No Shirt, No Shoes...No Problem!

by Jeff Foxworthy

  Dex just grunted.

  “You know what might be interesting?” I continued. “Ask Gary what he did last night.”

  Gary punched me around the side of the seat. Dex just kept driving. I couldn’t let it go. “Remember your dream girl, your one-and-only, your true love forever?”

  Dex thought about it for a minute. “Yeah,” he said. “She’s visiting my sister.”

  “Well Gary did her on the coffee table last night.”

  “NOOOOOO!!!!” Dex swerved the car into a ditch.

  “Sure,” I continued. “When I looked in the living room, I thought I was watching a naked rodeo.”

  “NOOOO!!!!”

  I know it might seem like I did a cruel thing, but I had to. Gary was never going to mention it, and I had Dex in such a vulnerable position that I felt obligated to destroy him. It was the guy thing to do. Besides, Gary had too much history with Dex to break his heart that way. Aren’t men odd? You can ruin a man’s dream, as long as you don’t talk about it to his face.

  Dex being Dex, he got over it.

  While we’re on the subject of women here’s a classic story I’ve been dying to tell for a couple chapters already. Now that we’re all grown-up, I think this is finally the place.

  I was with another friend of mine, Wally Pace, at the Monday Night Football Game, watching the Falcons play the Rams at Fulton County Stadium. We were drinking boilermakers at the food concourse with some of my coworkers from Kroger. We quickly got as drunk as coots, sang beer songs, and leered at the local scenery. Then a woman in a green dress walked by. Wally said, “Hey! Do you believe in love at first sight?” She turned around and kind of laughed, and said, “I don’t know.” Wally stood up, wobbled over to her, and kissed her!

  When they finally quit kissing he said, “Do you think it’s love or lust.”

  She laughed again and said, “I don’t know.”

  He said, “Do you want to go in the parking lot and find out?”

  She said, “Why not?”

  And they took off, leaving us to stand there with boilermakers in our hands, and our mouths hanging wide open. I know we all had the same thought: “This does not happen to anybody.”

  Halfway through the fourth quarter we saw little drunk Wally at the bottom of the steps, trying to find our seats. He ran up. Eddie Harlen said, “You didn’t do it.” Wally made Eddie smell the perfume on his shirt and elsewhere, and said, “Tell me I didn’t do it!”

  According to Pace the story went something like this: “We walked out of the stadium and I’m thinking, Where am I gonna do this? At first we thought about doing it on the grass outside but figured no, we’ll surely get caught. Then I saw a bus driver sitting in his bus with the door open. She walked in front of me and over her head I waved at him, and signaled: ‘Me, her, boom-boom-boom, your bus?’ and the driver waved us over.

  “But then I realize it might be too kinky and the guy would want to watch. So I ended up leaning her against the ladder of a Winnebago and we did it right there in the parking lot. When we finished, I said, ‘What are you doing the rest of the night?’ and she said, ‘I really have to get back. I just went to buy my boyfriend a beer.’”

  Ladies and gentleman: Casanova Wally Pace.

  Single people have the best sex stories, even if they have girlfriends or boyfriends. I know one guy who told me he had scored just because he wanted to shoot some ducks. He had walked down to the lake with a young lady and when he suggested blasting a few water fowl she became horrified and said, “You’re not going to shoot no ducks.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re just not.”

  He thought about that for a minute. “Hmm. What’s it worth to you for me not to shoot them?” he said to her.

  Just like a guy, isn’t it? She said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Let’s go into my trailer and find out.” Turns out it was worth quite a bit. Trailer park guys have all the luck. Later at dinner, he suddenly said, “Mmm. Ya know what? I feel like shooting some ducks.”

  “No, you aren’t,” his girlfriend said.

  “Really, I want to.”

  “I said no.”

  They went outside to his car to argue. You know what? She somehow convinced him to be kind to animals after all.

