How to F*ck a Woman

by Ali Adler

  I thought my dad was very pragmatic. I didn’t press him about number six, which made me bilious to consider what his standards for sex may be. After all, how would he have gauged this? A cracked-toothed, thick-bellied, hand-rolled-cigarette-reeking Hungarian sixteen-year-old babysitter stole his virginity when he was six. That’s right, six. When I declared what happened to him was molestation, my father, an actual medical doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, gave a lurid smile: “If that is molestation, then molest me!” he merrily decried. Not a trace of being victimized anywhere in him. That may sum up a lot of the entire male/female divide. My dad was thrilled to have a leathery-skinned, Slivovitz-stinking teenager grab his tiny (“Relax, Dad, I’m sure it’s very big now. You were six!”) penis and scoot it into the vicinity of her giant banged-out opening. I’m sure if he heard that a male babysitter that he procured for me at six (he didn’t trouble himself with this level of child-rearing detail, but let’s just suppose . . .) had taken my virginity, he would begin looking for this man with a dull axe in one hand, a phone book in the other. He doesn’t really get that the Internet may help in his murderous revenge quest. Point being, that what in hindsight plays out as a delightful sexual experience for Dad, when a fucked-up teenager steals his six-year-old innocence, would never be confusing to him for a six-year-old girl, especially his daughter. But his position wasn’t as rare as you may think. All the guys in every room I’ve been in wished they’d had Mary Kay Letourneau as their teacher. (Crazy, crazy fact here. Mary Kay is still MARRIED to her victim/student/now-husband/baby-daddy.)

  Okay, but back to Dad’s list. So when looking for his wife number two, I wondered what qualities, if any, had changed for his particular search engine. He indulged me.

  My Wife #2: (Again, in no special order.)

  8.Has above qualities #1 through #6.

  The new traits (assuming he learned some hard lessons over the course of his first marriage) for the revised list include:

  9.Is an “actualized” person (i.e., is a grown-up).

  10.Does not want to have a second family with me. (Phew! Avoidance of less attention and having to divide eventual, hopeful inheritance.)

  11.Has her own career. (Nephrology!)

  12.Is independent financially. (Be a nephrologist. You never go out of business!)

  We Are Wired to Recreate Our Childhoods

  Dad’s list for wife number two was very fair. He learned something from his first wife: what not to do. So pretend you’ve already divorced your first spouse. The one who represents everything you didn’t receive in your childhood. It’s pathetic that we’re so crudely wired to recreate our childhoods. Men and women can unite in this common bond. Childhood demons don’t check for gender; we look for in our partners either what we did, or didn’t, receive as kids. We recreate that blueprint, however glorious or fucked up. It is not purposeful; it is passive. This repetition is engrained. When a guy is looking for the impossible-to-find, the too-hot, the emotionally absent woman—sorry, but it is the combination of whatever he experienced as a child, most usually with his mom. Sometimes he will seek to correct this wound, and look for the opposite of what he received. That usually works out better.

  So how do we not fall for the wrong person? How do we not pick the person who is most familiar to us? The one who emulates our most influential parent? Recreates the familiarity (and the fissure) of all that was wrong (or right) in our childhood home lives? We choose either who our parents were, or who they weren’t. It’s a crapshoot of familiarity and overcompensation for what we lacked. We basically pick what we know, until we don’t need to pick it anymore. We make the same mistakes, attract the same basic person and have the same fights, until we’re ready not to. Our childhood will always dictate our choices.

  If you’re fucking up your life by constantly picking the wrong women, it means your picker is off. Don’t panic if you’ve got a shitty picker. To fix the picker, it’s like learning anything; like how to toss a football or make a layup or some other sports-related analogy. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m going to take the guessing out of it for you. I’ve baked up a few simple rules for you to follow until your picker gets stronger and more reliable, and you are able to choose on your own.

  Ali’s Rules for Who Not to Date

  1.Don’t date actresses or models. (Nothing in the “I need applause or adoration/love me, Daddy” field of employ.)

