Broadening rapport between the sexes

Wednesday, April 15, 1998

Broadening rapport between the sexes

COMMUNICATION: Past failures, mistakes with women open up ways
to deal with each other

This column is intended to be about successful communication
between men and women, but it fails miserably.

I’d like to believe that I’m quite knowledgeable about women.
Unfortunately, that’s just not true. To put it lightly, I don’t
enjoy a large measure of success with the opposite sex. The only
advice I have to give is that even after large amounts of alcohol,
no amount of belching will really impress a woman. I really have no
clue what will do the trick. Humor might work. Sometimes style is
the way to go; being a good dancer never hurts, and looking like
Denzel Washington works well. (I imagine that actually being Denzel
is always the way to go, but very few of us have that option.)

Truthfully, I have no clue how to act around women. Like most
guys, I just try to pretend like I’m really listening and that I am
a sincere guy. But in between sympathetic glances and obligatory
nods, I’m just checking out cleavage and entertaining impure
thoughts. This may mean I’m a jerk, but I can’t help it. I’m just
socially inept around women.

Despite my ineptitude, I’ve collected a few pearls of wisdom
from the rotting oysters of past failure (whatever that means).

The first involves gift-giving. Whenever a women gives a gift,
it seems to be a good one. It’s either something you really wanted,
or it has special meaning between the two of you. Guys often try to
pick up on this and pick out a gift loaded with sentiment and
emotion. However, we almost always fail:

Me: I saw it and I thought of you.

Past girlfriend: It’s a lawn tractor.

Me: Remember our first date? That guy was mowing the lawn
outside and …

Past girlfriend: Um, yeah, it’s great, but I … don’t like the
color. Do you still have the receipt?

As a general rule of thumb, never pick out a gift which needs
explanation. For example, a new car, an expensive necklace or a
very nice piece of silk lingerie doesn’t need an explanation
(unless she catches you wearing it). A diamond ring shouldn’t need
an explanation, but if you’re like most guys, you’ll probably
include an explanation about how it’s a ring, but not an engagement
ring. All these gifts have one thing in common: They’re expensive.
Unfortunately, guys, that’s your only option. Otherwise, you should
probably just include the receipt with the gift.

I only know one other thing about the opposite sex: Never get
into an insult match with a woman, especially in front of your
friends. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like women have superior
intellects or quicker wits or anything like that. It’s just that a
woman has an avenue of attack which is totally fatal: All she has
to do is start saying that you have a small-ass dick and right
there – bam – you’ve already lost. You can’t come back from that.
You’ve just gotta pick up the pieces and move on.

Many of you may disagree, believing you have the perfect retort
which will allow you to regain your pride. You can try to insult
the size of her breasts, call her a ho, or anything along those
lines. But that’s just not gonna work because it lacks sincerity.
You know, she knows and all your buddies know that even if what you
said is true, you’d go to bed with her anyway – right then,
even.

You could be in the middle of your best barb: "Your breasts are
so small that …" but all she’d have to say is, "I want you right
now," and you’d be apologizing right there and unzipping.

You might think that the obvious retort would be to point out
that she has no clue how big you are. But if your friends are
around, you can’t say that because you’ve probably already told
them that you’ve slept with her.

I guess the only thing to do is just whip it out right there and
let everyone judge for themselves. But if your buddies are like
normal guys, they would probably never call you again. Or maybe one
of them will start to call you a little bit too much, and trust me,
you don’t want to know Steve that well.

Most guys just wouldn’t unzip in public anyway. This comes from
traumatic childhood experiences. Chances are, the first penis you
ever see is your dad’s, when you’re 4 or 5. At that point, it looks
like it’s 2 or 3 feet long, easy. This is intimidating because,
growing up, you never see Dad as a normal man. That’s the real
reason why, no matter what, you always respect Dad (and wonder why
he never made any pornos).

