by Zack Love
And seconds later Evan was producing the same revolting sounds and noisome odors, as his body discarded much of what he had been feeding it over the last few hours. As Evan sat there, occasionally groaning to ease the process and trying to ignore the bustle and babble of a fast growing toilet queue, he decided that his next move after the bathroom was to survey the club for Delilah Nakova. Now that he knew what to say to her, he would figure out some way to break through the large entourage around her so that he could talk to her.
But just as he thought he was finished with his bathroom business, another embarrassingly loud volley of farts and their solid accompaniments was emitted from below him, followed by a sigh of relief that he couldn’t contain. In immediate response to what he had just thunderously accomplished, the large crowd in line erupted into a series of giggles and outbursts like “nasty!” and “ewww!” and Evan felt quite mortified at the fact that he now had a rather large and responsive audience.
Eager to escape the scene, Evan quickly finished up, wiped, flushed, and opened the stall door, only to find Delilah Nakova standing right in front of him, waiting to use his stall. She was looking right at him as he exited the stall, and all around her were the members of her entourage, each of whom looked amused to put a face to the record-breaking sounds that they had just heard.
Trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, Evan wasn’t sure whether it would be worse to wash his hands while Delilah’s ten friends stared at him, or to walk out right away and leave everyone thinking that he doesn’t maintain proper hygiene. He opted for a desperate charm offensive while washing his hands.
“I’m really sorry about that,” he said to Delilah and her crowd as he moved towards the faucet. “I think that Mexican food didn’t go so well with all of those tequilas.”
Delilah took one step closer to the stall to see if it could be used and was immediately repelled by the stench. One of the guys in her entourage yelled out, “You nuked the place, dude!”
“I know…I’m sorry, you guys may want to evacuate the area for a few minutes,” Evan said, as he finished washing his hands and headed towards the exit. He felt oddly guilty about leaving them there in the newsworthy fetor of his making, but he would have felt even stranger lingering there any longer. He tried to walk out as nonchalantly as possible, even though all eyes were on him, and the second he was out of the bathroom he heard the crowd urgently fleeing behind him.
******
Heeb was sitting at the edge of his bed, wide-eyed and completely engrossed, as Evan finished telling the story about his brief encounter with Delilah Nakova.
“That’s it? You didn’t go up to her again later that night?” Heeb asked, feeling as frustrated and disappointed as if it had all happened to him. “Maybe an hour or so later?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“What did you want me to do? Go up to her and say, ‘Hi. I’m that guy from the bathroom. Remember me? Did you find a safer place to crap after I left?’”
“Couldn’t you try to joke around with one of her friends and get into her circle somehow?”
“Oh, you mean go up to the guy who accused me of nuking the bathroom and be like, ‘Hey, that was a pretty funny joke you made about my bowel movements. This Mexican food sure is rough on the stomach, isn’t it?’”
“I’m sure you could have come up with something.”
“They’d probably be thinking: ‘Who is this freak? First he drops the mother of all shit bombs on the bathroom and then he thinks he can turn our collective trauma into a friendship.’”
“That really sucks, Evan.”
“It was a fucking disaster, Sammy. A total fucking disaster. And I’ve been mourning that night ever since.”
Chapter 23
SQ and the Fellowship of the Schlong
A few hours after Evan finished recounting his Delilah debacle, Doctor Clayton returned to inspect both patients. Evan would be able to leave the next morning, but Heeb would have to stay for another forty-eight hours after Evan’s release. The brief examination and Evan’s pending departure made Heeb insecure about his injury again. After the doctor left, Heeb shared some of his troubled thoughts.
“I can’t afford to date randomly for another year before looking for a Jewish wife. That would leave me with only two years for my search, and right now I’m not sure if even three years would be enough,” Heeb worried. By now, Evan was well aware of Heeb’s plan for a kosher marriage by age thirty. “This dick disaster completely destroyed whatever was left of my SQ.”
“What’s SQ?” asked Evan.
“Sexual Quotient.”
“What’s that?”
“Basically, it’s your odds of getting laid. Everyone has an SQ. Just like everyone has an IQ.”
“I’ve never heard that term before.”
“That’s because I made it up.”
“That figures. Finally applying your actuarial skills to what really matters, eh?”
“Yeah…It’s an idea I had always sort of toyed with, but after I lost Yumi to my boss, I really began to develop and refine it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I started obsessing over why she suddenly dumped me for him. And in the process of figuring that out, I developed the concept of SQ.”
“So how does it work?”
“Your Sexual Quotient is really just an attempt to quantify, on some absolute scale, how attractive you are to the opposite sex. In general, the higher your SQ, the more desirable you are.”
“So the higher your SQ, the easier it is for you to get laid.”
“Right. But your SQ determines a lot more; it effectively defines your bargaining position in a relationship. The lower your SQ, the more likely you are to be dominated by the person you’re with,” Heeb explained.