  2.Don’t date bisexuals. (Too complicated until your picker is more finely tuned.)

  3.Don’t date someone way smarter than you. Or the reciprocal: don’t date someone way dumber.

  4.Don’t date the unemployed.

  5.Don’t date someone much younger or older than you. (Seven years max in either direction.)

  6.No drug addicts or nonrecovering alcoholics. (You will want to fuck these people. Just don’t.)

  Other possible types to avoid:

  • The woman who is overly attached to her mom or dad

  • The woman who doesn’t have a good relationship with her mom or dad

  • The one who compares you to others

  • The one who compares herself to others

  • The criticizer

  • The people-pleaser

  • The man-basher

  • The woman-hater

  • The emotionally unavailable ones

  • The one whose emotions are too readily available

  • The too-mean woman

  • The too-nice woman

  • The takes-herself-too-seriously woman

  • The one who doesn’t take herself seriously enough

  • The woman who has it all

  • The woman who has nothing

  • The too-flirtatious woman

  • The woman who doesn’t have any clue how to flirt

  • The too-clingy

  • The too-independent

  • The woman who has done it all

  • The woman who hasn’t done enough . . .

  Well, you get it. Don’t date in the extremes.

  As you get better at picking women, these rules can lighten up, but for now, just color inside the lines. Plenty of time for freehand later.

  I get it. Guys say what women want to hear until you really get to know them. For guys, vaginas literally say what they want to hear: Nothing.

  The Vagina Effect

  The vagina is a most alluring creature. For men, the feeling of penis in vagina supersedes all reason. Rational behavior occurs only in hindsight. We only see why our relationships end, after the fact. But ask any of our clear-eyed friends, those unaffected by the druggy effects of genital mind-poisoning; they will have a long, cogent list of the reasons why it didn’t work out for you. Real obvious shit, too. Ten Commandment–style stuff. Lying, cheating, stealing, coveting . . . but in the initial pussy-drunk phase where your physiology (due to adrenaline) actually changes, you can’t see anything with clarity. This isn’t the same thing as “beer goggles,” where your standards are clouded because you’re inebriated. This is the “Vagina Effect.” Once in, we can convince ourselves that someone is something they are not. It can also be referred to as “Cock Hypnosis.” But that seems way more crass.

  For the man who has a tough time making sound choices, certain types of women should be tagged with warnings akin to those on packs of cigarettes. Avoid these, please. At least until your picker improves.

  CAUTION: This type of woman may be hazardous to your emotional health.

  CAUTION: This type of woman may be addictive.

  CAUTION: Quitting this type of woman greatly reduces serious risks to your feelings.

  Some groups to potentially avoid:

  1. Don’t date actresses or models.

  Actresses and models are people who pretend to be something else for a living. These performers went into this industry because they either need people to literally applaud them, or to chronically remark upon their talent and/or physical beauty.

  Years ago, I was in a writers’ ro
om with a guy who mused, “Yeah, you know, I’d still fuck Farrah Fawcett.” Oh wow, I’ll bet Farrah, who was then still very much alive, would’ve lit up to hear that a chubby Jewish kid from Pittsburgh, who was already making do with a third of his hair in his early thirties, “still” would’ve fucked her. I used to catch this guy, this Adam or Josh or Eric (none of these are his name, but oh so close), picking his nose behind his doodled-on TV script, thinking he’d built a successful paper screen to shield us from his grossness. I wondered about his word choice: “still.” This nebbish who masturbated to Farrah’s poster at least as many times as the twenty million copies it sold (are posters still a thing?) claims that he’d “still” fuck her. Why “still”? I guess because she was in her early fifties by then. Still unshakably gorgeous. Can you imagine if someone ran up to her mid–crab cake bite at the Ivy at the Shore with the news that, despite her advanced age, a portly nose-picker who chronically pitched cat names as jokes (“Mr. McFluffypants!”) would still let her lick his dick? I’m sure she’d toss back her sugar-rimmed gimlet, thrilled.

