Christopher Moore's Blog

The Beta Male as a Mate Although his very existence proves that the Beta Male is successful in mating, the natural habitat of the young Beta Male is heartbreak. He doesn’t know that he will eventually prevail, and that in the end, most females will settle, and it is the Beta upon whom she inevitably settles. Almost no Beta will reach his twenties without having had the object of his affection snatched from his grasp by an Alpha male, then when she is cast off, finding himself used as a cushion for her landing and the unwitting springboard for her next launch at the Alpha bachorlorama. The Beta is the trampoline the female world refers to as just friends. Thus, over the eons, the Beta Male has developed a highly developed sense of irony. (Not rhetorical irony, the gentler cousin of sarcasm, but twist of fate, bite you in the ass irony.) Like the bat who can sense the presence of the mosquito by the micro-turbulence caused by the insect’s wings, so can the Beta Male sense a heartbreak coming from the moment he first spots a woman. It is not uncommon to see a Beta Male pulling away from the drive-through window at Wendy’s, jaw clenched, fighting tears in reaction to the sub-textual rejection contained in the head-set girl’s, “Would you like catsup?” It is only among Beta Males that, “Hi, so how are you going to ruin my life?” is considered an acceptable pick-up line.

The ability to visualize failure that served the Beta Male’s survival early on, can undermine him in the modern mating ritual, if for no other reason than it erodes his self-confidence. Consequently, to compensate, Beta Males, may be notorious liars when it comes to dealing with women, and they represent an inordinately high percentage of the purchasers of hair pieces, foundation garments, erectile dysfunction drugs, cosmetic surgery (the chief procedure being the man-boob reduction, or “bilateral moob-ecotomy”), penis pumps, and Corvettes – virtually any accoutrement short of a personality transplant to hide their Beta-ness and make them appear more man-tastic than they could ever be naturally.

Although he has a capacity for deceit – the beta male, if nothing else, is loyal. He makes great husband as well as a great best friend. He will help you move, bring you soup when you are sick, and hide your drugs and porn from your parents should you be unexpectedly killed or incarcerated. He makes a great house sitter, especially if you aren’t attached to your house pets. Your girlfriend is generally in safe hands with a beta male, unless, of course, she is a complete slut. (In fact, the complete slut through history may be exclusively responsible for the survival of the beta male gene, for loyal as he may be, the beta male is helpless in the face of charging, unimaginary bosoms.)

Also, the Beta Male tends to be considerate: he’ll open a car door for a woman, and only slam it on her coat half of the time. The beta male thanks a woman after sex, and is often quick with an apology as well. Betas tend to die quickly, from heart attacks brought on by bad eating habits, or household accidents, usually coming out on the losing end of a battle with gravity or the deadly home-repair tag-team of electricity and water. A Beta Male won’t make you sit through a long soliloquy of last words, and generally, the most you’ll hear from him at that last go-round will be either, “Whoops,” or “I shouldn’t’ have had that third chili dog, my chest – ugh.” And a Beta will not leave you with a clean-up problem, as they tend to die in the garage or the driveway, where an enterprising girl can save a lot on ambulance or hearse expense by simply dragging him to the SUV for a quick jaunt to the crematorium. (Beta’s nearly always leave instructions to be cremated, because it’s economical, allows their ashes to go somewhere they never would have gone in life, like the beach or out the door of an airplane, and because the idea of being in a wooden box full of worms gives them the willies.)

In addition to being loyal mates, the Beta males almost always make good fathers. They tend to be steady, even-tempered, and responsible, the kind of guys a girl (if she were resolved to do without the seven figure salary or the thirty-six inch vertical leap) would want as a father for her children. Of course, she’d rather not have to sleep with him for that to happen, but after you’ve been kicked to the curb by a few Alpha Males, the idea of waking up in the arms of a guy who will adore you, if for no other reason than gratitude for sex, and will always be there, even past the point where you can stand to have him around, is a comfortable compromise. Besides, if you change your mind, you can’t ask for a better cuckold than a Beta – his physiology has been tuned by evolution to respond to a fucking-over as naturally as Lance Armstrong’s does to bicycle racing, and he tends to get the support check in the mail on time for fear of being busted on a dead-beat dad charge.

If they gave a Nobel prize for being accommodating, the recipient would almost assuredly be a Beta in a rented tux.

Of course there are gay Betas: the Beta-male boyfriend is highly-prized in the gay community because you can teach him how to dress and behave, yet you can remain relatively certain that he will never develop a fashion sense or be more fabulous than you.) The Beta Male transvestite is always Ethel Merman, never Cher.

In Part Four, we learn to spot the Beta Male