Why We Suck (19 page)

    

    Actually, the proper name for the color is Testicale.

    Testicale being a fake Spanish word I just made up. It means "ball." As in "my balls hurt." (Hey-I made up the word, I get to make up the definition.)

    And a towel that is colored Testicale is a towel that is pink with a slightly brownish tint and a little bit of peachy peach fuzz along the edges.

    And the reason I bring this up is because there is no such thing as a pink towel anymore. Or a brown towel. Nope. Some gay man somewhere-and I'm personally blaming Calvin Klein, married though he may be-decided that women were way more likely to buy way more towels if said towels were in fact saddled with fancy-sounding color names. Thus-instead of pink towels-we now have Salmon. Or Fuchsia. Or Blush.

    See? That's why I chose Testicale. Because the real Spanish word for ball is testiculo. Which just sounds too much like testicle, which reminds you of a scrotum and does not make you wanna buy a bunch of towels.

    Whereas Testicale sounds like some kind of smooth, fancy-tasting tequila, which you could sip over ice as you lounged in a soothing hot bath with Cooling Cucumber Bubbles and a Hydrating Skin Mask of Yoga Tea Leaves nestled atop your face.

    I bet I could get a shitload of ladies to buy Testicale towels.

    Guys? Not so much.

    We couldn't care less what color a towel is.

    We don't even care if it's clean.

    As long as it wipes the water off our back, head and ass and sops up all the nooks and crannies in between and we can slap on our slacks and get something to eat-we're happy.

    But even if pressed into having to pick, the Guy Pie Color Chart For Towels would consist of maybe three-blue, white and red.

    Maybe black.

    That's it.

    I would've thrown gray in there too but for most guys gray would just be another kind of blue.

    When did white and blue and black and red become too little too late for most women?

    When they got a whiff of Acorn and Heather and Persimmon and Pearl.

    I don't even know what colors those are supposed to be-I just saw them listed in a bed-and-bath store catalog I stole out of my wife's office.

    Get a load of these:

    Moss.

    Forest.

    Celery.

    Guess what color? Green, goddammit. Green. Moss? What the hell. I don't even know a GUY named Moss. Why not go with Mold? Or Yeast? Is yeast green? I dunno. All I know about yeast is that women get infections that are named after it AND I think they might use it to make beer.

    More catalog colors:

    Mushroom.

    Ecru.

    Taupe.

    Khaki.

    Got a guess? Tan. Fucking tan. Which is really light brown but let's not get into that-let's just accept that light brown is tan. Then-years ago-they came up with beige and burnt sienna.

    I remember because I was a kid and they added beige and burnt sienna to the Crayola crayons box, so let's accept that tan is tan and beige is lighter tan and burnt sienna is probably some kind of tan that the Indians came up with but is that enough to base a towel selection on? I guess the fuck not because now we have four more bullshit choices, which we will now unbullshit our way through:

    Mushroom. Mushrooms are for cheeseburgers, pasta sauces, soup and getting high enough to think that the Grateful Dead were actually a good band when in fact they were just a bunch of spaced-out, balding junkies with two songs they managed to spread out over four hours as a scam to sell tie-dyed T-shirts.

    Ecru? Sounds like a cough. (Don't forget-I'm a doctor.)

    Khaki? Pants. That's it. Just pants. I don't want a towel named after a pair of pants I wouldn't buy or wear anyways. Christ. Let's make all pant names into colors. How about Cargo. Are those off-white pants, Penis Man? Nope-they're Ski. Hey Lefty-are those pants black or navy blue? The proper name for the color is Tuxedo, asshole.

    And Taupe? I looked up "taupe" in a dictionary and here's what it says: "A moderate to dark brownish gray slightly tinged with purple, yellow or green." Jesus Christ. Could there be a less decisive color? Is Taupe running for President Of All Towels?

    Orange becomes Tangerine or Pumpkin, red becomes Burgundy, white becomes Alabaster, purple morphs into Plum, Lilac, Aubergine and Mauve.

