No Shirt, No Shoes...No Problem!

by Jeff Foxworthy

  “You want to do it?”

  “Oh, God, it’s so hot, I couldn’t possibly do it.”

  “You want to do it?”

  “Oh, God, it’s too cold.” The trick is to lie and say, “Okay, we’ll stay under the covers.” After you get started you can whip them off.

  “You oughta be warm by now! Yee-hah!”

  5. Physical problems. Has the missus had any significant aches or pains in the last thirty minutes? If she’s free and clear, make your move. The longer you wait the higher the odds against you. This is purely a gender thing. Guys could cut their knee off with a chain saw and before they go to the hospital if the wife said, “You want to do it?” they’d say, “Okay, we’ll put a towel around it. Could somebody hold the ambulance?”

  6. What she’s wearing. Check what the little woman’s wearing to bed. If it’s something she can rake leaves in, you’re out of luck. Or in for the kinkiest night of your life.

  Oh, by the way, no shirt, no shoes, no problem.

  If you’ve made it this far, sorry—there’s still a way to go. Once you’ve mastered these basic issues, you simply get to move on to more complicated ones.

  7. Cycles. According to medical science, guys get interested in sex roughly every ninety minutes. And we talk about it for the other eighty-seven. This even happens when we’re asleep. Sometimes you wake up right in the middle of a dream about you and the latest Playboy Playmate and you want to do it. Unfortunately, not many women want their men rousing them from REM sleep expecting something he didn’t make reservations for two days in advance. I don’t understand that. I’d even accept, “Okay, but try not to wake me.”

  8. Sex and food. The adage that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach is generally true. If my wife wants her way with me she fixes me something I like to eat. But you’ve got to be careful not to overeat. Sex is not a good idea after eating. There’s nothing worse than sleeping on a full stomach, especially hers. Big Jim told me that nothing kills passion quicker than a distended belly. Big Jim says you can do it if you’ve had too much to drink, you can do it you’ve had too little sleep. But you cannot do it on a full stomach, unless it’s yours and then you want to be on top.

  9. What’s on TV? Be careful what you watch on TV as your foreplay. The story about the kid whose parents died and left him in an alley where he raised himself and survived by eating from a dumpster is not going to help. It can’t be anything tearful. Stay away from 20/20 and Nightline and any infomercial featuring exercise equipment, chatty Aussies, or motivational demigods. You don’t want your woman motivated to exercise and run away with Mel Gibson.

  10. Watch the clock. Depending on how much sleep your partner has had during the week, you could still get the arched eyebrow at 12:10. Or it could already be too late at 9:40.

  “I thought we were going to do it tonight.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s 9:40! For God’s sakes, ER’s not on yet! We could do it and still watch ER.”

  11. Real foreplay. The most important thing to remember about sex after marriage is that you have to warm up your woman. (The second most important thing is afterplay. Any intelligent man knows it greases the way for the next time.) With the spontaneity of single life gone, women became hard machines to start. Everybody’s had a lawn mower they couldn’t kick over. You add gas, check the oil, and pull the choke, and still nothing. It should run better. Maybe it would if you used it more than twice a month when the grass grows, and let it idle once a week in the winter. If men were lawnmowers they might look like crap but they’d start up on the first pull and run until the last drop of gas got sucked into the carburetor.

  Tell you a little secret. Men always say they long for a woman who starts up like a man, but I think most of us would get bored if it was too easy. We might kick and scream and insist we wouldn’t, but it’s true. A good analogy is the thrill of fishing. If every time you threw in your line you instantly caught a fish and pulled it out, fishing wouldn’t be very much fun, would it? You’ve got to put on the right bait, deliver the line smoothly, retrieve it with finesse. Then when you get one, you’re proud. “Man, I must be pretty cool. I got a fish.”

