Act like a lady, think like a man (4 page)

I said, getting a little more jumpy with each word, “Either everybody goes down there to save her, or I’m killing everybody on the boat. This boat goes nowhere without her, and if it pulls off and she’s not on it, that’s it for everybody.”

My wife must have sensed something was up because suddenly, she was back above water. She knew that I was acting up.

And rather than dive, she returned to the boat, because she knew how nervous I was about the whole idea of her submerged under water where I couldn’t act on my natural instincts to protect her; she figured it was better to sit that dive out. She understands that primal need I have to make sure nothing bad happens to her. Marjorie is a pretty adventurous girl, but she’s cut out a lot of that stuff—the diving and parasailing and such—for that very reason. I finally get the woman of my dreams and while she’s out having fun the parachute wire jams and next thing I know she’s flying into walls, or she’s diving and the scuba tank doesn’t work? Her life is in jeopardy and I can’t do anything about it? No sir. Nope. No more of that. My philosophy for having a good time is that you have to have a good time and return home in one piece so you can tell everybody about your good time. My wife doesn’t trip about this; she just says,

“Thanks for caring, honey.”

And I do care about her, so my DNA screams out to me to protect her and provide for her and profess about her in any way that I can. This, by the way, is how our fathers did it, and their fathers, and their fathers, too—to the best of their natural ability and with the help of God, even in the most adverse times when protecting and providing and even professing were neither easy nor, in the case of black men, allowed. We’ve lost sight of this—stopped demanding it from our men. Maybe it’s because there are so many women left to raise their children alone, or maybe it’s because there just haven’t been enough men teaching our boys how to be true men. But I firmly believe that a real woman can bring out the best in a man; sometimes we need only meet a real woman other than our own mother to bring out our best qualities. That, however, requires something of the woman; she’s got to demand that every man stand and deliver.

On the radio show and in my everyday interactions with my colleagues and friends, I constantly hear women say that there aren’t any good men and complain about all the things men won’t do.

But I contend they don’t do the things that real men are expected to do because no one—especially, women—
requires
it of them (see my chapter “Men Respect Standards—Get Some”).

In sum, ladies, you have to stop heaping your own definition of love on men and recognize that men love differently.

A man’s love fits only into three categories. As I’ve explained, I call them “The Three Ps of Love—Profess, Provide, and Protect.” A man may not go shopping with you to buy the new dress for your office party, but a real man will escort you to that party, hold your hand, and proudly introduce you all around the party as his lady (profess); he may not cuddle you and sit by the bed holding your hand while you’re sick, but a real man who loves you will make sure the prescription is filled, heat up a can of soup, and make sure everybody is in position until you are better (provide); and he may not willingly change diapers, wash the dishes, and rub your feet after a hot bath, but a real man who loves you sure will walk through a mountain and on water before he’d let someone bring any hurt or harm to you (protect). This much you can believe.

If you’ve got a man who does these things for you, trust me, he’s all in.

3  T h e  T h r e e  T h i n g s  E v e r y  M a n  N e e d s

Women are complicated creatures. You need stuff.

Lots of it. And you expect your man to provide it, even if you haven’t explained what it is you need and want, or even if what you needed and wanted five minutes ago is wholly different from what you need and want now. In fact, I’ve said over and over again jokingly that the only way a woman can truly be completely satisfied is to get herself four different men—an old one, an ugly one, a Mandingo, and a gay guy. Now the four of them combined? They got you covered.

The old man—he’ll sit around the house with you, spend his pension check on you, hug you, hold you, give you comfort, and won’t expect any sex from you because, well, he can’t get it up no way. From him, you get financial security. The ugly one? He’ll go above and beyond the call of duty to help you out: he’ll take the kids to their lessons after school, run you down to the grocery store, wash the car on the weekends, babysit the cat—whatever you need, he’ll provide it because he’s just happy someone as beautiful as you is paying him any kind of attention. From him, you get “me time.” He frees you up to do all the things you need time to do. And then there’s the Mandingo man. You need a big ol’ Mandingo man. You know what you gonna get from him. He’s big, he’s not that smart, can’t hold a good conversation, got muscles popping out from his eyebrows to his pinkie toe and when you see him, you know he’s going to put your back out. That’s all you want from him, and he makes sure he gives it to you real good. Mind-blowing sex—that’s what you get from Mandingo. And then you need a gay guy—someone you can go shopping with, who doesn’t want anything from you but gossip and details about what the old man bought you, which errands you sent the ugly guy to take care of, and exactly how Mandingo had you doing monkey flips for a week. See, the gay guy gives you all the conversation you need (smile).