  Now you realize why we know that single people have the best sex stories. Because they share them with everybody. They slop on the intimate details. I didn’t ask to hear this last story, but the guy couldn’t help it. We all know these people. We see them in the break room at work. They always have a crowd gathered around. “So there I was, tied to the Black & Decker Workmate when she brings out the Shop Vac that cleans both wet and dry. Next night we did it with motor oil smeared all over our bodies. I also love it when she comes into the bedroom with a saddle and a set of jumper cables.”

  Married people just can’t compete with this. What are we going to come back with? “You know, last night Marge vacuumed in her good robe. When she bent down to get underneath the sofa, I saw her butt. I started to get excited until I realized I could watch Hoss on Bonanza anytime!”

  Married sex doesn’t quite hold up, does it?

  One problem with roommates is that they’re always borrowing your stuff. Clothes, food, women. Dex used to borrow my car. His was a piece of crap. He called it Bob, for Beast of Burden. You could hear Bob coming eight blocks away, ten minutes before Dex got home. I had a Datsun 240Z. I’d wake up and there’d be a note that read, “Jeff. Took the car. If the police call, just report it stolen.” I would never know how long he’d had it.

  One night Dex loaned Bob to some friends and they called us at two in the morning and said, “Dex, your car has broken down in the middle of the road and we can’t move it. What should we do?” We were too wasted to move. I took the phone away from him and said, “You do not understand: We cannot leave the house.” They said, “Well, we’re just going to leave the car in the middle of the road.”

  “Do what you have to do,” I said. “If we get in my car to come over there, we will never get out of jail again.”

  We got Bob back the next day, but he wasn’t long for the road. One night Bob broke down again on the soft shoulder. Dex said it needed water. I scampered down the hillside with empty beer bottles and found water in a ditch, in the dark. We kept filling up the beer bottles and pouring them into Bob. After about fifteen trips we decided to crank the engine. Bob went “pffflt” and died. About that time someone stopped by with a flashlight and shined it in Bob’s radiator and we discovered it was full of tadpoles. We left Bob there and never went back to get him.

  RIP, Bob.

  One day, just like Bob’s demise, the roommate experience is over. You move on. Maybe it’s to a place of your own, or your own room back at the folks’, or if you’re lucky, you meet the significant other of your dreams. That’s what happened to me. I met Gregg.

  I was wild in my single days, but I think that’s okay. I can’t apologize for trying to milk everything there is out of life. I had to go through, not around, the experience of trying it all. But one day I realized that my wallet and my back and my heart couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t continue to do all the stuff my parents told me never to do—because it was fun—and remain employed and a viable member of society.

  I didn’t actually think that clearly at the time. I worked pretty much on pure instinct. Let’s just say I knew that if I didn’t sow the wild oats and flush the tadpoles out of my system, then I might one day break down and be left on the roadside after giving in to the temptation to try that stuff under inappropriate circumstances, like when I was married with children.

  I knew it was time to grow up.

  From This Day Forth…

  The whole time I worked in Sarasota I nagged IBM to transfer me back to Atlanta. I missed my family, I missed the great state of Georgia, and for some reason I couldn’t get a date if my life depended on it. They finally broke down and sent me home in April 1984. The following month my buddies threw
me a “Welcome Home” party. I spent much of the evening on the balcony, drinking beer, telling stories, and making people laugh. Finally, Rob Burkett, who also worked at IBM, said, “Have you ever thought about going onstage at the comedy club? We go down there all the time.”

  I said, “No, I’ve never even been in a comedy club.”

  “Well, go with me next week and watch.”

  The next Tuesday I sat through the agony and the ecstasy of amateur night. Afterward I said, “Okay, I’ll try that.” Compared to shooting doves at the airport and jumping off a moving truck onto a hay bale at forty miles an hour, five minutes on a stage seemed unlikely to get me into much trouble or cause great pain.

  At home I wrote some material about my family. One bit was about Big Jim’s toenails, and how toenails change as you age. Another joke was: “When people celebrate a football win they tear down the goalposts and carry them over their heads. Life doesn’t really work like that, does it. When you sleep with someone for the first time, do you tear off the headboard and run around the apartment complex? I have, however, spiked a couple of pair of panties.”