  Now, coincidentally, you know why women aren’t big fisherman. They toss out their line and men always take the bait. Doesn’t matter what she looks like, a woman can always get some guy interested. (Yes, I know. A woman’s reason for fishing is not the same as a man’s. Women actually have to like the fish.) That, my friends, is why women make a game out of sex. They know they can get it anytime. They’ve always known it. It’s in some book they all get when they’re born, I’m sure.

  Another reason men don’t really want a woman who is overly eager is that we’re so insecure that we’re always thinking, “If I can start her up so quick then what is she doing while I’m at work?” Men like to think they’re the only ones with the keys to the machine. Men have good reason to be insecure. Haven’t you woken up in the morning and done it before either of you have brushed your teeth? Then you walk into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and think your hair looks like frame 237 of the Zapruder film. Plus, you’re breath is horrible, you’ve got gunk in the corner of your eye, and a little trace of drool down your chin. You think, “My God, if my woman would do it with this, she will do it with anybody.”

  And if she wanted to, you can’t stop her. Women have all the power. Men have none. They’re like Caesar’s wife at the gladiator show in the Coliseum. Do one thing wrong and it’s thumbs-down.

  12. Be romantic. The old cliché is that women give sex to get love and men give love to get sex. So what else is new? Men are not, by nature, romantic creatures. But I think we discovered early on in the game that if you don’t learn how to be romantic, you’re not going to win very often. So we shamble and ask, “What is romance?” Too bad we don’t like the answers: “Comb my hair nice? Put down the remote control? What if I spray-paint your name on the side of the house? I don’t give a damn about the neighbors. I want to tell the whole world how I feel about you.”

  If only we could. In the end we’re like circus bears. We need to be trained to do what we must to get the reward at the end of the act.

  You know what? We gladly do it.

  Since the night I first told Gregg I loved her, I’ve not gone a single day without saying it, and meaning it. Each day I also remind her that she’s the prettiest girl in the whole world. One more thing: Because ours is the greatest love story known to man, in the twelve years since we met I have never, ever farted in front of my wife. Take me on a camping trip and I can clear out a pup tent pretty quick. But never in front of Gregg.

  Maybe I’m not such a Redneck after all.

  …Till Death Do Us Part

  You know you’re married when you’re lying in bed with somebody and you suddenly think, “Uh oh, I’ve got to go home, my wife’s waiting on me.”

  Never happened to me, of course.

  I walked into my marriage with my eyes open and have never regretted it. Never fooled around and never wanted to. But once or twice, I’ve had those moments where I suddenly realized I was married—as if I could ever forget—and wondered how I’d gotten there. The first time that happened, I made an important discovery that you can only make after you’re married: The person you were dating who said “I wouldn’t change anything about you” was lying.

  It’s not just a female trait.

  But it’s mostly a female trait.

  No wonder marriage is a big decision: It’s the choice between the freedom to live as you please or with someone else’s relentless analysis of your shortcomings.

  Have you ever heard women in the supermarket checkout line talk about what their men were like before they met them? It’s almost as if they’d captured and tamed wild animals.

  “First time I saw Tom, he was naked on the side of the road, eating roots and kudzu with his bare hands. I took him home, taught him how to wear a shirt and eat with a spoon, and later we got him
a job. Still eats roots. If you don’t watch him like a hawk, he’ll pull his clothes off and go out in the backyard and start digging around the trees.”

  Among women, the things they’ve gotten their husbands to do are a badge of honor. “Since he met me, Narvel takes a shower every Saturday, whether he needs it or not.” This is usually the prelude to the conversation about the stuff their husbands still won’t do. “Then I said, ‘How about if we get naked in the satellite dish?’ But I don’t think he heard me over the football scores.”

  Women are shameless. Sometimes just for fun, and right out in public, they’ll compete with other women they don’t even know, over whose husband most embraced and abused the notion of bachelor living.

  “Before we got married, Ed’s refrigerator had a potato inside that was alive. I had to kill it.”

  “Oh yeah? I donated the mold on Randy’s shower curtain to the CDC. They took one look at it under a microscope and found a cure for jock itch.”

