Sex in the Title (33 page)

“Fourteen and under. If you’re under fifteen, you have to deduct eighty percent from your SQ.”

“Eighty percent?!” Evan exclaimed. “So after the standard deduction a thirteen-year-old boy has only a ten percent chance of getting laid?”

“Exactly.”

“But I thought Jews consider a thirteen-year-old male to be a man.”

“Well, for Bar Mitzvah purposes, but not for SQ purposes.”

“Why not?”

“How many thirteen-year-old guys do you know who are getting laid? It’s not exactly the age that women are looking for.”

“I’m not so sure,” Evan objected. “Pop culture is bringing sex to younger and younger audiences, so I wouldn’t count on that.”

“Look, we can quibble about the cut-off points and percentages later. Let me just finish with the age factor.”

“OK.”

“So if you’re fourteen to sixteen, you deduct thirty percent. If you’re sixteen to seventeen, you deduct twenty percent. And if you’re eighteen to twenty-two, you don’t deduct anything.”

“Why is that?”

“Those are your college years. Assuming college guys want to sleep with college women, they couldn’t do better in terms of their age, so there’s no need for a deduction.”

“But what if the college guy wants sleep with an older woman?”

“Then he’ll probably need to take a deduction of ten to thirty percent for that older woman, depending on how sophisticated he is and how much of a Mrs. Robinson she is.”

“All right. Go on.”

“So twenty-two to twenty-nine, deduct ten percent. Thirty to thirty-three, deduct twenty-five percent.”

“Whoa! Why does turning thirty bump you from a ten-percent to a twenty-five-percent deduction?” Evan asked.

“Because most guys in their early thirties still want to go after females in their early twenties.”

“So?”

“So many of those females think of guys in their thirties as being dirty old men.”

“Shit,” said Evan, reflecting on the fact that he had only ten months left before his thirtieth birthday.

“Continuing along the age spectrum, if you’re thirty-four to thirty-eight, deduct forty percent. If you’re thirty-nine to forty-four, deduct – ”

“All right, I get the picture. This is depressing me.”

“Depressing you? What about me? I’m almost as old as you and we haven’t even gotten to the deductions for height, weight, handsomeness, and hair.”

“All right, well how do those work?”

“Let’s take hair. The more hair you have, the less you have to deduct.”

“That makes sense,” Evan said, patting the top of his scalp lightly, as he tried to estimate how much longer the slightly thinning hair above would still look like a full head of thick hair.

“In fact, if you have hair at an age when nobody expects you to have hair, you actually add a bonus rather than take a deduction.”

“I assume handsomeness is fairly straightforward,” Evan said.

“Yes. Handsomeness can add or deduct up to twenty percentage points from your SQ.”

“Why only twenty?”

“An old, short, bald, fat guy with no money and no personality who has a very handsome face still isn’t going to get very far. And, conversely, a guy with an ugly face who’s young, tall, charming, with a head full of hair and a bank account worth millions, should still do pretty well. The face is important, but ultimately limited in its impact on SQ, when you go through the whole calculus.”

“What about height and weight?”

“Height is like hair: the more, the better, unless you’ve hit a freakish extreme.

“Like what?”

“Like a Planet of the Apes look in the hair department, or someone over six-seven in the height department.”

“Why over six-seven?”

“At that point, it’s going to be hard to find women who are tall enough to feel comfortable around you. Kind of like with too much weight.”

“What about personality?”

“Personality is an all-encompassing term that includes all of the nonphysical attributes like charm, wit, intelligence, creativity, social skills, etc.”

“So personality should be very important.”

“In theory. If it’s ever fully discovered. But how many parties have you been to, where the woman spots your personality from the other end of the room and comes flirting in your direction?”

“So are you saying that most women are too shallow to get past looks unless they already know your other qualities?”

“Usually. But they’re still better than men as far as that goes. I’m the ultimate proof of that, because if women were as shallow as men, I’d still be a virgin.”

“So now you’re saying that men don’t care about personality in women?”

“Men notice female personality even less than women notice male personality.”