  Horrible stuff, but I did it for Rob and my brother. They laughed loudly enough that I decided to take the next step. I’d risk my reputation as a funny guy in the IBM break room and repeat my routine in front of total strangers who didn’t give a damn about me because all they wanted was more to drink and for the headliner to come out and make them laugh. There was only one problem. When we called the Punchline to get a spot on amateur night they told us it was temporarily canceled for the summer because for the next twelve weeks the club was hosting the prelims for the Great Southeastern Laugh Off.

  “Wait a few months,” they suggested. However, we were extremely fired up, so Rob got everybody he worked with to call the Punchline and ask, “Is Jeff Foxworthy going to be on next Tuesday?”

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “If so we’d like to bring forty people.” It was a total bluff. You’d think comedy clubs would have caught on by now. But by the time they got the fiftieth phone call the club owners had probably decided that they couldn’t take the chance that it was a hoax; they had to think instead about paid admissions and big liquor sales. So the people at the Punchline said, “Yeah, he’s gonna be on.” No one went down except Rob and me, but I did get my spot—on last—in a contest that was really only for working comedians.

  That night was the only time in my career I’ve needed a drink to perform. Four Seven & Seven’s did the trick. I was still so nervous I could not look at anybody, so I stared at the floor instead. My first words before paying customers were: “I am a virgin comedian. This is my first time.”

  I won my night, eventually made it to the semifinals, and came in fifth overall. They only took four finalists and I’d missed it by half a point. My mistake? My set went too long.

  That first time I was thrilled because I had actually gotten laughs. Without laughs there never would have been a second time, I promise you. However, figuring that my first five minutes had worked, I brimmed with confidence and wrote a new five minutes. Then I went on at another local club, Jerry Farber’s. Rob went with me and this time brought people. I went totally down the toilet.

  Even so, I knew I had found my calling.

  A new career would have been enough, but the night was still young. I didn’t know it, but my future wife was in the audience that first night at the Punchline. We didn’t know each other. I don’t remember this, but she later told me she came up and said “Congratulations.” Gregg thought the “virgin” routine was just part of my act and that I was a working comic from Florida. When she got to know me better, she also told me she thought I was a snob because all I did that night was say to her, “Oh, thanks,” and turn away. The truth is that I was a nervous wreck. If I’d known better I would have paid more attention at the time. Anyone who reads women’s magazines like I do (a man’s got to take something up in the tree to pass the time) will know that they’re full of articles insisting that what women want first and foremost in a man is a sense of humor. Take some advice from a guy who’s never had any trouble making people laugh: This can’t be true. Every woman in the world could say “sense of humor” until the cows come home, but you never see women throwing their panties onstage at a comedy club. Except in those rare circumstances, like when you have a top-ten-rated TV show or you’re the last man on the planet, comics don’t have groupies.

  Fortunately, Gregg also told a friend she thought I was cute. Unfortunately, I only learned this after three years of marriage, during a fight about whose family was crazier, when she took it back.

  We met again a few months later when the friend who’d taken her to the club the first time decided to go onstage on amateur night at the Punchline herself, and she talked Gregg into being her audience. At first Gregg said, “I don’t know if I want to go,” but her friend said, “Well, Jeff Foxworthy’s going to be there.” (Said it provocatively, you understand.) So Gregg said, “Okay, I’ll go.” God bless her for being willing to give me another chance.

  After the show we were formally introduced.

  I remember trying to be cool because in the intervening months I had gained a little stature as one of the better amateur comics in Atlanta. (I was definitely funnier than the other two.) I recall exactly what she was wearing: tan pants and a little zigzag sweater over a white shirt. The sweater had no sleeves. I’d like to credit my romantic personality for remembering her outfit, but honestly, it’s because I walked up and immediately spilled my drink down the front of her pants and sweater. After fumbling the kick off, so to speak, I was ready to forfeit the game.

