I’m not the most organized guy in the world.
I kinda fly by the seat of my pants in most of the stuff I do.
I grew up that way.
And I’m still like that as an adult.
I do everything at the last minute… and I generally try to pay all of my bills right before they become thirty days past due.
If the people really want their money they’ll call right?
And they get so happy when I give it to them and I get to hear that in their voices on the phone.
I get a lot of bills in the mail.
There’s like this ‘secret code’ or something…
the really important ones are red in some way.
I know how far I can push it.
It’s fun living dangerously sometimes… watching how low you can get the needle down on the gas tank before you gotta get gas.
That’s how I learned about something really smart people call ‘parallax.’
Paralax is ‘the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions.’
Like if you look at the needle on the fuel guage from the passenger side it looks like you got less gas than you really do.
That’s where your girl sits and looks at the gas guage from.
The designers of automobiles took this into consideration when they dealt with fuel guages.
They know your woman’s gonna look over and see that needle on ‘E’ and say something.
It’s like a built in safety device.
And she’s always like ‘we better get some gas.’
And you’re always like ‘we can go another 70.4 miles after the needle hits ‘E’ babycakes.
Then you tell her about ‘parallax.’
Dumbass.
There you go with your physics shit again.
Note to your idiot self: chicks don’t care about physics.
Name one legendary female physicist.
There are none.
I just did a search for ‘legendary female physicist’ on Google and got the old "Your search – legendary female physicist – did not match any documents."
Not one.
I also did another Google search in my intensive research for this book… research which consists almost entirely of my life experience, lies, bullshit, bullshit lies, made up statistics, things drunk people told me in bars and Google searches.
I Googled ‘chicks who like walking after their dumbass guy runs out of gas.’
And guess what came up?
"Your search – chicks who like walking after their dumbass guy runs out of gas – did not match any documents."
Then in that little box it taunts you with every time you misspell something it said ‘did you mean to search for ‘dumb ass’ instead?
Did you ever get the feeling that Google was talking directly to you?
I will admit that I had to do the search twice because the first time I used ‘there’ inappropriately when I should have used ‘their’ and I needed to straighten that up to insure the integrity of my research…
because that’s the kind of guy I am… and I’m also not afraid to admit that I’m wrong either…
as long as no one’s around to hear it.
Not even any naked pictures came up or anything.
That seemed odd.
So just to be sure that Google wasn’t broken I did a search for ‘hot freaky sex’ which produced twenty one million one hundred thousand results.
And lots of fascinating pictures.
That’s the Google I’ve come to know and depend on.
You know I really didn’t get much out of the rest of that day.
Or half of the next.
I did have to think fast when my girl got home and said ‘Honey… did you use all of my lotion?’
‘Yeah Love Gravy Buckets… I was doing research for my new book.’
And then she did the predictable thing… the very thing I did not predict…
she asked me ‘why would you need an entire bottle of my lotion to research your book?’
‘And what happened to the full roll of paper towels I put out just before I went to work?’
I had to come clean with her so I showed her.
You know what?
I’ve never been so happy to let the woman peer into my browser’s history.
I felt like that moment helped her to ‘get me’ more just then.
I think she liked some of that stuff and I ‘bookmarked’ the stuff that she seemed fascinated by.
Or at least just not ‘overtly repulsed by’ anyway.
Then we had a really good talk… you know… the kind that bring you closer together after helping you to understand each other in a deeper and more intimately meaningful way?
‘It’s all about the research Sweet Love Kitten’ I promised.
‘But I hafta admit that some of that stuff looks like it could really spice up our love life you know’ I added.
Then just to reassure myself that this kind of research was valid for something other than an excuse to look at all of those pictures that are now seared into my mind right next to all of the other pictures just like that that have been seared into my mind for a very long time…
I did another Google search after typing ‘women are impossible to understand.’
It came back with one hundred and seventy one million results.
These statistics which I did not make up for once… not only support everything that I’ve been telling you… they’re alarming.