    I knew a pissed-off lesbian from Dublin who was named Mauve and a French-Canadian hockey goon whose last name was Aubergine-neither one brings the color purple to mind. (Although Mauve did give me a purple nurple because she thought I was hitting on her girlfriend when I was-in fact-just asking for a light. Her girlfriend looked like Aubergine, by the way-only he had better teeth.)

    The point is-why.

    Why do we need these colors why is someone getting paid to create them why are women buying towels and curtains and linens and bedspreads named with them and bringing them home or even worse showing us the choices in the catalog BEFORE they buy them and asking us which one we like better-the Pewter or the Periwinkle? The Topaz or the Azule?

    The Milk or the Butter the Cream or the Honey the Egg or the-I don't know if I'm still picking out bed and bath wear or ordering fucking breakfast.

    Speaking of which, it's the same thing that's happened with food. My wife and I recently went out to eat on a gorgeous late-winter Saturday evening and after watching her perform an extended version of The Lace Panties And Bare Skin Display and driving twenty-five miles inside an enclosed space as the scent of her perfume arrayed itself around my lips, I had two thoughts in mind: sex sex and more sex.

    Actually-that was all one continuous thought, so as we arrived at the restaurant I just wanted to chow down and speed home before tearing her clothes off and manhandling her.

    Then-the ponytailed, three-earrings-in-one-earlobe, not black but I'm sure Midnight suit-sporting waiter sauntered up to the table, placed a menu gingerly into each of our hands and-I shit you not-began to recite the following special additions:

    (I remember because as soon as he was done and excused himself-no doubt to re-buff his nails-I borrowed a pen from my wife and wrote all of this down.)

    An Heirloom Tomato Tower Featuring Goat Cheese And A Plum Salsa Dressing.

    French Tenderloin Filet With Crab Galette And Israeli Couscous Flecked By Casino Butter.

    Pistachio-Encrusted Swordfish With Corn Whipped Potatoes Drizzled With An Asian Fennel Sauce.

    For Dessert-Italian Apple Sorbet Sitting Above A Vanilla Wedge And Topped By Belgian Chocolate Glaze.

    First things first. A tower of tomatoes is okay by me 'cause it sounds like a tomato sandwich and that seems like it would just be faster to eat, but

    FEATURING goat cheese? What is this, a rock concert? And what the fuck exactly is plum salsa-an excuse not to have more tomatoes on the plate? But I digress. Because the tomato tower is normal stuff compared with the French Tenderloin Filet With Crab Galette. You know what the galette was? A crab cake.

    It's just a chunk of steak with a crab cake on top, and I've been to Israel-I worked there for a summer once-and I never heard the words "Israeli couscous" in English OR Hebrew and what the fuck is Casino Butter-pads of butter with paper on either side that you stole from the Caesars Palace All You Can Eat Buffet? And let me ask you this-Corn Whipped Potatoes-did you actually whip the potatoes WITH a cob of corn or did you just save me the trouble of having to mix the corn into the potatoes right here on my own plate? I appreciate your deshelling the pistachios for me in advance, by the way, but I don't want them encrusted around my goddam fish. I don't like anything encrusted. Reminds me of that stuff you have in your eyes after you wake up from a deep sleep. Especially when you have the flu. Flu-Encrusted Cod anybody? And drizzled? Let's cut to the goddam chase on that one-poured. Okay? You poured some shit over some other shit. Drizzle means it's raining outside but it's not really raining. And I'm Irish so I'm kind of an expert on this one-anything "drizzled" or poured or splattered or plopped on top of potatoes is gravy-I don't give a good goddam if it's from Asia or the South Bronx-it's G-R-A-V-Y-and you better have a shitload of it. And as far as dessert goes-you ain't fooling me. It's an apple on top of a cookie with hot fudge. Fuck Belgium AND the Italians.

    My wife loved it. I closed the menu and let her order for me. It all gets so confusing and long and descriptive and-basically-uses way too much time and far too many words. Here's what the menu at the ultimate restaurant built by, for and WITH men in mind would say:

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    That's it. Make them all the same price and you have a done deal-guys will flock there in record numbers.