“I think you’re wrong. Personality is very important to me in a woman,” replied Evan.

“I’m sure it’s the first thing you notice, Evan.”

“It definitely affects the way I perceive her.”

“OK. How many overweight, unattractive women with personality have you dated?”

Evan was silent.

“Like I said, the fact that women are less shallow than men is the only reason that there’s hope for guys like me.”

“No! That’s not a fair question,” Evan protested.

“Don’t feel bad about it,” Sammy continued. “You would care less about looks and more about personality if you were less attractive. But the fact that you’re a good-looking guy makes you feel like you’re entitled to date a good-looking woman.”

Evan still seemed uneasy about Heeb’s analysis, so Heeb went even further.

“Hey, if I looked like you, I’d also feel entitled to date more attractive women.”

“But why does a preference for attractive women mean that I don’t care about personality? Why can’t I date an attractive woman with personality?” Evan asked.

“That’s like a woman asking why she can’t date a rich man with personality.”

“Well why can’t she?”

“She can. And she will – which also proves how women are smarter.”

“How does it prove that?”

“Because a man’s superficiality just gets him a nicer-looking woman. A woman’s superficiality gets her a nicer life.”

Evan thought about Heeb’s observations, and furrowed his brow, somewhat troubled by everything he was hearing. Heeb saw that he was clearly having an effect on Evan, and this only encouraged him to expound further upon his ideas, so that he could – for a little longer – relish the guru power that he seemed to hold over Evan now.

“That’s why wealth is such an important factor in a man’s SQ – and arguably even more important than his age. Think about it: a multibillionaire – whether he’s sixteen or eighty-two years old – can still attract a vast number of women, because women have their eye on the ball. It’s their evolutionary survival instinct. They’re looking to find the most plentiful and resourceful environment for their offspring.”

Evan started fretting about his net worth. He owned a small, unimpressive studio, with a large mortgage on it. He calculated that his net worth was about sixty thousand dollars. Then he started thinking about how long it would take him to be worth eight million dollars, and whether that would be enough to guarantee him the SQ that he wanted.

“And the nice thing about wealth,” Heeb continued, “is that it’s always true that more is better. It’s not like weight or height or even hair. At some point, if you get any more of those things, you hit an unattractive extreme. You start to look like a blimp, a skyscraper, or the Planet of the Apes. But that’s never the case with money. In fact, with enough money, you can actually make up for any freakish extremes or deficiencies you might have.”

“You don’t even need personality.”

“Nope.”

“So would you give up your personality for a few billion dollars?” Evan said.

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t give up who I am. Besides, personality includes IQ, and if I give that up, then I’d quickly lose all my money – on bad investments, idiotic purchases, and fraudulent schemes that exploit my stupidity.”

“That wouldn’t be good.”

“No, it wouldn’t. Then I’d be a short, bald, overweight, twenty-seven-year-old idiot with no cash and no personality.”

“Yeah, that would be bad.”

“You can’t lose perspective, Evan. SQ isn’t everything.”

“I guess it isn’t.”

“Unless, of course, you haven’t been laid in a while.”

“Right.”

*****

The next morning, the nurse gave Evan some medications and cleaning material to care for his wound at home and gave him some pointers to keep in mind until his follow up visit in one month. Evan happily took off his hospital gown, put his regular clothes back on, and then thanked the nurses and doctors who had helped him during the last four days and nights.

Heeb was secretly a little envious of Evan. Irrationally, he even felt a tad betrayed by Evan for being so happy about leaving. Heeb knew, deep down, that he and Evan had bonded in a deep and lasting way. But the fact that he would now be alone for the next forty-eight hours made him reflect on how both his injury and his SQ were worse than Evan’s, and how these differences could mean that their close bond might be as temporary as the circumstances that united them.

Fortunately, the two had grown so attuned to each other’s emotional states that Evan quickly felt the awkward tension and unspoken questions surrounding his imminent departure. He walked over to Heeb’s bed.

“Sammy, thanks for making this whole thing so much more bearable.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“In some sick way, I’m going to miss our hospital room days together.”