There’s eight times as much ‘women are impossible to understand’ out there on the internet as there is ‘hot freaky sex.’
Try it yourself.
If your woman catches you you can just tell her that you were checking the academic soundness of my work.
And if you’re a woman it’s a good opportunity to take a look inside of your mans medulla-hot-freaky-oblongata and see what he’s really thinkin’ about 96% of the time.
And wait until you see how much more ‘exciting’ it gets to check your ‘spambox.’
That’s where all the good stuff goes anyway.
Except those messages that are always giving me a complex…
the ones that say ‘would you like a bigger penis?’
I’m going to find out which of my vindictive and bitter ex’s signed me up for that one and have a little ‘talk’ with her.
Anyway I think it all goes to show that I’m right… there’d be a whole lot more hot freaky goin’ on if men could understand women.
I’d like to see those numbers reversed in my lifetime.
Shit… I’d like to see those numbers reversed in my personal life.
But I don’t need to do a Google search to tell you this brainiac:
no chick wants to walk because your dumbass parallax understandin’ self made a miscalculation over fuel endurance.
Dude.
THAT is a walk you never wanna take…
walking to the gas station with your woman after you showed her how close you like to get to the edge.
Just like saying stupid shit… burning the gas in the tank down to vapors before you get more gas is a deep intrinsic need of yours.
What is the frickin’ use of the ‘bottom’ of the gas tank anyway if you don’t use it right?
Yeah I run out of gas every once in a while…
I have never done it with a woman in the car though.
Run out of gas I mean.
Ever.
Except my daughter.
And that only cost me a little glittery plastic pony to get my ass out of that one.
Women feel that having more than fumes in your gas tank when you take them somewhere is what they call ‘considerate.’
The danger you think you are facing in driving that car until the last molecule of the petrochemical dinosaur juice miracle that propels it is combusted just as you pull up to the gas pump is nothing compared to the danger you’ll be in if your calculations are flawed when your woman’s in the car.
And lets face it.
That’s when it’s gonna happen too.
Because you won’t handicap your mental fuel endurance calculations for her nonstop adjustments of the climate control because you’ll be thinkin’ about hot freaky.
And since women ALWAYS lie about their weight you’ve probably underestimated the total load you were carrying.
Plus that duffel bag she calls a purse that she carries gahdknows what in and that keychain she has… the one that’s composed of lots of key chains all fastened together until it becomes one megalithic ass keychain… the one that weighs like nine pounds that every once in a while you fear she’s gonna beat you with.
Am I right or am I right?
I’ve tried to explain my propensity to do this to my girl this way…
‘baby… I look at it in a lot of ways like I look at our relationship… It’s like I just wanna ‘know’ my car you know… I wanna know it so deeply and intimately… like I wanna know you… all of its needs and stuff… I wanna know when it’s ‘really’ gonna stop… I have a need to know this kind of thing… you know… how far I can push shit… aren’t you always saying that I do the same thing with you?’
You know I had to fuck that one all up at the end right?
So I run outta the go juice every once in a while…
and here and there whatever utility I may have pushed it too far with stopped by the ranch and disconnected me.
Living the Amish life for a few days isn’t the end of the world.
It gives you the time to sit around and make high quality solid oak furniture with your bare hands because you won’t be fucking around on the Internet all day.
In college I’d just hook it back up after they left.
Scored free cable for a lotta years too.
I didn’t even hafta climb the pole to do it because my roommate caught my neighbor doing it in the middle of the night one time.
My roommate was not a ‘legitimate businessman’ and freaked out when he saw a guy climbing the telephone pole in the middle of the night because he thought it was the authorities fixin’ to tap the phone lines.
The guy might not have been a ‘legitimate businessman’ but he was ‘legitimately paranoid.’
He ran out there to ask the guy what the hell he was doing… in his bathrobe… with a gun… and I just kinda sat there on the couch so I could get a head start on makin’ up my story or something.
Guy walks back in in five minutes all smilin’… puts the gun down and says… ‘we got cable now… turn the tv on… the neighbor was jackin’ it and I told him to ‘turn us on’ too… premium channels and everything!’
