by Dave Barry
But although I can’t define exactly what it means to be a guy, I can describe certain guy characteristics, such as:
GUYS LIKE NEAT STUFF.
By “neat,” I mean “mechanical and unnecessarily complex.” I’ll give you an example. Right now I’m typing these words on an extremely powerful computer. It’s the latest in a line of maybe ten computers I’ve owned, each one more powerful than the last. My computer is chock-full of RAM and ROM and bytes and megahertzes and various other items that enable a computer to kick data-processing butt. It is probably capable of supervising the entire U.S. air-defense apparatus while simultaneously processing the tax return of every resident of Ohio. I use it mainly to write a newspaper column. This is an activity wherein I sit and stare at the screen for maybe ten minutes, then, using only my forefingers, slowly type something like:
Henry Kissinger looks like a big wart.
I stare at this for another ten minutes, have an inspiration, then amplify the original thought as follows:
Henry Kissinger looks like a big fat wart.
Then I stare at that for another ten minutes, pondering whether I should try to work in the concept of “hairy.”
This is absurdly simple work for my computer. It sits there, humming impatiently, bored to death, passing the time between keystrokes via brain-teaser activities such as developing a Unified Field Theory of the universe and translating the complete works of Shakespeare into rap.2
In other words, this computer is absurdly overqualified to work for me, and yet soon, I guarantee, I will buy an even more powerful one. I won’t be able to stop myself. I’ll claim3 that I need the new computer, but the truth is that I just want it. If there’s a reason why I can’t buy a computer for myself—say I’ve had my current one for less than a week—I’ll try to talk my wife, Beth, an editor who can use the same computer for years, into getting a new one.
“Why?” she’ll say. “Mine works fine.”
Beth doesn’t care about RAM or ROM.
Probably the ultimate example of the fundamental guy drive to have neat stuff is the Space Shuttle. Granted, the guys in charge of this program claim it has a Higher Scientific Purpose, namely to see how humans function in space. But of course we have known for years how humans function in space: They float around and say things like: “Looks real good, Houston!”
No, the real reason for the existence of the Space Shuttle is that it is one humongous and spectacularly gizmo-intensive item of hardware. Guys can tinker with it practically forever, and occasionally even get it to work, and use it to place other complex mechanical items into orbit, where they almost immediately break, which provides a great excuse to send the Space Shuttle up again. It’s Guy Heaven.
Other results of the guy need to have stuff are Star Wars, the recreational boating industry, monorails, nuclear weapons, and wristwatches that indicate the phase of the moon. I am not saying that women have not been involved in the development or use of this stuff. I’m saying that, without guys, this stuff probably would not exist; just as, without women, virtually every piece of furniture in the world would still be in its original position. Guys do not have a basic need to rearrange furniture. Whereas my wife, Beth, who happens to be a woman and who, as noted, would cheerfully use the same computer for fifty-three years, rearranges our furniture on almost a weekly basis, sometimes in the dead of night. She’ll be sound asleep in bed, and suddenly, at 2 a.m., she’ll be awakened by the urgent thought: The blue-green sofa needs to go perpendicular to the wall instead of parallel, and it needs to go there RIGHT NOW. So she’ll get up and move it, which of course necessitates moving other furniture, and soon she has rearranged our entire living room, shifting great big heavy pieces that ordinarily would require several burly men to lift, because there are few forces in Nature more powerful than a woman who needs to rearrange furniture. It would not surprise me to wake up one morning and find that we lived in an entirely different house.
(I realize that I’m making gender-based generalizations here, but my feeling is that if God did not want us to make gender-based generalizations, She would not have given us genders.)
GUYS LIKE A REALLY POINTLESS CHALLENGE.
Not long ago I was sitting in my office at the Miami Herald’s Sunday magazine, Tropic, reading my fan mail4, when I heard several of my guy co-workers in the hallway talking about how fast they could run the forty-yard dash. These are guys in their thirties and forties who work in journalism, where the most demanding physical requirement is the ability to digest vending-machine food. In other words, these guys have absolutely no need to run the forty-yard dash.
