by Ali Adler
So, yes, we women are different. Sure we’re different from you physiologically—but we’re also different from each other emotionally and mentally. Don’t make assumptions about one and apply it to us all. You will irritate us, and when we’re annoyed, we are also sexually stingy.
Women Have “Tells”
Observe and digest—as if you’re sitting at a poker table and looking for “tells.” Women have them, too. You will be patient at a table for hours, memorizing a furrowed brow or a quickened chip shuffle based on someone’s poker hand, but you think that a woman is too boring to study for emotional tells even though the potential value of the pot can be far richer. So sit, listen, digest; and when you make a move, do it gently and with premeditation. It can win you a jackpot.
Be patient, even when she is bugging the hell out of you. No matter the extreme detail she needs to engage in, or the explication of what you perceive as irrelevant emotions—they are important to her. If you seem as if you are glazing over, she will be offended. Don’t exclaim, “I’m so bored, why are you asking me to care about this?” or, “Can you tell this with way less detail? I don’t give a shit what her uncle’s cat’s name is.” Any version of this, no matter how true it feels for you, will hurt her feelings. Even if you can’t understand why she needs to drag you through all this minutiae, admit defeat and just let her go on and on. Think about the Dow Jones, or the Häagen-Dazs bar you ate instead of lunch. Appearing to listen to her long, drawn-out story is what will eventually encourage this anecdote to end.
So act as if you’re listening carefully, even ask an occasional question, as if you give a shit. She will be pleased that you’re interested. It will benefit her in her discourse, and you in intercourse.
Chapter 2
Dating
Pretending to Be Someone You’re Not
“I’d like a sorbet, and I’m fairly certain he’d like sex.”
Look at yourself in a mirror. See not what you are familiar with (“That guy sure looks cozy!”), but the message that your physical presence sends. What does your “look” say about you? Snap judgments aren’t always accurate, but nine times out of ten, they’re an effective time-saving tool. It’s the proverbial judging a book by its cover. If you’re sloppy, lame, or out of it—or if you dress in keeping with the last year you had a great sexual run—chances are, you should shake it up a bit.
Just because loose, low-slung jeans worked when your last relationship began (around the same time University of Miami beat Nebraska in the Rose Bowl) doesn’t mean they are still relevant. Keep up with the trends, even if you aren’t setting them. Don’t be overweight or overly colorful, and think in advance about those sleeves of tattoos. They are the same flappy arms that will play bridge and shuffleboard later in a retirement community. It’s like we tell children: “Don’t color on the couch. Ink is for paper.” You can throw paper away after you’ve made a bad choice. As opposed to living the rest of your life with a Chinese symbol engraved into your forearm that translates to “Sweet and Sour Chicken.” (A hilarious chuckle at twenty-three, but not really sure it stands the comedy test of forever.)
Create a Look
What if you don’t have a “look”? How do you go about creating one? Check your age on your driver’s license, because it actually matters. Then go out and buy one of those crappy gossip magazines, or go to a website with pictures of celebrities at various functions. Click past the weddings and formal award sections, and go to some daytime charity events. If you are young, you will look at what Drake or Zac Efron are wearing. If you are a few years older than that, you will see pictures of Hugh Jackman or Jay-Z on a step and repeat (the backdrop that advertises the charity event). Examine the clothes of your peer group. Do your clothes resemble anything they are wearing, style-wise? Does the cut of your pants seem similar; do the shades of their color palette seem vastly different? If so, follow these rules.
Go to your closet, or to your stuffed-to-the-max banged-up dresser that’s as depressing as the clothes inside. If you haven’t worn something in two years (most people say one, but you are thriftier and less eager to change than most), throw it out or give it away. If you have a cozy T-shirt that has sentimental value, give it to whomever you’re fucking. It will make her feel special. She will want to wear it without panties to sleep in, or with her most beloved jeans to go get groceries.