I live and breath chaos.
I seem to be pretty good at it.
A lot of people just can’t live life in such a dynamic and unstructured way.
They’re probably better off for it…
because it drives a lot of people crazy.
Especially every one of my ex’s apparently.
I just couldn’t live any other way.
Unless a preponderance of hot freaky tips the scales towards a more regimented and domesticated lifestyle.
Ultimately everything is negotiable I suppose.
I work hard and I play hard and I do dig myself some nice vacation here and there.
It’s something I really look forward to as a self-employed ‘legitimate businessman.’
Men and women and vacation are a strange and extremely volatile mix if you ask me.
They’re always volatile really.
Vacation is just the ‘spark’ that can really set them off.
I can remember my parents getting into fights all the time right before getting into the car and heading on the door out for a roadtrip.
That really sucked and it kinda made me think that I just had hot head freaks for parents.
Besides fights about dad coming home shitfaced every once in a while fighting was pretty rare in my childhood home.
What I didn’t know then was that ALL couples pretty much get into it either just before vacation of just as they’re walking out the door.
Mom wants to make triple sure that everythings cool with the house.
Dad figures ‘fuck it… lets go… I got insurance.’
Mom wants the house to be really clean as soon as she steps in the door when we get home from vacation.
Dad says ‘fuck it lets go.’
Mom’s worried about what she forgot to pack.
Dad says ‘fuck it… I got a wallet full of money.’
Mom says ‘you never take anything seriously.’
Dad says ‘why do you always have to start shit right before we roll off to vacation?’
You can see that I am the descendent of a man with a propensity to say stupid shit too.
In fact I come from a long line of men who were really good at saying stupid shit.
It is my experience that leaving the pad and going mobile does different things to the sexes.
Men just wanna get the hell out of Dodge.
Women wanna make sure that Dodge is in good shape before they come back.
Secretly I think men are thinkin’ that they’re gonna have such a good time on vacation it might just be the end of them.
That’s always my goal on any given vacation… to have so much fun I could die.
So what do men care?
Maybe women can see that ‘glint in their eye.’
When I speak this way I can’t indict all women for this behavior.
Just the one’s I’ve been with.
And we’ve already come to understand that I’m not the kinda guy who makes the best choices.
I’m pretty sure that all men share the same guilt though.
Every woman I’ve ever been in a longterm commited, or unilaterally semi committed relationship long enough to go on a shared vacation with has had that lobe pop just prior to or right at departure time.
I’ve often wondered why this is.
I have a theory.
Going mobile makes women feel vulnerable I think.
And when your woman feels ‘vulnerable’ she knows full well that you’re to blame.
She ‘needs’ you to protect her… or at least make her feel ‘protected.’
And since she feels vulnerable buddy… You have failed.
I see it start up about a week out as a mild anxiety.
And it builds up with each day closer to ‘go time’ that we get.
Generally the lobe pops right when you’re packin’ the car.
I think it’s just that guys get all excited about going on vacation.
And we can’t pack for shit because we don’t know where anything is anyway.
And women, they just get a little nervous about leavin’ the nest.
And all their throw pillows.
They’ve worked so hard to decorate the place and now they’re being torn from it like it’s a cesarean section going down.
You gotta be sympathetic to them just then.
All they really need is reassurance.
Lots and lots of reassurance.
And not the regular kind of reassurance…
like how she’s more beautiful than the day that you met her…
or her ass isn’t ‘really’ getting fat…
and that you want to grow old with her…
she needs ‘vacation specific’ reassurances.
And you don’t get too many oportunities to work on your vacation specific reassurances.
Because for once in your life you’re not just thinkin’ about hot freaky.
You’re thinkin’ about ‘vacation hot freaky.’
You know all about the pseudo-scientific studies that show that a woman’s more likely to get down with some hot freaky in a hotel bed.
Because it’s not hers.
That way she doesn’t have to think about it again in the perfectly accessorized and color coordinated ‘love sanctuary’ that she created for the two of you called a bedroom.