But one of them, Mike Wilson, was writing a story about a star high-school football player who could run it in 4.38 seconds. Now if Mike had written a story about, say, a star high-school poet, none of my guy co-workers would have suddenly decided to find out how well they could write sonnets. But when Mike turned in his story, they became deeply concerned about how fast they could run the forty-yard dash. They were so concerned that the magazine’s editor, Tom Shroder, decided that they should get a stopwatch and go out to a nearby park and find out. Which they did, a bunch of guys taking off their shoes and running around barefoot in a public park on company time.
This is what I heard them talking about, out in the hall. I heard Tom, who was thirty-eight years old, saying that his time in the forty had been 5.75 seconds. And I thought to myself: “This is ridiculous. These are middle-aged guys, supposedly adults, and they’re out there bragging about their performance in this stupid, juvenile footrace.” Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I could beat 5.75 seconds.”
So we went out to the park and measured off forty yards, and the guys told me that I had three chances to make my best time. On the first try my time was 5.78 seconds, just three-hundredths of a second slower than Tom’s, even though, at forty-five, I was seven years older than he. So I just knew I’d beat him on the second attempt if I ran really, really hard, which I did for a solid ten yards, at which point my left hamstring muscle, which had not yet shifted into Sprint Mode from Mail-Reading Mode, went, and I quote, “pop.”
I had to be helped off the field. I was in considerable pain, and I was obviously not going to be able to walk right for weeks. I felt pretty stupid. Fortunately, Beth was sympathetic.
“You idiot“ she sympathized. “What on earth did you think was going to happen? You’re forty-five years old! You didn’t even warm up!”
She didn’t understand. But the guys in my office did, especially Tom, who took the time to call me at home, where I was sitting with an ice pack on my leg and twenty-three Advil in my bloodstream, so he could express his concern.
“Just remember,” he said. “You didn’t beat my time.”
There are countless other examples of guys rising to meet pointless challenges. Virtually all sports fall into this category, as well as a large part of U.S. foreign policy. (“I’ll bet you can’t capture Manuel Noriega!” “Oh YEAH??”)
GUYS DO NOT HAVE A RIGID AND WELL-DEFINED MORAL CODE.
This is not the same as saying that guys are bad. Guys are capable of doing bad things, but this generally happens when they try to be Men and start becoming manly and aggressive and stupid. When they’re being just plain guys, they aren’t so much actively evil as they are lost. Because guys have never really grasped the Basic Human Moral Code, which I believe was invented by women millions of years ago when all the guys were out engaging in some other activity, such as seeing who could burp the loudest. When they came back, there were certain rules that they were expected to follow unless they wanted to get into Big Trouble, and they have been trying to follow these rules ever since, with extremely irregular results. Because guys have never internalized these rules. Guys are similar to my small auxiliary backup dog, Zippy, a guy dog5 who has been told numerous times that he is NOT supposed to (1) get into the kitchen garbage or (2) poop on the floor. He knows that these are the rules, but he
has never really understood why, and sometimes he gets to thinking: Sure, they ordinarily don’t want me getting into the garbage, but obviously this rule is not meant to apply when there are certain extenuating6 circumstances, such as (1) they just threw away some perfectly good seven-week-old Kung Pao Chicken, and (2) they are not home.
And so when we come home, our kitchen floor has been transformed into GarbageFest USA, and Zippy, who usually comes rushing up to greet us, is off in a corner disguised in a wig and sunglasses, hoping to get into the Federal Bad Dog Relocation Program before we discover the scene of the crime.
When we yell at him, he frequently becomes so upset that he poops on the floor.
Morally, most guys are just like Zippy, only taller and usually less hairy. Guys are aware of the rules of moral behavior, but they have trouble keeping these rules in the forefronts of their minds at certain times, especially the present. This is especially true in the area of faithfulness to one’s mate. I realize, of course, that there are countless examples of guys being faithful to their mates until they die, usually as a result of being eaten by their mates immediately following copulation. Guys outside of the spider community, however, do not have a terrific record of faithfulness.