“You really think so?”
“Look at me. I always end up being the doormat because of my SQ. But if you look at models – male or female – they generally get away with demanding more and giving less.”
“So how do you figure out your SQ?” Evan asked, suddenly eager to compute his own Sexual Quotient.
“Well, your subjective SQ is how attractive you are to a particular person. And your objective SQ is just the average of all the scores you got for all of the people out there.”
“So how do I calculate my SQ for a particular woman?”
“It’s calculated the way you would calculate your personal income taxes.”
“How’s that?”
“Various facts cause you to take deductions from the total, although with taxes you want the deductions and with your SQ you obviously don’t. Because the lower your objective SQ is, the fewer women you attract, and the less picky you can be. And that’s a bad thing. And for anyone who wants to marry a Jew, it’s a disaster.”
“Why?”
“Because there are only about fourteen million Jews in the whole world, which leaves about seven million for each gender. So let’s say I’m willing to date any Jewish woman who’s twenty to forty years old. That leaves me with a choice of about two million women in the world. And if we assume that half of those women are already taken, I’m left with a million eligible women roaming about six billion people.[7]
“A million?”
“Yeah. And if you want to get really precise, we need to shave off at least another three hundred thousand, because I can’t date any Chasidic, Orthodox or even Conservative Jews.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’m compatible only with bagel Jews.”
“Bagel Jews?”
“The ones who are Jewish culturally but not religiously. Which leaves about seven hundred thousand.”
“That’s pretty bad.”
“Tell me about it. I lower my standards by at least twenty percent the minute a woman tells me she’s Jewish.”
“So why do you limit yourself like that?”
“I’m not really sure…It’s complicated…Part of it is pres
sure from my family. Part of it is thinking that cultural familiarity makes it easier to get along with someone.”
“But you’re not even religious. So what are you talking about? The fact that you can enjoy bagels with your wife?”
“Don’t underestimate the importance of bagels,” Heeb rejoined.
“OK.”
“But it’s more than that. It’s a shared history. A value system. A kind of humor. And there’s also this idea of cultural survival.”
“What do you mean?”
“After genocide eliminates one third of a community, the remaining two thirds feels somewhat obligated to replenish the population.”
“I guess I never thought about it like that.”
“And even if I know very little about my own religion – embarrassingly little – I can confidently say that we must be doing something right.”
“Why is that?”
“Because we’ve survived three thousand years of persecution, and along the way we still managed to spit out Einstein, Freud, Marx, and seventeen percent of all Nobel Laureates.”[8]
“Well, you’re definitely not a group of slackers.”
“Yeah. But I still have my doubts about sticking to Jewish women, given how few of them there are. Especially when I’m competing with all of the other men out there and have to take my deductions.”
“What deductions?” Evan asked.
“A man’s SQ is derived using a composite formula, based on seven key factors: wealth, social power, age, handsomeness, height, weight, personality, and hair.”
“Is that in order of importance?”
“Basically. Although wealth and social power are probably tied in terms of importance, and hair can sometimes outweigh personality, if you’re dealing with a shallow hottie.”
“And how do these factors combine?”
“It’s pretty obvious if you just compare scenarios. For example, between a seventy-nine-year old billionaire and a nineteen-year old billionaire, the vast majority of women would prefer the nineteen-year old, unless of course they’re hoping to inherit quickly, in which case you wouldn’t want them anyway.”
“Very true.”
“And if you have two millionaires of the same age, but one has hair and the other doesn’t, the one with the hair wins.”
“So this is how you deduct?”
“Essentially. You start with one hundred percentage points, which represents a guaranteed lay with any female you approach. One hundred is, of course, a theoretical ideal. No man actually has a one hundred SQ because no man could really have sex with absolutely any woman of his choice.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s always this random component to sexual taste.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even the hottest, tallest, wealthiest hunk with a full head of hair and the best personality, might still strike out with some female who, for some random reason, would never want to sleep with him.”
“Why?”
“Maybe he reminds the woman of her evil stepdad, or some psycho ex-boyfriend.”
“Or maybe she just became a nun,” Evan offered.
“Right. Or she might have some deep medical or emotional reason to remain celibate. You never know. So you have to account for this possibility with a standard deduction of ten percent. Just like there’s a standard deduction for every taxpayer.”
“OK…So really, the highest possible SQ is ninety.”
“Right. But after the standard deduction you need to apply the itemized deductions for the seven key factors of wealth, social power, age, handsomeness, height, weight, personality, and hair.”
“So give me an example of an itemized deduction.”
“OK. Take the all-important factor of age. Just like your tax rate depends on which income bracket you fall into, the size of your age deduction depends on what age range you’re in.”
“So what’s the first age range?”