The next experience a guy has with another penis (assuming he
doesn’t go to a Catholic school), is around the seventh grade, when
one of his classmates gets a really smutty magazine. You know, the
type of magazine that makes Playboy or Penthouse look like art
magazines. There’s always this picture of a very well-endowed man
doing two hot women and maybe a penguin, and there’s a caption that
reads, "Buck, with his 13-inch schlong, decides where to go first."
(If it’s a really smutty magazine, he chooses the penguin.)

Of course, after reading this stuff, all the seventh graders try
to sound cool. They all say stuff like, "Yeah that guy was almost
as big as me," or "That’s not my leg …" By the end of the seventh
grade, a guy thinks that every other guy has a penis over 15 inches
long.

Eventually, a guy will get it into his head to see how long he
actually is. He waits until he’s home alone, then he gets out some
Vaseline, that smutty magazine and a ruler (perhaps a yardstick if
he’s optimistic). The young man then proceeds to see how he
measures up.

Well, remember how disappointing it was when you were 5 and
couldn’t ride the Tea Cups at Disneyland because you were just a
few inches short? It’s like the same thing here, only you want to
ride the head cheerleader much more than you ever wanted to ride
the damn Tea Cups.

At this point, a guy begins to think there must be some mistake
(probably having to do with the metric system) and goes back to the
magazine in order to check and make sure Buck is really 13 inches
of man. While he is flipping through the pages, he comes across
this ad: "Turn your penis into a sausage," or something like that.
And they always claim things like, "Will add 4 to 6 inches
guaranteed." I don’t know for sure if anyone has ever used one of
these things, but I guess the answer is "yes," or they wouldn’t
keep running the ads.

Actually, I think a penis extender business would be a pretty
safe one to get into; all you need to do is make some cheap device
with rubber bands and maybe some pieces from your erector set. Even
if your product doesn’t work, no one will ever sue you. In order to
be sued for making a faulty enlarger, the plaintiff would have to
claim that he used it and nothing happened. However, that would
require the plaintiff to publicly admit that his penis needs
extending, which no man would ever do – especially if the jury had
any women on it.

But enough on phallic obsession – we are attempting to bridge
the communication gap between men and women, and as far as
intelligent, informed dialogues go, the penis only gets in the way.
However, the penis is not the only obstruction to inter-gender
communication. The biggest roadblock is that women lack the ability
to be straightforward.

For instance, let’s say you notice a guy who has been moping
around a lot recently, and you want to know what’s wrong or why
he’s feeling down. Most women would try to subtly coax the
information from him by asking absurd, abstract questions like,
"What’s wrong?" or "How are you feeling?" It’s this overt
manipulation which often stifles the male ability to communicate.
As men, we respect each other and would never stoop to
manipulation. Rather, if we want to know what another guy is
feeling, we get right to the point and ask, "Did you see the Lakers
game last night?"

It might be surprising, but men as a gender lack the ability to
communicate in a standard manner about their own feelings (probably
some evolutionary mechanism to help avoid therapy). Instead, guys
have developed a language of their own to convey emotion or
sentiment.

So whenever a guy wishes to know what’s on his friend’s mind, he
asks a question like, "How ’bout them Dodgers?" or "What did you
think of the Lakers game last night?" His friend will answer,
usually from one of the following responses (complete with
translations):

"The cheerleaders were very attractive." (I’m pretty horny.)

"The fourth quarter nearly put me to sleep." (I’m tired.)

"Shaq is really huge." (I need to go to the gym more often.)

"The Pistons kept negating the three on one breaks." (My
girlfriend didn’t go for my idea.)

"I liked it when Shaq took it hard to the hole." (You don’t want
to know …)

If you remember all these keys to communication, in no time at
all, you should be able to figure out exactly what is going on in
the heads of all the men in your life. And you’ll probably never
want to see any of them again.

Until next time, it really sucks that the Dodgers haven’t scored
for a while.