I’m not saying guys are scum. I’m saying that many guys who consider themselves to be committed to their marriages will stray if they are confronted with overwhelming temptation, defined as “virtually any temptation.”
OK, so maybe I am saying guys are scum. But they’re not mean-spirited scum. And few of them—even when they are out of town on business trips, far from their wives, and have a clear-cut opportunity—will poop on the floor.
GUYS ARE NOT GREAT AT COMMUNICATING THEIR INTIMATE FEELINGS, ASSUMING THEY HAVE ANY.
This is an aspect of guyhood that is very frustrating to women in general, and my wife in particular. I’ll be reading the newspaper, and the phone will ring; I’ll answer it, listen for ten minutes, hang up, and resume reading. Finally Beth will say: “Who was that?”
And I’ll say: “Phil Wonkerman’s mom.”
(Phil is an old friend we haven’t heard from in seventeen years.)
And Beth will say, “Well?”
And I’ll say, “Well what?”
And Beth will say, “What did she say?”
And I’ll say, “She said Phil is fine,” making it clear by my tone of voice that, although I do not wish to be rude, I AM trying to read the newspaper here, and I happen to be right in the middle of an important panel of Calvin and Hobbes.
But Beth, ignoring this, will say, “That’s ALL she said?”
And she will not let up. She will continue to ask district-attorney-style questions, forcing me to recount the conversation until she’s satisfied that she has the entire story, which is that Phil just got out of prison after serving a sentence for a murder he committed when he became a drug addict because of the guilt he felt when his wife died in a freak submarine accident while Phil was having an affair with a nun, but now he’s all straightened out and has a good job as a trapeze artist and is almost through with the surgical part of his sex change and recently became happily engaged to marry a prominent member of the Grateful Dead, so in other words he is fine, which is EXACTLY what I told Beth in the first place, but is that enough? No. She wants to hear every single detail.
We have some good friends, Buzz and Libby, whom we see about twice a year. When we get together, Beth and Libby always wind up in a conversation, lasting several days, during which they discuss virtually every significant event that has occurred in their lives and the lives of those they care about, sharing their innermost thoughts, analyzing and probing, inevitably coming to a deeper understanding of each other, and a strengthening of a cherished friendship. Whereas Buzz and I watch the playoffs.
This is not to say Buzz and I don’t share our feelings. Sometimes we get quite emotional.
“That’s not a FOUL??” one of us will say.
Or: “YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT’S NOT A FOUL???”
I don’t mean to suggest that all we talk about is sports. We also discuss, openly and without shame, what kind of pizza we need to order. We have a fine time together, but we don’t have heavy conversations, and sometimes, after the visit is over, I’m surprised to learn—from Beth, who learned it from Libby—that there has recently been some new wrinkle in Buzz’s life, such as that he now has an artificial leg.
(For the record, Buzz does NOT have an artificial leg. At least he didn’t mention anything about it to me.)
I have another good friend, Gene, and one time, when he was going through a major medical development in his life, our families spent a weekend together. During this time Gene and I talked a lot and enjoyed each other’s company immensely, but—this is true—the most intimate personal statement he made to me is that he has reached Level 24 of a video game called “Arkanoid.” He had even seen the Evil Presence, although he refused to tell me what it looks like. We’re very close, but there is a limit.
You may think that my friends and I are Neanderthals, and that a lot of guys are different. This is true. A lot of guys don’t use words at all. They communicate entirely by nonverbal methods, such as sharing bait.
1 Specifically, “asshole.”
2 To be or not? I got to KNOW. Might kill myself by the end of the SHOW.
3 Especially on my federal tax return.
4 Typical fan letter: “Who cuts your hair? Beavers?”
5 We also have a female dog, Earnest, who never breaks the rules.
6 I am taking some liberties here with Zippy’s vocabulary. More likely, in his mind, he uses the term “mitigating.”
This book contains an excerpt from the hardcover edition of Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys by Dave Barry. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the hardcover edition.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1988 by Dave Barry
Illustration copyright © by Jeff MacNelly
Excerpt copyright © 1995 by Dave Barry
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-91406
eISBN: 978-0-307-75882-8
v3.0