If you are under thirty and not overweight, get skinnier jeans. If you are over forty, toss out those skinny jeans. Get rid of clothes that have tears, rips, or stains, unless you paid extra money for tears, rips, or stains. (However, please do not wear these types of age-embellished products after thirty-three. Thirty-three is when Jesus died, and I just can’t picture him in distressed jeans.) It is okay to wear things besides jeans and T-shirts. Pants are not just for business meetings and funerals.
If you can afford it, invest in a good watch. If you can’t, still wear a watch. Find your dead grandpa’s old Timex and remove his yucky, broken Twist-O-Flex band. Attach a brand new twelve-dollar grosgrain band to it. It looks very cool. This says something about you: You have style, and a belief that time and something outside of yourself matters. Or that a grandparent once loved you enough to bequeath his cheap heirloom to you. Wearing a watch implies that you have responsibilities in life. You have to be places. I know, I know, it feels weird. It feels uncomfortable, and it constrains all that yucky hair that grows on your wrist. I know that you can always look at your phone to ascertain the time, but there is something handsome/adult/post-collegiate about wearing a watch. It’s a rite of passage—as if your arm had a bar mitzvah.
Regarding clothes, confine patterns to the small. If you are chubby, don’t confuse your bloatedness with getting older. You need to go to the gym. The reason you stayed more slender when you were a kid was—yes, your metabolism was faster, but also because a bossy asshole wearing a comb-over and a generic-brand polo shirt was blowing a whistle at you in gym class for fifty minutes a day. Fact: if you ran around for fifty minutes every day now, you’d be way skinnier. Do not ignore your body, because it will respond by turning on you and becoming a piggy blob. It’s tough to be motivated to want to fuck someone who seems not to care about himself enough to take care of his body. Your wife will do it with you sometimes, but she won’t really be that into it. She will not make that extra effort or go out of her way (e.g., ball-licking) if you don’t (e.g., running on the treadmill).
These rules are different if you both started out large, and/or loved each other into largeness. However, if this was a gradual or sudden shift to your current size, then initially you unfairly represented the package. Also, atrophied butter-soaked arteries are even more alarming. Because I can guarantee you that 100 percent of the time, you will always fuck better if your heart is still beating.
If you want to fuck someone who is physically pretty, lithe, and taut, yet you want to remain very corpulent or unattractive, the only way to do this successfully is to be frighteningly rich. If you are very rich and fucking someone who’s extra hot, and you think she’s fucking you because you are hilarious or inventive or witty, please know that she is only fucking you because you’re smart enough to have figured out how to get all that money. But she’s also fucking you because she’s into the lifestyle: the private jet and the ice-encrusted watch and the nice person whose job it is to live in your home and make things easier for the owner. You know, the lady who prepares your woman a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup in the middle of the night because she’s a little sad about something her dog said. I’m not judging, either. I’m proud of you for figuring out how to have it all, but please don’t mistake her wanting your thick wallet with wanting your thick body.
Never stop evaluating yourself. Don’t stop growing or changing in our ever-evolving world. Don’t be afraid to ask yourself those very tough questions. My friend Josh’s goatee looked like an unkempt mouth vagina. I explained to him that it’s rare to find a woman who wants to kiss something like that.
I told him that goatees are the facial hair equivalent of trench coats. The bearer always has something to hide. Weak chin. Assassin. On the lam. Gender transitioning.
Josh, bless him, was open to my advice. He shaved his hairy pussy-mouth, and suddenly an entirely different caliber of woman opened up for him. Turned out, his face bush was originally borne of shame; he’d grown it in college to cover up french fry acne that he’d contracted while smoking bales of marijuana. Without his mom there to nag him to eat right, stop smoking, shave his face, Josh got used to hiding behind his hair burka. Shaving it allowed him to stop hiding, like taking off a cartoon disguise. Can you imagine how much more ass Groucho Marx would’ve gotten if he’d shaved his ‘stash and removed those glasses? I mean, not literally, because those women probably did want to fuck Groucho Marx—but you know what I mean.