The place she likes to think of as a ‘budoir’ but would never tell you that.
You know why?
Because a ‘budoir’ is a room that a woman lays around in and thinks about her perfect fantasy guy.
It becomes a ‘bedroom’ the second you walk in.
Because you spoil the whole effect by leaving your dirty socks on the floor right next to the freaking hamper.
But dad’s not thinkin’ about any of that.
He wants to get the fuck out of there.
He’s excited to go.
Mom’s nervous about leaving.
Maybe he’s already ‘getting to work’ on his skills of tuning the kids out.
Maybe he’s thinking about the car and any problems it might have.
He’s got the route in his head and he’s got a timetable that he wants to stick to.
Dad’s got plans to be wherever it is that he’s going at a certain time.
He has done pages of mental mathematics… running all sorts of navigational calculations against his personal biorhythms, applied ‘rush hour’ handicapping to whatever city you’ll be driving through then, figured out the liklihood of having the kids sleep at the most critical point…
Dad’s mind is on the journey.
It’s like a ‘bombing mission’ over hostile territory the way that he looks at it.
Moms worried about whether or not she left the iron on.
Dad doesn’t know what that is and why she’d be worried about that anyway.
Vacation creates a great disconnect between men and women.
At least the preparing and the motivating part.
If your relationship were the Titanic… vacation would be the iceberg.
I really don’t think that there’s anything more perilous a guy can do with his girl than to go on vacation.
This guy I used to work with… we’ll call him ‘Eddy’ because I’m not sure the solution that he came up with for this very situation was either legal or ethical… but damn… it was nothing short of brilliant.
Especially if you knew ‘Eddy.’
Me and the guys were sittin’ around the warehouse one day talking about this very phenomenon when Eddy jumps off the forklift and chimes in…
‘Bitches are always cranky right before they go on vacation… everybody knows that… you know what I do… I see it comin’ and I say ‘hey baby… you look a little stressed… let me get you a glass of wine.’
Then ‘Eddy’ said he goes to the kitchen… pours a nice glass of red outta the box in the fridge… and then he crushes up two xanax tablets and stirs ’em in there real good.
He insists you gotta use red because he tried it with a zinfandel once and he said you could see like some ‘residue’ in the bottom of the glass.
‘She feels all happy that I noticed her anxiety and she cools off when I hand her the glass of wine you know’ he said.
All of us just stood there in stunned silence with wide eyes and mouths agape.
‘When those xanax kick in and the alcohol from the wine I ain’t got a problem in the world… I been doin’ it for years and it always works’… and he looked at us when he said it like he’d just divulged the very secret of life to us.
Fuckin’ ‘Eddy’… the smartest gahdamn forklift driver in the world.
None of us could believe his genius at that very moment.
And we all agreed later after he got fired for getting caught on video coming into the warehouse at five am one morning after a three day cocaine bender just to get a box of razor blades and then go home to call in sick that his idea was the most intelligent thing any of us had ever heard him say.
I’m not advocating ‘slipping your woman a mickey’ but I’ve sure thought about it since ‘Eddy’ told us about his secret method.
In my studies on the male mind I’ve found that most men can’t think past the next weekend.
That’s because statistically that’s when we’ll be most likely to successfully impregnate a woman and pass on the propensity to say stupid shit to yet another generation.
It’s a part of our biology.
Plus we have to work all week.
While a woman is entirely capable of making restaraunt reservations for dinner four months in advance.
About the same time she begins thinking about what she’ll wear to that dinner.
That comes from her biology.
She’s got that monthy cycle to break down time for her into manageable chunks.
It’s a lot easier to do when you can only get pregnant on one of those weekends anyway.
And if she’s on the other end of your weekend ‘reproductive success’ or failure depending on how you look at it she’s got a nine month gestation period to give her enough time to figure out the perfect color scheme for the nursery and whatever the most fashionable baby name might be that year.
That’s just the way it is.
It’s always been that way.