  “Well, I guess this means you’ll never go out with me,” I said.

  She said, “You haven’t even asked.”

  Time to throw the long bomb.

  “Okay, will you go out with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Touchdown!

  Boy, was I smiling on the outside. Inside I knew I was a dog. Not two days earlier I had returned from a weekend with a woman at a cabin in the South Carolina mountains. But once I met Gregg I forgot all about anyone else. I disappeared on this woman and never called her back. I imagine, as just retribution, that she’s never written me a letter saying she’s my biggest fan. She probably thinks I’m the scum of the earth.

  Gregg and I spent the rest of the evening standing at the bar, talking. I discovered that Gregg was an actress who had just played the lead in a movie called Ocean Drive Weekend. She also did local commercials. I thought she was big-time show business, which didn’t make her less interesting at all. However, it’s good that besides wanting to hitch my wagon to a star, Gregg had other great qualities. I’ve always liked brunettes. I’ve always liked small women. I like them with spit and fire. She had all three.

  Finally the lights came up and it was time for everyone to go home. Gregg and I had already planned to go out later that week, but as I said good-bye, I did something that I’d never done before without at least a date under my belt. I kissed her goodnight. This was not a little peck. I kissed her very well, which, in my book, involves cutting and shampooing my mustache, exercising my lips for ten to twenty seconds to warm up, and, if I’m in a really sexy mood, applying a little lip gloss and peach slicker.

  Gregg later told me she’d never kissed a guy so soon before, either. I said that was nice, and that I’d never kissed a guy at all, even if I’d known him for years, and I hoped it wouldn’t jeopardize our getting to know each other better. Now that I think about it, our first kiss was like that moment in Annie Hall when Woody Allen smooches Diane Keaton to “get it out of the way” before they get all tense about it at the end of their date. I’m no short, neurotic, brilliantly funny, New York comedian who ponders the ineffability of love and death and questions the nature of existence, but otherwise I like to think that I’m a lot like Mr. Allen.

  “If you think challah is what you do when a tractor runs over your foot…you might be a Redneck.”<
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  As I was saying, I’m surprised that Gregg and I kissed. Watching a couple make out in public is not a pretty sight. I always think, “Oh my. Geez. I’m trying to keep some nachos down. Would you guys knock it off?” Stranger still, we’d both recently ended unsatisfying relationships and didn’t want to get involved so soon again.

  That was a Tuesday.

  “Don’t want to rush into anything,” we both said.

  The Saturday we went out Gregg had, coincidentally, just moved in with one of her best girlfriends, in Marietta, Georgia. I drove down to pick her up. While I waited in the living room for Gregg to get ready, her roommate said, “You’re gonna be smitten.” She didn’t even know me, but she seemed sure that it would happen.

  I took Gregg to a party. Sixty people were crammed into a little house. We walked in, grabbed two beers, and went directly to a bench on the back porch where, beyond the loud music, we sat and talked for hours. We were oblivious to everyone and everything, although we did stop talking for a moment to watch a woman dancing by herself in the corner.

  “Hey, it’s only 8:30 and Peggy’s dancing by herself,” I said. “That shirt’s coming off tonight, I guarantee it.”

  Gregg looked at me like I was some kind of cretin.

  “Just part of the act. Just the act, I promise.”

  Then we got lost in each other.

  Three hours later we realized it was three hours later. I know this sounds stupid, but honestly, all I remember is that at some point early in the conversation I looked at Gregg and thought, “I’m gonna marry this girl.” She must have been thinking about forever, too, because that’s when she said, “Honey, would you mind getting me another beer?”

  It was all I could do to not blurt out, “Will you marry me?” right there.

  On the way back to Gregg’s I decided that I would be a perfect gentleman at the door because I didn’t want to screw up my long-term possibilities. No way did I want her thinking, “Oh gee, we get to the door and he starts pawing me like a cougar.” I wasn’t going to do any leaning in on the leg. None of the poodle-on-the-living-room-floor stuff.