    I bring all of this up to let women all over the world know-once and for all-we don't really care about Amber towels and Auburn washcloths and Claret curtains and Salsified Sea Bass and Crystallized Cocoa Flake Splashed With A Dandelion Brandy Sauce. We'll shower up and rinse our hands clean and sit down and eat the stuff but for one reason and one reason only-we wanna have sex with you. That's it.

    That's why I'm extending the argument put forward in the previous chapter, guys-don't go off the deep end about the linen and the menu additions like I just did-sit back and let it all go.

    So you have to let some ponce in a ponytail point out food that simply by the length of its title is gonna have a price tag far beyond its actual nutritional value-so what?

    So instead of grabbing a red towel and raking it across your ass and your ballsack-you gently dab at your dabbables and remark: "Honey-this towel is so big and fluffy and just so-is it Magenta? It is? It's such a perfect balance with the smaller towels-the hand ones? Lemme guess-are those Puce or Terra Cotta? Oh-Vermillion. I love it!"

    That and a slow, gentle slide of your hand-palm down-across the surface of the new Crimson sheets and a quick remark about how much you love the Russet pillowcases will do wonders down unders.

    Nowadays, wife wants a cup of tea? Do I grunt and grumble? Nope. I put on my reading glasses and I shuffle down to the kitchen, put on the hot water, open The Tea Drawer and start perusing the titles:

    Smooth Move, hon?

    Women's Liberty? No? Okay.

    Green Ginger it is.

    She's got a selection of teas the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence wouldn't have TIME to throw into Boston Harbor:

        Azo Passion Tea

        Every Day Detox Tea

        Yoga Bedtime Mulling Spice

        Yoga Thai Delight

        Cinnamon Ease

        Yoga Rejuvenatta

    

    Now-they all have their apparent purposes, even though how and when she may need them remains a mystery to me. Does she down a cup of Azo Passion in order to get in the mood? When she needs to loll about on the front porch and ponder the world's problems, does she savor some thoughtful sips of Mulling Spice? Do three and a half ounces of Women's Liberty really set her free? I dunno. But the last couple of boxes I dug out of that drawer are enough to bring any man pause:

    Yoga Black Chai and Licorice Root.

    This is when teatime can turn into a potential witch's brew-are these the two bags she drops into a boiling mug before telling me to go fuck myself? Is she holding them in reserve in case she one day decides to put me out of her misery? I dunno and I ain't asking.

    I just make her the cup of Green Ginger and wonder what kinda teas they make for men.

    Oh yeah. I remember:

    Lipton.

    End of list.

    

    I think we've done a good job in the last couple chapters with delineating some of the differences between men and women-now it's time for this good doctor to put the final nails into what has become a politically correct coffin in this country:

    We don't talk as much as you do.

    We just don't.

    Keep in mind this is coming from a man who is not only a doctor but-as you must know by now if you've been reading along-a very verbal guy.

    I obviously do not have a problem expressing myself.

    But you can take all the halfhearted and quarter-assed medical studies done around the world that say men speak just as many words a day as women do and put them in a massive blender and make a giant bullshit shake-I'm here to tell you they are not true.

    Go to the gym and watch and listen-guys have headphones on as they run and squat and grimace and grunt-staring up at the TV in between sets.

    The women? Paired off on adjacent treadmills or elliptical trainers-yak yakkety yick yak yic, yic yickety, yawbeddy jawbeddy-jic jak yick. Yicketty yacketty blah blah blah.

    I don't trust the tests that say women don't talk more than men because I know for a fact these tests are being paid for and urged on if not administered by women who are desperate to find a way to prove one more cliche about them to somehow not be true.

    Do I have medical research to back up my claim?

    You bet your ovaries I do-fifty years of life on this gabbing glob of rock and gas, all of them surrounded by sisters and Irish aunts and female cousins PLUS twenty-five of those years living in the same domicile with my wife.

    She talks on the phone to her sister while she's making dinner and I sit there starving and steaming.

    She talks on the phone with her mom while she's making dinner while I still sit there starving and steaming.

    She steams vegetables while talking on the phone ABOUT her mother WITH her sister while I try to decide whose temperature is getting higher-mine or the broccoli's.

    She talks to her BFF on the phone WHILE she's e-mailing her OTHER best BFF about a THIRD former BFF who's just now calling on the other line.

