the woman, no-man to fight the wild animals, no-man to throw his body in front of the bullet.
The woman is strong, sensitive, smart, compassionate and she dresses with commendable simplicity. She radiates goodness and light. The man? The man is not there.
But the boy is. The boy is pale, weak, frail. He too is sensitive, like his mother. He is blonde and soft and loving, and if it wasn’t for all those gizmos you’d want to hug him all night long.
Because he is so frail he needs protection. He needs someone to stand between him and the dangers of a new world. That someone is his mother, the one who gave him birth and, most probably, designed the machines that keep him alive. When he looks up at her, he feels warm and safe. When she looks down at him, she probably wants to run out for a six-pack, maybe two, and fly to a place where a woman can…
But she carries on. She shoots the ray guns, drives the space modules and, ever so courageously and sensitively, advances into the bleak unknown. Then she runs back and grabs the kid and his gadgets and drags him into the new space she has cleared.
One wonders what will happen when the boy gets to be about fourteen, shucks his machines, jumps into the family flyabout and takes off to find himself. Who am I? he might ask, gazing up at the six moons of Earth 2. Who am I? Sure I’m kind, I’m sensitive, I’m smart, and I’m as huggable as the Eveready Bunny. But somehow I know I’m something else, something strange and different and…frightening.
I am a man.
Imagine having to go back to the pod and confess that to his poor mother, who has worked so hard all these years, who has fought space dragons and cosmic winds and those little jeepers people, the ones who could make themselves so small and then, Boom! Ladies above, that was scary, and she was so brave, and now he’s got to tell her this.
Hey, Mom, we’ve got to have a talk, he might begin. I mean, I don’t want to, the last thing I want to do is hurt you but…Mom? Mom?
But Mom is dead drunk on the couch, the satellite receiver slipping from her hands, the empty plastic container of Jennie’s Sweet Space Swill floating just above the floor.
The young boy – not yet a man, thank God, not yet – goes over to his mother’s side, slips the receiver from between her strong fingers, and pulls the space blanket up under her chin. It’s hard, he knows, being a mother, being alone, killing all those monsters, it’s hard, harder than anything he could even imagine.
Sure, sometimes she gets mad, sometimes she gets drunk, sometimes she just jumps in that flyabout and is gone for hours, Lord knows where she goes. She seems to want something, to need something, and for the life of him he just doesn’t know what it is. Sometimes she just sits there, staring at nothing, and he feel scared. Because if you can’t count on Mom, who is there?
There’s the machines. Yes, there’s always the machines. But, somehow, he was sick and tired of the machines, even if they were real smart.
And then he asked her that question, again.
Mom, where did I come from?
And she keeps answering: Kid, you came from outer space. Now shut up and go play with your gizmos.
But that’s not good enough. It’s not good enough. There’s got to be something more. Something different.
Because our whole existence is built on difference, on being able to tell one thing from another because they are different. When things become the same they blend together and then – Poof! – they’re gone.
It’s like when those evil Zormons came with their dematerializers and they almost destroyed us by using that same principle; they made things disappear by making them all the same. Thank God Mom kept her head together and zapped those creepy Zormons back to the crab nebula.
The boy went over to his mother’s side. He put his hand on her forehead and gently stroked her graying hair. She didn’t even stir.
Well, he thought, maybe I won’t tell her. Maybe I’ll just let it be my terrible secret. And if I ever want to find out about this man-thing, I’ll just have to find out on my own.
You see, that’s the thing about Earth 2. It’s an awful lot like Earth 1, gender-wise.