Ask Questions, and Remember the Answers
Now that you’re finally wearing pants and your face is free of antiquated facial hair, maybe you’ve made active plans with an adult female. You are sitting upright in a place that serves food. There is a napkin on your lap. On this first date, please pay attention to the small details. Ask questions and listen to the answers as if you’re a grizzled TV detective gathering clues. Especially at the beginning.
Ask tiny interrogatory things that are seemingly unmeaningful: “Girl person, what is your favorite color?” Do not black out while she answers, as this will be on the test. “What is your favorite restaurant?” “What is your favorite type of See’s chocolate?” All these tiny preschool preferences, a whole bunch of nonimperative nothings, will blend together into a delicious batter. She will even forget that she told you whatever her answers may be. For her, it’s so much blather that will blend into a comforting ambient experience (the white noise of pleasantries) like, “Ooooh, that was a fun date.” (She talked and talked, you listened and listened.) This will have her under your spell. Then, pocket her answers. Stow them away for later. Don’t forget that fucking is a motherfucking complicated business. It’s not checkers; it is chess—and you have to plan a few moves ahead.
If you are still interested in sticking your private area into her private area, but it hasn’t yet occurred, ask her out again. Try recalling her answers to your banal questions. Remember that the sum of these answers will work to your advantage. Take her to her favorite restaurant that she will barely remember having mentioned. (Ooh, mind-reader!) Produce the box of chocolates with her favorite color of ribbon tied around it. (Ooooh, the little things!) Make sure that inside the box, there are only her handpicked favorites. Just a pound of the kind she specifically mentioned; e.g., milk-chocolate almond caramels. No random and prewrapped package like the kind you grab at an airport kiosk. No annoying cherry goops or marshmallow splats or dark chocolate jellies to tentatively bite halfway into and discard, annoyed to have wasted calories on anything less than perfection. Just the ones she loves and said aloud, and that you remembered. For you, it was annoying to listen to, and irritating to go out and buy. (Why the fuck does it matter? Who cares about a bunch of stupid candies? Won’t she be mad at me for giving her chocolate because she’ll complain about her weight? Is this the 1950s?)
Whoa, whoa, whoa. It isn’t really about the chocolates, dumbass. You can apply this same “listening” to any kindness. It makes her feel globally heard and meaningfully remembered. She has the concrete evidence that you listened, processed the information, and thought about her when she wasn’t there. Which is everything to her. And you will most probably get your penis sucked for this relatively cheap gesture—which is everything to you. So, in actuality, listening is very selfish.
Manners: have them. I know they may seem arcane, a nod to a time long ago before you could download etiquette apps for $0.99. It’s all the stuff your grandma nagged you about, right? “Hold a door open for a woman.” “Get out of the car to open her door.” “Pull out her chair at a table.” “Get up when a lady enters.” “Walk her to her door.” “Offer her your coat.” “Carry her purchases.” “Pay for her shit.” “Offer her cunnilingus.” All this stuff. But just knowing how to properly use a knife and fork goes on her checklist; she sees that manners were important in your family. So this is a nod to history and education. You don’t need to open a door for a woman or pull out her chair. But it is a paean to a time lost, and—if you’re interested in sucking on her titties—it is something women notice when you don’t do it more than if you do. So make it seem effortless, like you do this annoying shit all the time.
In terms of sexual manners, Emily Post may never have typed on her typewriter: “Gentlemen, do not hasten to blast a surprise load upon a young lady’s face, catching her unawares your first time up at bat.” But perhaps that was based on her own lack of firsthand experience. Her suitors were probably too afraid their ejaculate would glob together in the feathers of one of her ornate hats, so they naturally shied away from this activity.
Dating Is the Best It Will Ever Get
So, what to do on a date? First of all, in these modern times, make one. Actually pick a time, place, and location. Put it in your iCal. Where to go? Who cares? Look, it’s all a silly charade meant to test the waters. You are both mutually temperature-taking to see if there’s sexual chemistry, so it’s all a bit false, anyway.