Four guys, supplying each of your needs
should
bring you happiness. I say should because for women, happiness isn’t guaranteed, even once their needs have been met. We fully recognize that you maintain the right to change at any time the perimeters, conditions, and specifics of what, exactly, will make you happy, and we try to adjust accordingly, and usually can’t.

Now men, by contrast, are very simple creatures. It really doesn’t take much to make us happy. In fact, there are only three things that pretty much every man needs—support, love, and “The Cookie.” Three things—that’s it. And I’m here to tell you that yes,
it’s that simple
. What we need never weakens or wavers—hardly ever gets more demanding or harder to achieve. In fact, I’d argue that it’s easy for a woman to give her man support, love, and sex because it’s in her makeup—sup-port and love are things that women dole out innately and freely. You just call it something else: nurturing. And if you love a man enough to nurture him, then I’d argue you love him enough to be intimate with him. So those three things come natural to you. And this is all your man wants from you.

Let me break it down.

We have to feel like somebody’s got our back—like we’re the king, even if we’re not. You have to understand that when we walk out the door, the entire world is standing at the ready to beat us down. Black, white, yellow, striped, every man leaves the house ready to battle. He might have a job where three people can walk by his desk and give him a pink slip at any given moment—change his life in the flash of an eye. The guy in the position beneath your man’s may be just searching for a way to undermine him, so he can get the bigger pay—and he doesn’t give a damn about whether what he says and does can put your man’s job in jeopardy. Your man could be driving down the street minding his own business and get pulled over and something could happen that he has no control over, or someone may try to come and take what he’s got. In other words, a man is constantly on the lookout, sizing up the next man, standing at the ready to defend his and all of his gains (that would include you).

So when we walk back in our house, we want to be able to let our guard down. All we want, really, is to hear you say,

“Baby, how was your day? Thank you for making it happen for us. This family needs you and wants you and is happy to have you.” We’ve got to feel like we’re king, even if we don’t act kingly. Trust me, the more you make us feel like we’re special, the more we’ll give in return. We’ll just try harder. Plain and simple. Take a page from my mother: every Sunday morning, my daddy cut my hair for church, and when I got out of that chair, and lotioned up and put on my suit and my shoes and walked into the living room where my mother was waiting for me, she would take one look at me and say, “Look at that boy’s haircut—boy, you clean!” or “Look at you, boy—you sharp when you go to church!” I internalized the message—if I got a fresh haircut and I put on a nice suit, my mother would compliment me, and I would walk out of the house with my shoulders squared and head held high because my mother said I looked good and she was encouraging me to be presentable. And my father’s chest was out as far as mine because every Sunday, she reminded him that he made it all possible; she kissed and thanked him every Sunday.

A man needs that from his woman—he needs her to say,

“Baby, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you do for me and the kids.” Those simple words give us the strength to keep on doing right by you and the family. From working harder on the job, to bringing home that paycheck, to something as simple as throwing some meat on the grill on Saturday evenings or folding up a load of the laundry, we’ll do it more often if there is reward in it. That reward doesn’t cost you one red penny. It simply comes from the heart:
Thank you, baby. I appreciate you.

You don’t know how important that is for your man; that little bit of encouragement makes him want to do more. You think because we’re hard and we don’t want to cuddle that we don’t need that encouragement, but we do. And the woman who comes along and says, “You so big and strong and you’re everything I need,” well, we’re going to go get some more of that!