    We don't.

    We don't talk when we're hungry-except to say "I'm hungry-let's eat."

    We don't talk on the phone when we're hungry unless we are ordering food to be delivered from the place where they make the food right to where we are sitting waiting for some food-still one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of eating as far as men are concerned.

    Once we have the food-no talking-just chewing.

    We don't even talk while we're working.

    Ever watch a bunch of guys shovel snow? If there's five of them-they say hello and shoot the shit quickly about the game on TV last night or this hot new chick one of them is dating and/or holy fuck did it snow like a motherfucker then they start pointing and dividing up sections of the area that need to be shoveled and then?

    They shovel.

    For three straight hours.

    And the only talking they do is to redirect each other to parts of the area that need to be shoveled again or piles of snow that need to be moved.

    That's it.

    When they are done they talk briefly about the best shovels in the history of shovels and how to invent an even better shovel and then they get in their trucks and drive away.

    All you hear when you walk by a construction site is the sound of machines bamming and whamming and shouts of "Get the fuck out of the way, Tommy!" and "Toss me that hammer, Sal!"

    If women did all the shoveling or women were put in charge of actually physically building our buildings we would be left with mounds and mounds of snow-covered streets and sidewalks and a cityscape chock full of lumber, cement bags and steel but a skyline somehow free of sky-scrapers. Plenty of recipes would be exchanged and reputations damaged, though.

    My studies show that women-on average-use 15,678 words a day.

    Men-according to my tests-use about 3,700.

    And 2,000 of those are "Uh-huh, honey," "What did she say then?" and

    "Mm-hmm."

    "Yup" and "whatever you say, sweetheart" were also very popular.

    Don't bother digging out all the new studies that say men and women speak exactly the same number of words. I've read them all and they are-in one of my daily allotment of roughly 4,000-crap.

    As is the BFF idea. And The Frenemy-the female friend who is actually an enemy but still-somehow, incredibly-kept close at hand by your wife or chick.

    How many countless times have you heard your girl come home and say "You're not gonna believe what that bitch Suzie said to me today while we were having a nice, chatty lunch at such and such a place" or hang up the phone after a seventy-eight-minute conversation with her "friend" Emily and say "God how I hate her"?

    Here's what a guy says to another guy who he KNOWS just insulted him or just even LOOKED at him the wrong way:

    What the fuck is your problem, dickwad?

    And then the relationship is over.

    You know that friend of your wife's who just talks endlessly and not only never shuts up but seems to think every single one of the other women is fascinated by what she has to say when in fact they all wish that somehow she would just stop and take a breath so that they could get a word in edgewise?

    Here's what One Angry Guy says to The Big Loudmouthed Guy who All The Other Guys think is talking too much:

    Hey-loudmouth. Shut the fuck up and let someone else fuckin' talk.

    That's it.

    We don't have BMFs.

    And while we are on the subject-let's get something else completely set straight-guys don't want their girlfriends or wives to be their best friends. Our best friends are other guys. Guys we hang out with. Guys we play sports and sweat with. Guys we fart openly with and compare coughed-up phlegm with or go to hockey games with or play golf with or watch a heavyweight championship on TV with. Our best friends have beards and balls and hair on their backs and we can watch a sixty-seven-yard touchdown pass from Peyton Manning to Marvin Harrison and just grunt at each other in firm admiration and approval because we know how almost impossible a task that is to pull off. I don't wanna have sex with my best friend or give him a hot-oil massage or kiss him on the back of the neck or sneak up from behind him and quietly cup his right breast in my hand while breathing a low and steamy whisper into his other ear.

    Here's a headline-we eat food with our hands when chicks ain't around. And if we do use cutlery, we grab one of those huge serving utensils-a great big spoon or a fork with four massive prongs-so we can shovel whatever the hell it is we're eating into our gaping pieholes with even more speed. Getting to the pitchfork first is key 'cause then you can stab at the hands of the other guys when they try to grab some of what yer eating out of the bowl or dish it sits in.

