My blender, my bicycle and my guitar all held on just long enough for me to get a job. Almost the instant that I received a job offer earlier this week, all three broke. The blender launched broken plastic across the kitchen, the bicycle’s pedal shaft snapped, and the guitar sprouted a brutal crack below the bridge. But thanks to the precious sliver of manhood I gained thanks to this job and its concomitant salary and benefits, I could now, of course, afford to fix these items. Or at least to provide myself with new ones. Like a man.

It was exhilarating, the male rites opening up before me now that I had secured employment and income for myself. Suddenly provision, protection, fatherhood, and even marriage all seemed infinitely more doable. My dad even bestowed on me some long-withheld approval, assuring me that I had now (by becoming fully economically independent) adequately thanked him for his fatherly sacrifices over the last 27 years.

Man, it was good to be (almost) a man. Good enough to celebrate with a rock and roll show. Good enough to treat myself to Jet at the Paradise Lounge last night, and maybe even a beer while I was at it. I loved Jet back in 2005 or so. I still know most of the words to their album “Get Born,” a piece of loud pop near-perfection, and I thought that shouting them along with the crowd might acknowledge the passing of boyhood in some superficial but visceral way.

But god damn it. The minute Nic Cester walked on the stage, leered at the screaming crowd and held his cherry red Gibson ES-335 over the adoring fingers in the front row, I knew that I had got it all wrong. Here was a man leading men onstage. This man had the dream job, the scream-your-songs-and-be-applauded job, not to mention the power to sculpt mass adrenaline. The power was majestic, and the digger thrived in it.

Duly humbled, I still had a great time. I could tell that the band members still loved what they did, worked hard at it, and had authentic fun on stage. In honor of Boston they even played a lick of Dirty Water in the encore. It was perfect. Perfect because it was such a characteristically manly way to celebrate, and perfect because it so characteristically reminded me that even among men, there is a man.