  I’ll bet Farrah, an actual Warhol muse, would race over in her two-door Mercedes to his too-expensive-for-his-age house and ring the bell. He’d open it, thinking it was the Indian food he’d just ordered, tossing in a bonus cheese naan for sauce sopping. And there she’d be, fiftyish hair slightly more brittle than the buoyant bouncy locks of the poster of his youth. But he didn’t care. He’d still fuck her. She evokes in him his—and I’m kind of proud of this one—six-million-dollar manhood. I’m sure she’d totally appreciate his spastic lovemaking skills, confused and overwhelmed, as he hunched into her magnificent iconic blondness. He couldn’t help but think about his Steve Austin doll with bionic grip and an actual telescopic eye as he spewed out a premature load, just imagining the silhouetted opening credits of Charlie’s Angels. Blooooop, praying he can make it past the Kate Jackson as meter maid part.

  If you have the opportunity to sleep with a Farrah type, go ahead. It’s not like whatever I say is going to sway you. You should do it. Do it a bunch of times for good measure, if you can. But if you wind up marrying an actress, don’t be surprised if you spend quite a bit of time allaying her insecurities and fears. Because the prettiest packages usually need the most reassurance. And when the most beautiful person in the room all of a sudden gets older and can’t rely on her physical package any longer, guess who is in charge of reassuring her diminishing looks with increasing compliments? That’s you. And by then, you’ll be old and exhausted.

  2. Don’t date bisexuals. (Too complicated until your picker is sharper.)

  Bisexuals, please don’t be mad at me. I’m not one of those people who believe it’s a phase on the road to gay. It’s an amazing and incredible thing to be emotionally and sexually available to 100 percent of the population. However, for people whose partner-pickers don’t function well, you’re just too complicated. Dealing with bisexuals requires a higher skill level at first, so let’s not make it hard on the people who choose poorly. It’s like trying to ride a bucking bronco when you have no clue what a saddle is. It opens up way too many emotional tributaries for the common man to handle.

  If you’re a guy dating a bi-girl, you may think this is hot and sexy. But word to the wise: she likes to fuck other women. It’s not just a sexy skit for your pleasure. And, chances are, if she’s a girl lover, she also likes to emotionally connect with women. Which will double the amount of boring emotional talks you hate, but have to have. Trust me, the potential for experiencing a three-way won’t cover the amount of time you’ll waste on the “I’m-not-getting-my-emotional-needs-met” girl-blather. Which any girl who likes girls has naturally grown to expect. Fact: A straight female has spent a lifetime curbing her expectations of the amount of emotional processing a straight man can endure. A straight woman is your best-case scenario with that.

  And here’s a super-big piece of news: being bisexual doesn’t actually mean she is automatically open to three-ways. Bisexual just means that particular person is open to loving and/or fucking both genders. So you may never get this elusive magical night that you’re hoping to boast to your friends about. “My dick was in one vagina, then it was inside another. One mouth, then the other! Four tits! One cock!” You may have put in hours and hours of dialogue with your bi-girlfriend about her emotions that will never, ever pay off. Ever. You may be digging a well that will never yield water. You will die a thirsty man while still putting in all that goddamned sweaty, dusty digging effort. You will just have spent a lifetime in circuitous conversations, only imagining her going down on a woman. And if that’s true, you may as well just imagine your straight girlfriend fingering a lady.

  3. Don’t date someone way smarter than you. And don’t date someone way dumber.

  This is one of those rules that is very tough to gauge at the beginning. You’re so caught up in the fucking that whatever she says, you imbue her with a certain mental acumen. It is only when you take that person out of the bedroom and into real-life situations that her stupidity may register. If you’re not totally sure how smart she may be, take her out to meet your friends and family—not that they will tell you the truth. They will lie to your face. No one will tell you your new girlfriend is too dumb. They will just wait for you to realize it.