    When chicks ain't around we scratch our asses and tweak our balls and reconfigure our cocks in our pants and spit and moan and stare each other down and call each other pussies and faggot and threaten to kick a guy's ass and elbow him in the face for a rebound and spit and snort and grunt and cackle and high-five and fart and then cackle about the size of the fart and then high-five BECAUSE of the fart and then piss and moan and snot snotrockets. We piss in sinks and sandtraps and on trees and in sandbuckets and into old coffee cans and almost anywhere we can find when the bathroom is taken or there isn't one around and we jerk off a lot and it has nothing to do with whether or not we are in or out of a happy relationship it's just at the very least a release of testosterone and/or a form of target practice because the more we do it the longer we can last and making it last longer is a point of pride when you are trying to make the woman in your life happy in bed. We couldn't care less about Sex and the City and we'd really rather stare at a six-color double-page Road & Track shot of the engine inside a new Ferrari Testarossa than we would at actresses we don't know in red carpet dresses from People magazine or even one of the same actresses tastefully naked but airbrushed into ambiguity in Playboy or Penthouse. We like to bang shit with hammers but if we hadn't invented hammers we would be just as happy to bang shit with big rocks-we like to drive fast and throw sticks and chuck small rocks and peg acorns or apples or almost anything we can get our hands on.

    And we barely talk during any of this. Except to yell "Nice goal, Schiller!" or "Pass the goddam puck, Lombardi!" or "Think I can hit that pigeon with this bottle top?"

    As a matter of fact, Think I Can Hit That Tree? is a game even grown men can play for hours on end. All you need is a tree, two men, and some loose stones. One guy says something to the effect of "Think I can hit that tree from here?" and the game is on: two adult males will throw flat stones, round stones, rectangular stones-thin, fat, chubby, chunky, we don't even care-at said tree until they either run out of stones or they see a squirrel. Then they start playing Think I Can Hit That Squirrel? Same rocks, same rules-moving target.

    Pretty goddam simple.

    We don't do Extreme Makeovers. You wanna know what an extreme makeover for a straight man is? He comes home, takes his suit off and puts on his torn and frayed Red Sox T-shirt from 2003 and complements it with a pair of boxers he bought during the first Clinton administration. He turns on ESPN and thinks about whether or not he should shave. Decides to wait a couple of days.

    That's it.

    We don't sit around talking about you.

    We don't sit around talking about food.

    We don't break out acoustic guitars and sing "Viva Viagra" in four-part harmony.

    Here's what I have to say about change-we don't do it. We are as God made us. What you see is what you get. You CAN judge a book by its cover-it's called "Big, Hungry, Horny, Simple Guys."

    You know that best-selling tome called Eat, Pray, Love? It's a memoir written by a thirty-something American chick who gets divorced and travels in well-fed splendor to three different countries to heal her broken heart and oh so damaged self-esteem and in the process find her true inner is-ness and being.

    The guy version of that book would be called Eat, Fuck, Sleep. And it could be written by any red-blooded American male. In it he would eat, fuck and sleep. And in between those he would work his ass off and also watch documentaries on The History Channel about other men in three different countries and what kind of tools they use and wars they wage and tanks they drive and blah blah history blah until the Red Sox feed from the West Coast away game they're playing against the Angels kicked in around ten p.m. or so.

    Let's make this all as scientific as we can-I've included in my study ink and paper scans of the male and female brains. Take a look:

    

    

The Male Brain

    

    

    

The Female Brain

    

    

    In the homosexual male brain, you can replace "Great Sandwiches I Have Eaten" with "Musicals to Die For," exchange "Dicks" for "Tits" and take out "Starting Lineup of the 1967 Boston Red Sox" in favor of "Judy Garland and Her Secretly Gay Husbands."

    Also-the Red Sox 1967 lineup section may be interchanged with the starting nine of whichever baseball team may have made the biggest impact on your boyfriend or husband's life during childhood.

    These simple diagrams explain many things. For instance-when you sidle up softly and nestle down next to your man and ask that always-upsetting-for-guys question-"honey, what are you thinking about?"-the reason he panics is very very easy to discern. Almost anytime you ask it-except during dinner, sex or sudden death overtime of a Big Important Game-this is what a guy is always thinking-ALWAYS: