Manslations (14 page)

Look, everybody knows that the vast majority of men are going to be “the wrong guy.” There seem to be endless ways that this whole dating thing can end badly. You didn't need anyone to tell you that (and if you did, well, there's a whole shelf filled with books that will tell you all about it).

But now you know to pay attention to what he does (and chill out about what he says). Just think how quickly you'll be able to weed'em out. You could get through your whole address book in, like, ten minutes!

What you need to understand about men is that the
right
man is not going to play all of these weird games with you. You're not going to have to go nuts trying to figure out why the right guy didn't call, and you're not going to have to worry about calling him. You're not going to have to walk on eggshells trying to keep from frightening him off.

You're not going to have to do any of this nonsense, because the right guy is the one who is crazy about you. The real you. All of you. The right guy is the guy who can't wait to call you, can't wait for you to call him, can't wait to spend lots of time with you.

Anybody who isn't that guy, well, the best thing you can do with him is have as much fun as you can, and then let him go. He's not worth agonizing over.

__________________

^*
Don't take it to the actual bank. The teller will almost surely call security.

CHAPTER 6

men and their things, or
sometimes a remote is just
a remote

N
o, I'm not talking about those things. I am not about to sit here and tell you about men and their genitals. That's for another book.

But isn't the male obsession with stuff just that thing where men compensate for their penises with bigger cars, TVs, or whatever?

No. Common misunderstanding. There is a certain school of thought that says that everything is all about men's “things.” But I do not belong to that school, so get your minds out of the gutter. Yes, men are obsessed with the size of their penises. And since they are also obsessed with the size of their TVs, smart people with lots of time on their hands (and puny TVs, I bet) make the connection that it's all about the penis. But maybe it's more simple than that.

Men just like to keep score, period. Men are in constant competition about everything. This is why men like sports. There are “winners” and “losers.”

Believe me, men don't spend a lot of time thinking about penises. We are far more focused on winners and losers. And penises are just one of the many competitions we might win or lose. Technology, gear, tools, cars, and sports are others.

What is it about men and their stuff anyway? Why do they love it?

Because they understand it. Technology either works, or it doesn't. And we can tell when something's wrong. And if it doesn't work, we're pretty sure that we can get it to work.

Basically, we like electronics because they are not like you. You frighten us. When you get mad at us, we know something is wrong, but we can't for the life of us figure out how to fix the problem. We try; we get into worse trouble; and ultimately we give an unconditional surrender where we say, “Look, I don't even know what I did. But I'm sure that I'm really sorry about it. Can we get back to the part where I don't feel tense and terrified that I'm doing something wrong, please?”

There's a big lesson there, ladies. If you can tell us exactly what we have done wrong, it will be better for everyone. No, we will never be able to just tell. Stop hoping for that. I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

Another reason that men love technology is that it
does
stuff. The first item of this type was probably the club. Whoever had the best one killed the most elk. Awesome. And what about fire? Oh, forget about it. Whichever cave dude had the first fire made all the other guys go nuts trying to figure out how to make a bigger, better one.

But why does it matter?

I don't know. Why do you have five pairs of black shoes that are exactly alike?

They are most certainly not exactly alike! See, these have a little strap, and this pair has—

Please kill me now.

See, that's just what I'm talking about—you love those… totally distinct and different and in-no-way-the-same… shoes. Men get excited about, you know, different details.

Okay, fair enough. But every one of those pairs of shoes—

Thanks. Thank you, that's great.

Let's go through some of the main areas in which men are mesmerized by technology and see if we can determine why, what it all means, and how you can use this information to better understand your man. Or men who aren't yours. Once you know this stuff, you are free to go around understanding men at your discretion.

You can break man and his gadget obsession down into four categories, the first three of which date back to the earliest men (our friends with the pointy sticks and the cars that they braked with their feet, you know). The categories are:

Tools:
The stuff with which a man can do stuff to stuff


The Kill Brought Home from the Hunt:
The stuff that a man uses to impress everybody else


Controlling the Environment:
The stuff a man uses to exert his dominion over the universe around him


Badass Make-Believe:
Ways that men can pretend to be the awesome, cool guy that he's pretty sure he's not

Dating back to the very first tools, men have been trying to get a leg up on the competition. We're obsessed with finding a better way of doing stuff. It would be very easy to conclude that this was some kind of a drive to succeed, to improve, to leave our mark. Sadly, it's probably more about laziness. As in, “Oh man, if I get that new lawn-mower that has the GPS unit built into it, I bet I could program it to mow the lawn without me!”