Understand that our love is wholly different from a woman’s love. A woman’s love is emotional, nurturing, heartfelt—sweet and kind and all encompassing. You can slice a knife through it, it’s so thick. And when she’s in love with you, she is loyal to you—she can’t see herself with someone else, because for her, no one else will do. That’s a woman’s love.

But for men, love is loyalty. We want you to show your love to us by being loyal. That means that no matter what, you’re going to stand beside us. We get laid off, we know you’re going to stay, even if we’re not drawing a paycheck. You get around your girlfriends, you’re going to say with great enthusiasm,

“That’s
my
man. I’m loyal to
him
.” Idris Elba, Denzel, Usher, or the like walks into the room, money dripping from their suit jacket, floating on air and glistening and all that? You’re going to hold on to our hand a little tighter and say from the bottom of your heart, “I don’t want any of those shiny, rich, fine men because my man is the only one for me!” (We can only hope that’s what you’ll say—smile.)

That’s loyalty—our kind of love. To men, they are one and the same. The kind of love you require is beautiful, but our love isn’t like your love. It’s different, though it’s still love. And a man’s love is a very powerful thing. It’s amazing love. If your loyalty is real and unimpeachable, that man will kill concrete for you. He ain’t going no damn where.

Men. Need. Sex. We love it. Ain’t nothin’ on this planet like it, nothing else we want that bad on a continuous basis, nothing else we simply cannot live without. Take our house, take our job, the ’69 Impala, our last pair of gators, but please—puh-leeze—don’t hold out on the cookie. We don’t care about anything else; we need the cookie. We need to be physically engaged with the woman we love, the woman who is loyal to us and supports us, and the way that we do that is by making love. The emotional stuff—the talking, the cuddling, the holding hands, and bonding, that’s y’all’s thing. We’ll do those things because we know it’s important to you. But please understand: the way we men connect is by having sex. Period.

It’s how we plug in, recharge, and reconnect. I don’t know of a man who doesn’t need this. Ask any guy if sex is important in a relationship and the one who says no is lying. I just haven’t met that guy yet. When you meet him, let’s get him in to the Smith-sonian—he’s that special and rare. But the rest of us men? We need sex like we need air.

You got about a good month at best without it. And then he’s going to get it from somewhere else (unless you’re carrying his child). I’m telling you: gangs are built on support and loyalty; dudes go out and form gangs built on those two things right there. The only thing missing is sex, and that’s where the girl gang members come in. It’s the same thing with motorcycle clubs, the country club, the Elks, the Masons, frats—the whole of a man’s world is built on these three principles. There’s not one day of the week that we are not waking up in the pursuit of it. Let’s say you’re
not
a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, or you’re an almighty member of Omega Psi Phi, and someone who hasn’t pledged their undying support and love to frat on a line for at least six weeks—be that person putting on their colors and let them find out you haven’t pledged, that you didn’t cross over. Do you know what the hell would happen if those boys found out you’re not frat? Messing with their loyalty—their colors? Man, not nary a day. Be a Crip and go to a Blood’s house and see what happens. Try going into that country club and you’re not a member. Loyalty. Support. That’s what men are made of.

And can’t one of them survive without sex. Oh, he’ll work with you if you have an off week—if he loves you, that is. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t bother to try to get your cookie—he’d just go on and get it from somewhere else. But if he’s into you, and you’re cutting back, rationing it out, you’re not doing what you did when you all first started dating, he’s going to line up someone who will. Please believe me when I tell you this: he will tell everybody, “This is my girl right here,” but mean-while, he will have another woman lined up and waiting to give him what he needs and wants—the cookie.

Don’t get it wrong—we’re not animals. We know things change, the baby comes and the doctor says we have to wait six weeks, or your monthly is on the way, your hormones are acting up and you’re not in the mood. But the excuses can’t go on forever. You can play your man short if you want to. No matter how much a man loves his wife, his family, his house, his role as the man of the house, the one who’s bringing in all the money into family account, maybe even putting a little extra into yours, if you mess around and start shelling out the cookie in crumbs, it’s going to be a problem.