It will always be.
And those differences should be celebrated you know?
They are what makes a couple who’s found and nourished and built a functional relationship capable of so much more than any one person could be on their own.
Neanderthal mom would look back to last fall and remember where she filled her basket up with those delicious nuts… or the succulent berries in the spring.
Neanderthal dad and the guys would be playing around bullshitting with each other when one of them said ‘yo… check it out… a wooly mammoth… we should kill it.
And Neanderthal mom would always be accusin’ Neanderthal dad of behaving like a ‘Cro-magnon.’
The differences in the male and female mind and thought process’ are there for a reason.
Not just to cause you to get in all manner of fights with your girl and to get in the way of hot freaky.
The secret I think is to show your girl that even though you are for the most part a beast so different than what she really wants you to be that it is in many ways those very facets of your manliness that she secretly craves and needs in her life as much as baskets, throw pillows and paint sample chips.
And the way to show her that is to become her hero and save her ass.
One of these days I’m gonna rig up a secret ‘baby be cool’ button in my automobile.
Here’s what it will do…
whenever Sweet Honey Cake Biscuits isn’t showin’ me the love… if she’s all bitchin’ at me about some crazy shit I did for the fiftieth gahdamn time…
I can press the secret ‘baby be cool’ button.
It will make the vehicle break down.
Hopefully I will push it in the worst neighborhood I can.
At night.
Then as I glide to a stop on the side of the street she will get all freaked out…
feel really vulnerable and scared…
she’ll forget whatever the hell we were just fighting about… as soon as she confirms the car didn’t stop because I ran it out of gas…
and I will open that hood like a MAN.
Because I know where the secret lever that opens it is.
The thing on the side by where your legs go with the dumbass lookin’ stick figure standing in front of an open hood staring at an engine that he has no idea how the hell it works and scratching his head as he does.
And Honey Pie has no idea where the secret lever is.
We just happen to be in my ‘realm’ now.
I will demonstrate reassuring confidence that I can fix this problem and save our asses.
Maybe I’ll say something like ‘I know you’re scared baby… but don’t you worry Sweet Peaches… just give me a minute and I’ll have this fixed.’
Of course I will need some tools that I have in the back near the spare tire next to that comprehensive first aid kit that I’ve built over the years.
And I will make it a point to ask her where those tools are because I put them there for just this situation.
When she tells me that she ‘put them in the garage’ I’ll be cool with that… I won’t blow my stack… I’ll say ‘don’t worry baby… I can fix this… even with my bare hands if I have to.
I’ll mess under the hood for a couple minutes like I know what I’m doing as she bites her nails and sinks in her seat to keep from being seen…
I’ll touch something dirty and wipe that on my face so she can see it and be reminded of what a freakin hero I am when she tells me to wipe it off and lovingly hands me a baby wipe she keeps in that duffel bag sized purse of hers…
then I’ll get back in the car and press the secret ‘baby be cool’ button again…
Whammo!
I have saved us!
I am the man.
End of argument.
I think that button would end just about any argument.
Because she will instantly have it reinforced that even though I am a creature filled with flaws and who may have only evolved half as much as her… that she needs me.
Sometimes.
When I make the car break down in bad neighborhoods at night.
And even if you’re not arguing you could just use the ‘baby be cool’ button to be her hero every once in a while.
Because nothing gets you hot freaky like being a hero.
Her hero.
If you apply science, logic, psychology, thought and your half mastery of automotive mechanics to your goal… if you recognize all of the traps, dangers, perils and pitfalls of going on vacation with your woman…
and you have that ‘baby be cool’ button installed on your car like I’m telling you to do… and you use it at precisely the right moment…
you will be telling me how it is that you have personally come to discover that ‘vacation hot freaky’ is more than just the stuff of myth or legend.
You will be the man.
It’s either that or you’re gonna be telling me about the train wreck that was your vacation when your miserable ass makes it back to the refuge of the office where you’ll be just as unappreciated but you’ll be safe among men who’ve all ridden on the crazy train too.