History Break

Take, for example, the Industrial Revolution. This was a time in which men suddenly realized that if they set up a factory that would do a whole bunch of stuff really, really fast, they could make more money than any of their friends. And this gave them giant, raging, industrial erections. If there is one thing that turns a man on almost as much as a willing woman, it is a way to crush their friends in defeat through the clever use of impressive gear. Oh, that one feels really good.

And the two go together, hand in glove. If a man is getting regular, fantastic sex, it might just make him think, “Good Lord, I am a god. I can do
anything.
I bet I could consolidate all the steel companies into one giant corporation!”

On the other hand, it can go the other way as well. “I swear to God, if I don't get some action sometime very soon, I am going to deforest the entire state of Minnesota.”

Now, this can refer to literal tools, as in that 111-piece screwdriver set that he wants, even if he has no intention of screwing in 111 things in his lifetime. Or that Dremel tool that… I don't know what it does. I'm not even sure what it is. But it has, like, seventy-five uses or something, and I kind of want one.

But a “tool” could really be anything that gives him a powerful advantage over the modern-day equivalent of saber-toothed tigers. For example, the computer.

The advent of computers as a part of our day-to-day lives has… okay, sorry. Suddenly this turned into an article in the
New Yorker.
The computer is the pointy stick that brings down the mastodon. It's the wheel. It's the thing that makes a guy feel like he's CAPABLE: “Check it out! I can print— WIRELESSLY—from anyplace in the house!” He now feels like the mighty god Thor, seated at the right hand of Odin in Valhalla.

The computer is a big area of misunderstanding between men and women (you can also see this with cars, home theaters, and model trains, probably). It's the idea of
the best.
If you spend enough time with guys who are into computers, you'll hear them fantasize about the unbelievable gear they'll have one day. You'll ask what seems to be a reasonable question, “Why do you need that? What does it do that your computer doesn't do?” This is where the answers will get a little fuzzy. It's not so much that he
needs
it. It's that he can't relax knowing that someone, somewhere out there, has a more awesome computer.

Another fairly common example of this is the GPS device. GPS in the car means never having to ask for directions. Why can't he ask for directions? I don't know—why do you need five pairs of nearly identical black shoes? It is what it is.

He can't just ask for the directions because—and this is important—he's not lost. Yet. He hasn't conceded defeat yet. To ask for directions is to admit that he is not as much of a badass as whichever gas station attendant he asks for help. (Jack Bauer doesn't stop to ask for advice on how to strangle someone, does he? Pff. Bet your ass he doesn't.) I know it's frustrating for you because, well, what do you care? You just want to get there, right?

So there's your solution. If your man simply will not ask for directions, buy him a cool GPS tracking system. He'll install it, and it will
tell
him where to turn. Yes, I know. This sounds an awful lot like asking for directions. But he'll still feel like he solved the problem himself—through superior technology.

As we'll discuss in the special Holiday chapter, tools make excellent gifts for a man. I know, I know. You don't want to get him something functional; you want to get him something special. Trust me—whatever he's into, if you can get him some kind of a gadget or tool that makes it easier, better, or cooler, to him
that's
special. And I promise he'll be very, very psyched.(You'll be able to tell when he brags to his idiot friends about how awesome his new doodad is.)

These items are the kind of thing that primitive men brought back to the cave to impress the women and to make the other men feel like inadequate cave jerks. In this situation, it's often a “bigger is better” mentality. You can expect your man to show you these things as if you might be impressed by them. If you are as smart as my woman is, you'll ooh and aah all over the place and tell him how impressed you are. Then he can go on about his business knowing that he's a man.

Now, this isn't to say that he always understands what might be impressive to you. You know how a cat will often bring you a dead mouse? Why would he do that? Is it because he wanted to disgust you? Not in the least. It's just that

He really likes mice,


He was very proud of the fact that he killed it, and


All he has to offer is a dead mouse.

This is like when your man tells you about something really cool that he did at the office with the new scanner/ printer/fax machine. He's not trying to bore you to death. He just wants you to know that he did something cool and that he's a capable man who deserves you. If he had something better than that dead mouse of a boring story about how he saved the company seventy-nine dollars per decade on Post-it notes, believe me, he'd give it to you.