Heeb’s face lit up. “Me too,” he replied. “Particularly since I’m still here for another forty-eight hours.”

“You’re gonna be fine. Ten years from now, this will just be another funny anecdote from your past.”

“What are you talking about? It’s already a funny anecdote.”

“Yeah, but you better not tell anyone!” Evan said sternly but with a smile.

“Don’t worry, our time here is not exactly something I’m putting on my resume.”

Heeb got up from his bed to embrace Evan and say goodbye. But he felt somewhat ridiculous standing barefoot on the lukewarm hospital floor with nothing on him but the grey hospital gown, looking up at the taller and fully clothed Evan.

“Just remember what Nietzsche once said,” Evan began, trying to offer some inspiring words of fortitude for Heeb’s remaining time in the hospital. “Anything that doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”

“In our case it’s more like: Anything that doesn’t castrate you could still ruin your sex life.”

“Tell me about it,” Evan replied, suddenly retreating from his bravado. “I don’t even want to think about what this did to our SQ.”

“Dick-bite scars are at least a ten-percent deduction.”

“No. That’s too much.”

“At least that, if not fifteen percent,” Heeb insisted.

“Like I said before, if a woman is getting anywhere near your dick scars, you’ve already won her over.”

“True, but you can always scare her off at the last moment.”

“Keep the lights dim and it won’t be more than a two-percent deduction, Sammy.”

“You know, I thought of a way for us to possibly compensate for the SQ loss.”

“How?” Evan asked.

“At the end of the day, finding women comes down to odds. Like everything else in life. And I’ve been thinking that our odds would improve significantly if we formed a posse of four or five guys.”

“A posse of players, eh?”

“You bring in Narc and Trevor, and I’ll bring in Carlos.”

“That’s gonna be really tough.”

“Not tougher than Carlos. He’s happily married, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, but Narc and I had a falling out. And Trevor could be impossible.”

“Trevor needs to be rescued anyway,” Heeb insisted.

“You’re right. He’s gotta get over that incident.”

“Look, I don’t know for sure if Carlos will join, but it’s certainly worth a try. We have nothing to lose. And there’s a huge potential upside.”

“Like what?” Evan asked.

“First of all, a posse would produce a certain Spice Girls effect.”

“It’s funny because I never did think those girls were that cute as individuals, but there was definitely something sexy about them as a group.”

“Exactly. With a posse, the whole is sexier than the sum of its parts,” Heeb said, happy to elaborate. “And it makes each of us look like we’re socially well adjusted enough to have lots of friends.”

“Women definitely prefer guys who seem normal,” Evan agreed. “And the more friends you have, the more normal you seem.” Evan thought of another advantage. “And if you’re seen as a group of normal guys, it probably tempts women to start speculating about the members of your group, comparing them, following their individual stories – like what happens with boy bands,” Evan added.

“Yes! And if you get rejected, it just becomes a group joke rather than a personal failure,” Heeb added.

“There’s strength in numbers, as they say.”

The two spontaneously clasped each other’s hands on the proposition. Sammy wanted to embrace Evan, but it would have felt too strange getting so close to him with his convalescing Hebrew National dangling freely below.

“I’d hug you, but – ” Heeb looked down, and Evan laughed a little.

“That’s all right. I’ll consider myself hugged.”

“Hugging just seems like the right thing to do after you’ve formed the fellowship of the schlong,” Heeb gushed.

“Well, consider yourself hugged too,” Evan reassured him lightly, still holding Heeb’s hands.

“Long live the fellowship of the schlong!” Evan cried out, raising their clasped hands even higher, as if to formalize an important military alliance between two neighboring medieval tribes.

“Amen!” Heeb added.

They looked at each other, smiled, and released their hands. Evan started towards the door of their shared room and Heeb accompanied him. When they arrived at the door, they stopped.

Like a prisoner of war about to escape an enemy prison on his own and sadly unable to bring his fellow prisoner friend with him, Evan turned to Heeb and said solemnly, “I’ll be back for you. I promise.”

They shared a smile and a thumbs-up, and Evan turned around and left.