  “Earl slept with the light on.”

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  “Every morning he couldn’t figure out why the car wouldn’t start.”

  When I see this happen, I have to laugh softly to myself. Any man would because we’re all thinking the same thing: “Yeah? So what? You slept with me. What does that say about you?”

  Most women are obsessed with clothes. I don’t mean their clothes. (This book would be twice as long if I wrote about that subject.) When a woman wants to change a man, she often begins with his wardrobe. The whole time you’re dating she never says anything when you wear hip waders to the covered dish Christmas dinner. She thinks it’s cute. But women are sneaky. Once you’re sharing a bedroom and closet, she will get rid of your clothes when you’re not looking. All of a sudden there’s so many bags of stuff marked “charity” that the Salvation Army pulls up in an eighteen-wheeler. I once came home from the road and discovered that Gregg had done me “a favor” and “cleaned out” my closet. I immediately ripped through the boxes she’d piled in the hall.

  “You can’t get rid of this shirt!” I said.

  “But it’s out of style.”

  “Out of style? Are you kidding me? When I watched Bewitched last night Darren had on one just like it. That’s not out of style!”

  Men aren’t stupid. We know it’s out of style. We’re just waiting for it to come back.

  What’s even worse is that if your wife spends any time going through your things, your clothes start to smell like her perfume. Then you can’t wear anything because your friends will give you a hard time.

  “You smell nice, Jeff. New fabric softener? Haw, haw.”

  This is one reason why it’s always a good idea to keep your hunting clothes in the garage, ready for an emergency.

  Heaven forbid that I would ever go into Gregg’s closet and do her a favor. I wouldn’t dare think about it because (a) I’m too lazy to do it, and (b) I just wouldn’t dare.

  I might fool around in her closet, though. I’ve cleaned out her underwear drawer occasionally and put everything back where I found it. (Never a problem. As you know, I graduated from Big Jim’s College of Leaving It Like You Found It.) I also check to see what new accessories she’s bought. I keep hoping to find something frilly and exciting, but it pretty much comes down to belts and shoes. I’ve got three belts and three pairs of shoes. She’s got 700 belts. I’m still counting the shoes.

  Women have too much choice. Any time we dress to go out with friends she says, “I can’t wear that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wore it six months ago. The last time we saw these people.”

  “So? How are they going to know?” I can’t tell you what I wore yesterday.”

  When women go out, they come home and talk about what other women wore. “Did you see the Jaclyn Smith skirt Darlene had on? I know I saw it last week on the K Mart closeout table.” Never do you see two guys leaving the bowling alley at the end of the evening going, “Did you see the shirt Fred was wearing? Oh my God. And those pants, they had to be from last year. Come on Fred, show some fashion sense, for God’s sake.”

  Women also try to get you to cut your hair a different way, and to care for it with their girly conditioners. Why they think it’s a waste of perfectly good automotive products to use transmission fluid to keep a pompadour set is beyond me. Besides, it gives your hair an Elvis-like sheen.

  Guys don’t want to change a lot about women. Guys just like consistency. They want more food, less nagging, and more sex. As regularly as possible. Otherwise, men are pretty flexible. If a woman suddenly stopped her share of the housekeeping duties and the dishes piled up in the sink, a guy would think, “Oh, we’ve chosen a new lifestyle. Okay, I can do this. I’ve done this before when I lived with Boomer.”

  One thing we don’t want is a lot of questions. For instance, “What are you thinking?” When two guys ride together in a truck, never does one turn to the other and go, “Chuck, whatcha thinking?” Ask a woman what she’s thinking and it’s either about your shortcomings or about food. You’ve got to feed them regularly to keep them out of a bad mood because that’s when they start thinking about what’s wrong with you. (Everything in a woman’s universe is connected, Buddha buddy.) I don’t know how often my wife and I have been on the road together and she’s said, “If I don’t eat soon, I’m going to get a headache.” I’ve ridden a billion miles with guys and I have never heard a man say, “God, if I don’t eat soon, I’m gonna be hell to live with. Scratch the hell out of the dashboard, I’ll tell you that. I don’t want to get pissy, but I need fries.”