  This process takes a long time. How can you tell if your new woman just isn’t keeping up? If you tell a story and she stares at you blankly, don’t assume this means she’s in a higher place of understanding. (See Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There.) If you find yourself always asking, “Do you know what I mean? Do you get what I’m saying? Do you know what I’m talking about?” these are your own clues that you are dating the less smart. You: “No, you’re not understanding my point. Are you being purposefully obtuse?” Her: a blank stare. You: “Do you know what obtuse means?” Her: “Of course. It’s a triangle.” Or, after taking your new girlfriend to a friend’s wedding, Her: “That was amazing, they’re such a cute couple. Are you ready to throw graffiti at the bride?” You, with teeth grinding: “Did . . . you mean . . . confetti?”

  Conversely, the too-smart woman will make you feel dumb. If you are the one struggling to understand the anecdotes, the references—what is preindustrialized London? Anything about the Roman aqueducts or jet propulsion. You still think the native language of Sweden is candy. If you are constantly reminding yourself to google the meaning of the topics that she brings up, then she is too smart for you. Especially if you feel too embarrassed to ask, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  You’ll try to nod with seeming intuition, making your eyes sparkle with comprehension. It will take a while before you are found out. When she’s talking about something you find tedious, or you don’t understand, try to stop yourself from saying that aloud. You may even risk asking questions about her wide body of knowledge on things that interest you not at all. But be advised, you will reveal that you don’t know shit.

  4. Don’t date the unemployed.

  Some people don’t care about money. They don’t mind paying every time. It does something for their self-esteem, or it doesn’t even occur to them to care. Good for them! Find them and date them. The downside of being the person who always pays is that it creates a legitimate power imbalance. Like boss/employee, it creates a not-so-sexy dynamic. Traditionally, we’re more used to the guy paying, although you still shouldn’t have to pay all the time. The rule isn’t “Don’t date those who are paid less than you” or “Don’t date the people who love it when you pay.” It’s “Don’t date the unemployed.”

  Having a job creates an identity, a self-confidence and equality. It creates balance between two people, even if their pay packet is extremely different. That equality can’t be bought with the laying down of a credit card every time the bill comes. I’m not talking about if you get married; I’m talking about when you have the entire world’s population to choose from. Don’t date someone who can’t get her shit together enough to pay for her own things, even if
they’re of a lesser quality than yours. You don’t want to marry someone who has never purchased a couch, even if it’s a crappy one.

  If she is being supported by her parents, this dynamic creates a whole other dimension of unnecessary competitions, entitlement, and comparisons. If she simply can’t figure out what it is she wants to be when she grows up enough to get any kind of job, that’s another host of headaches. And if this woman can’t get a job in whatever field she has chosen, she will feel doubly dumb, insecure, and inadequate. All of this creates a series of unnecessary frictions and fights. Which will stop you from fucking.

  I’m just trying to clear the path for you to fuck. If I had to take out all the “Don’ts” and pare it down to one simple “Do,” it would be “Date your equal.” And that includes financial economics as well as emotional considerations. She doesn’t need to make the same kind of money as you do, or even be in the same ballpark—but she should feel that she can survive and be on her own independent path, without your economic subsistence.

  5. Don’t date someone much younger or older than you. (Seven years max in either direction, please.)

  I don’t care about age, per se. Maybe you don’t either. It’s enough that you obey the statutory laws of the land. Maybe you’re aroused by wrinkles; that’s fine, too. But here is a cautionary tale about dating people beyond this seven-year span: you are always going to be in a different phase of life than she is.

  I have a twenty-six-year-old friend; let’s call him Jason. No, wait, he’s young, so let’s call him Jax. Jax, with his cute, off-white canvas tennis shoes and stripey shirts, started dating an eighteen-year-old. (This breaks the rule only slightly; just eight years younger instead of seven.) He thought this was super sexy at the time. I thought he was acting like a teenage fuck pig; barely legal, but shockingly, it worked! This couple, whom I wound up adoring, dated for five happy years.