In fact, it’s a goddamn show. It’s practically a Broadway musical, with makeup and hair, costumes and sets. Acting like you’re someone you’re not, to gain a stranger’s approval. She actually applied hot wax to her labia and had it ripped off so that you might be visually pleased. This is not what real life looks like. After she has had three of your kids, she’s just gonna try to whack away at that shit with a cheap five-pack pink drug-store razor, and hope you’re not looking too closely during your seven-minute shove-in. This dating time is the best it’s ever going to get, so if you’re not into her now, you’re never going to be.
You might think you’ll know within a few minutes whether this person is right for you. No! Stop. You may be blowing the opportunity of a lifetime. Just wait a few beats longer than you ordinarily might before making your final judgment. Humans are, by nature, reactive. It’s fair to say that you can’t really judge anyone on a first date—even though you will and do. She is struggling to impress you, and she is absolutely not herself. She is the best version of herself based on a guess she makes about what you want her to be. But don’t blame her: you are not yourself, either. You are a superstar boring-anecdote listener, a nonfarter, a new-shirt wearer, a napkin dauber. So let’s just hold off judgment until date number two, or at least the latter part of this one.
Always offer to pick her up. Don’t be offended if she won’t allow you to, due to her fear that you’re a Ted Bundy type. Men are usually bigger physically, so if she says no to your stopping by her place, it’s either because you’re still a stranger, or she wants to be in control. As in, she may want to ditch you in case you’re a loser. (Still, she wants you to ask her if she wants to be picked up, because that confirms the dateyness.)
Defy the Odds: Ask Her about Her
Be a reporter on date one. Ask questions. Pretend to listen. Have follow-up questions. Do an 80:20 ratio in terms of asking things about her, versus discussing yourself—even though we know that you are way more interesting to you than she is. Don’t just wait to start talking. She has the same feeling in reverse, and is so excited that you seemingly defy the odds of most men only being interested in themselves. So ask questions, and let her speak. If she’s boring, watch her lips move. Look at her boobs bounce when she’s saying something emphatic. See? This isn’t so hard. You can do it! Reward yourself by asking another question. Oh, wait—maybe something she says actually relates to you and your life. You identify with something she’s said. Avoid making this analogy out loud; you can always share that kinship later. And, if you bring it up later, it will seem like you have given some thought to what she’s had to say.
You do want her to get to know you, but let’s face it: the real you
doesn’t have these upright, interactive, face-to-face conversations very often, so think of this as showing off. Your focused attention will make her feel appreciated, and show her your capacity for listening. She will attribute a personality to you that you don’t really have, and potentially reward your imaginary self with real-life lovemaking.
In choosing where to go on this date, pick somewhere you’ve gone before. Know the lay of the land, but DO NOT associate this place with another female. I know you believe that memories don’t bug you, but they are like an air-conditioning filter. They clog the new, cleaner memories, congesting the current atmosphere. Another rule is to take her somewhere she’d never go by herself. Be clever, but by no means too clever. Don’t go somewhere so odd that she will be afraid you’re a psycho. A picnic in the desert may seem romantic to you because you know you won’t kill her and bury the body, but she doesn’t know that yet.
Please know her well enough, at this point, through texting or phone chats, to take into account what she may want to do. Don’t take a recovering alcoholic to a wine tasting. Don’t take someone with a nut allergy to a cooking class. Don’t take a quadriplegic go-karting. Don’t take a Jew to a luau. Invent one of your own here. Know your person well enough to know what would be an idiotic thing to do. The rule for date number one is: Be all about her.
On the second date, show her a unique aspect of yourself. Let her in on a secret. Do you love scouting for vintage T-shirts at thrift stores? Do you go to the observatory to check out the constellations? Do you like an out-of-the-way taco stand that only a few people have heard about? If you get to the second date, go somewhere that shows a side of you that may feel surprising to her. Hey, no shit, but it doesn’t have to be real. Take her somewhere that reveals a quality or interest you wish you had. Obviously, it’s better if it’s the real you. But if it’s more intriguing if the revelatory thing is that you like to volunteer at a children’s hospital or you like to pick up trash on the beach, go for it. It will improve your chances of getting to the fucking.