  I don’t know what women want. We married them, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. I think they’d rather have great-looking shoes that are comfortable. Eyeliner that doesn’t run. And jewelry. I hear you can never go wrong at the jewelry well.

  My wife doesn’t deny it, but I get the feeling that even if she had all that it still wouldn’t be sufficient.

  “I just want you to show me some attention,” she always says.

  “Sure thing, sugar dumpling,” I always answer. “At halftime.”

  One satisfying aspect of marriage is attending your friends’ weddings and trying not to fall on the floor laughing because they have no idea what married life will be like. Just because they’d lived together since they were brother and sister doesn’t mean a thing. You’ll also laugh at yourselves because you know that no matter how hard you try, there’s no way to explain it to them.

  Even so, weddings typically offer the best entertainment value for your community property dollar. I remember when my friend Jimmy got married. I was one of six groomsmen. We decided right before we arrived at the church that we were going to convince Jimmy that he had a cliff-hanger; in other words, something in his nose. Jimmy came out and stood near the altar. As each of us walked down the aisle to join him, we’d point discreetly to our noses. Jimmy spent his entire wedding picking at his nose. He would look over at us like, “Did I get it?” We’d look back and silently mouth, “Nah, you didn’t get it.” The whole thing is on video. I can get you a copy.

  Once or twice I’ve wondered what it would be like to be a woman. I think I’d probably get kicked out of public places for playing with my breasts a lot. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to stop fondling yourself in front of the other diners.”

  Seriously, I would love to sit around with women and talk to them as a woman and find out what they really want from men. Guys are totally clueless. But even if I discovered the secret, changed back to a man, and told my friends, they probably wouldn’t believe me.

  “Nah, Jeff. It couldn’t be that. You musta heard it wrong.”

  Things change slowly, as Don Henley once sang on the Eagles’ Long Run album, “if they ever change at all.” So it is with couples. It’s only when spouses accept that they can’t really change each other that the mature marriage becomes possible. With the pressure gone to be someone else, each of you gets to relax and be who you are.
There are risks, however. The shock of realizing who your husband or wife really is could make you feel as if you just fell into a mountain brook in the middle of winter. You’ll instantly go numb and just want to get out as soon as possible. Or with nothing left to nag each other about, the energy that also kept the marriage together might evaporate and the whole thing could come apart like your intestines during a bad bout of Montezuma’s revenge. Then it’s adios amoebas.

  By the way, if you ever break up with someone, destroy all the cards and letters they ever gave you. If you don’t, no matter where they are hidden or how ancient—the sender could be dead twenty years—your next spouse will find them. “So, you carried Gloria’s books to school, you never carried mine…”

  But it’s not all bad news.

  Some couples understand the nature of marriage. They know that a relationship requires two people: One to run into the grocery store, and one to sit in the car, look at the time and say, “Oh for crying out loud! You said three items. Let’s go!!

  See? Some couples can accept and understand what’s really important to their partners. They learn how to compromise. For instance, when a friend of mine realized how much it bugged his wife when he left his underwear on the living room floor, he took it off in the kitchen instead.

  That’s what I call respect.

  Arguing is a lot more fun when you’re married.

  Lots of things can start an argument. A question like, “Are you going to wear your hair like that?” is pretty much the start of a crappy evening for everyone.

  A lot of fights begin with the phrase “What’s wrong?!”

  “Nothing!”

  “You set the cat on fire! Don’t tell me nothing!”

  This is also why most fishing trips began with the phrase “I have had about enough of this shit.”

  When you’re single and you argue, once you’re through running each other into the ground there is nothing else to fight about. When you’re married, once you get through trashing your partner you can bring a family member into it. No matter how bad you’re losing, slamming a relative will turn everything around. You need never lose a fight again.