“Fourteen and under. If you’re under fifteen, you have to deduct eighty percent from your SQ.”
“Eighty percent?!” Evan exclaimed. “So after the standard deduction a thirteen-year-old boy has only a ten percent chance of getting laid?”
“Exactly.”
“But I thought Jews consider a thirteen-year-old male to be a man.”
“Well, for Bar Mitzvah purposes, but not for SQ purposes.”
“Why not?”
“How many thirteen-year-old guys do you know who are getting laid? It’s not exactly the age that women are looking for.”
“I’m not so sure,” Evan objected. “Pop culture is bringing sex to younger and younger audiences, so I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Look, we can quibble about the cut-off points and percentages later. Let me just finish with the age factor.”
“OK.”
“So if you’re fourteen to sixteen, you deduct thirty percent. If you’re sixteen to seventeen, you deduct twenty percent. And if you’re eighteen to twenty-two, you don’t deduct anything.”
“Why is that?”
“Those are your college years. Assuming college guys want to sleep with college women, they couldn’t do better in terms of their age, so there’s no need for a deduction.”
“But what if the college guy wants sleep with an older woman?”
“Then he’ll probably need to take a deduction of ten to thirty percent for that older woman, depending on how sophisticated he is and how much of a Mrs. Robinson she is.”
“All right. Go on.”
“So twenty-two to twenty-nine, deduct ten percent. Thirty to thirty-three, deduct twenty-five percent.”
“Whoa! Why does turning thirty bump you from a ten-percent to a twenty-five-percent deduction?” Evan asked.
“Because most guys in their early thirties still want to go after females in their early twenties.”
“So?”
“So many of those females think of guys in their thirties as being dirty old men.”
“Shit,” said Evan, reflecting on the fact that he had only ten months left before his thirtieth birthday.
“Continuing along the age spectrum, if you’re thirty-four to thirty-eight, deduct forty percent. If you’re thirty-nine to forty-four, deduct – ”
“All right, I get the picture. This is depressing me.”
“Depressing you? What about me? I’m almost as old as you and we haven’t even gotten to the deductions for height, weight, handsomeness, and hair.”
“All right, well how do those work?”
“Let’s take hair. The more hair you have, the less you have to deduct.”
“That makes sense,” Evan said, patting the top of his scalp lightly, as he tried to estimate how much longer the slightly thinning hair above would still look like a full head of thick hair.
“In fact, if you have hair at an age when nobody expects you to have hair, you actually add a bonus rather than take a deduction.”
“I assume handsomeness is fairly straightforward,” Evan said.
“Yes. Handsomeness can add or deduct up to twenty percentage points from your SQ.”
“Why only twenty?”
“An old, short, bald, fat guy with no money and no personality who has a very handsome face still isn’t going to get very far. And, conversely, a guy with an ugly face who’s young, tall, charming, with a head full of hair and a bank account worth millions, should still do pretty well. The face is important, but ultimately limited in its impact on SQ, when you go through the whole calculus.”
“What about height and weight?”
“Height is like hair: the more, the better, unless you’ve hit a freakish extreme.
“Like what?”
“Like a Planet of the Apes look in the hair department, or someone over six-seven in the height department.”
“Why over six-seven?”
“At that point, it’s going to be hard to find women who are tall enough to feel comfortable around you. Kind of like with too much weight.
”
“What about personality?”
“Personality is an all-encompassing term that includes all of the nonphysical attributes like charm, wit, intelligence, creativity, social skills, etc.”
“So personality should be very important.”
“In theory. If it’s ever fully discovered. But how many parties have you been to, where the woman spots your personality from the other end of the room and comes flirting in your direction?”
“So are you saying that most women are too shallow to get past looks unless they already know your other qualities?”
“Usually. But they’re still better than men as far as that goes. I’m the ultimate proof of that, because if women were as shallow as men, I’d still be a virgin.”
“So now you’re saying that men don’t care about personality in women?”
“Men notice female personality even less than women notice male personality.”
“I think you’re wrong. Personality is very important to me in a woman,” replied Evan.
“I’m sure it’s the first thing you notice, Evan.”
“It definitely affects the way I perceive her.”
“OK. How many overweight, unattractive women with personality have you dated?”
Evan was silent.
“Like I said, the fact that women are less shallow than men is the only reason that there’s hope for guys like me.”
“No! That’s not a fair question,” Evan protested.
“Don’t feel bad about it,” Sammy continued. “You would care less about looks and more about personality if you were less attractive. But the fact that you’re a good-looking guy makes you feel like you’re entitled to date a good-looking woman.”
Evan still seemed uneasy about Heeb’s analysis, so Heeb went even further.
“Hey, if I looked like you, I’d also feel entitled to date more attractive women.”
“But why does a preference for attractive women mean that I don’t care about personality? Why can’t I date an attractive woman with personality?” Evan asked.