Manslations (26 page)
Authors: Jeff Mac
This one isn't always easy for women to believe. But yes, men are rarely very sneaky about their feelings, desires, needs with you. If he calls you in the middle of the night to have sex and then you don't hear from him for three weeks, when he calls you again in the middle of the night to have sex, do not look for the deep meaning here. The meaning is that he only thinks of you every three weeks, when he is in the mood to have sex with you. It doesn't matter how great the sex is/was. It doesn't matter how sweet he talks on that phone call. His behavior tells you all you need to know.
The point is,
don't delve.
Just stop it. Don't try to imagine all the possible circumstances that are making him act however he is acting. If you are doing this, you are thinking too hard about it. Don't bother. Save your strength. Ask yourself, “Okay, if a creature that had
no
brain at all was behaving this way, why might it be doing it?”
Every woman should have heard this one about a zillion times by now (at least a couple of times in this very book, if you were paying close attention), but it bears repeating. Number one, it never,
ever
works. And number two, it's not nice. That's what he's like. If you can't live with it, you're with the “wrong guy,” not a “great new hobby.”
And maybe, most importantly, you don't want this anyway. You don't want a guy who needs to change to become the person you want. That's not even fun. You want someone who fits well with you, even though you and he are so different. Which brings me to…
I know that secretly you
love
not knowing what he's thinking. And he loves not being able to figure you out. It's fun. And when you're with the right person, it's constantly surprising, sometimes frustrating, but all worth the trip.
Well, I suppose that is that, my delicate butterflies. I hope that at least one idea in this book has been helpful to you. Actually, I hope a lot more of them were, but I guess at least that number should not be zero.
I hope that you have a great time trying to figure this stuff out. Have fun—it's very satisfying to take the behavior of someone of the opposite sex and to translate it into something that you can understand and work with. The first time you do it, you will be so pleased with yourself, you won't be able to stand it. You will become drunk with power.
Regardless, I hope you find all the love and sex you can stand. And if by some bizarre, insane, barely worth mentioning, outside chance I haven't solved every single relationship problem you've ever had—ludicrous, I know!—hey, drop by my website, and I'll see what I can do.
THE END…
…OR IS IT ONLY THE BEGINNING…?
WELL… NO, IT'S PRETTY MUCH THE END
GLOSSARY
the phrase book
A
s you can see below, we've got two sections, just like in a foreign language phrase book: Man-to-Woman and Woman-to-Man.
*
| He Says | Manslation |
| “That was fun, we'll have to do it again sometime.” | Absolutely nothing. He could as easily have just done the Charlie Brown “wah wah wah wah wah ” talk. He only said this to end the date without incident. |
| “I'm not a good boyfriend.” | I've done something very, very wrong already or am planning on doing so. At the very least, I know that I don't trust myself, so you definitely should take my word for it. Bail out now. |
| “I don't care where we go for dinner.” | Oh please, God, will you please make up your mind? I'm dying over here. I really do not care where we go, and so I want you to make the decision in case you do. If you don't, let's just go any freaking where. |
| “What? Honey, of course I don't find HER attractive.” | I do find her attractive, and the sexual part of my brain was just thinking about her naked. Please stop asking about this, you don't wanna know. |
| “I give great backrubs.” | Please, if you have sex with me, I'll do everything I can to make you like it. * |
| “You should come check out my (insert name of attraction—river-view apartment, sailboat, marmot ranch) sometime.” | I would like you to have sex with me at my (insert name of attraction), and I'm hoping that if you go look at it with me, we can make that happen. |
| “I'm just not looking for a relationship right now.” | I'm not looking for a relationship with you right now. (Even Hannibal Lecter's looking for a relationship right now. Granted, the one he's after will probably involve herbs and/or spices and preheating his oven, but the point stands.) |
| “I just got out of a relationship, and I don't think I'm ready.” | I'm only recently single, and I'm not lonely enough right now to date you. |
| “I'm not looking for a real ‘commitment’ right now.” | I'm looking for some sex, no strings attached, and I'm hoping you'll oblige me. However, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't go for it if I put it in those terms. |
| “I think of you as more of a friend.” | I don't want to have sex with you. |
| “I want to… but I don't want to mess up our friendship.” | I want to have sex, but I don't want to have any responsibility to you afterward. |
| “Look, I'm a passionate person….” | Expect all kinds of erratic behavior with no apologies. |
| “Well, I have ADD/Asperger's/ depression/etc., so….” | See “Look, I'm a passionate person…” |
| “That woman's shirt was really weird, did you see that?” | I was absolutely staring at that woman's boobs, and I'm just making sure I'm covered with an alibi if you spotted me doing it. |
| “Your friend—what was her name? She was really fun!” | I am picturing her naked right now. |
| “I've been meaning to call you, but work just got crazy busy. We should hang out sometime.” | Say it with me: booty call! |
| “I could never date a woman who is constantly asking, ‘Am I fat? Do I look fat in this?’” | I have never been in a relationship longer than a month. |
| “We're basically broken up. In a way, we broke up a long time ago.” | We broke up yesterday. Well, sort of. We're probably going to break up soon. Want to have sex? |
YOU SAY IT)
| She Says | Manslation |
|---|---|
| “We have to talk” | Uh-oh, I'm in big trouble. What did I do? Quick, damage control! Get ready to say whatever gets us off the hook! |
| “Where do you see this relationship going?” | She wants to get married— now. Either that or she wants to break up— now. |
| “What are you thinking/feeling right now?” | (Insert that sound your TV makes after a station goes off the air.) |
| “Do you think she's attractive?” | Danger. Trick question. Quickly say, “No, God no, honey!” Do not, under any circumstances, pause to think! |
| “Do I look fat in this?” | Red alert! Do not look at her body. Just tell her no no no. |
| “Do you remember what I was wearing on our first date?” | Oh man, I'm screwed. I don't even remember what I'm wearing right now unless I look down and check. |
| “Notice anything different about me?” (i.e. fishing for a compliment on your new hairstyle/tattoo/ piercing) | Okaaaaay… Let's see… what did she look like yesterday? Think, damn you, think! |
| “Do you think you'll want to have kids someday?” | Her biological clock is about to punch me in the face. |
| “Can you please (insert name of chore you want him to do)?” | Okay, here's what we'll do: Say, “Sure, no problem.” And that's it. Hopefully, this will all blow over and she'll forget we had this talk. |
| “Listen, can you please just actually do (insert name of same chore)?” | Okay, it's not going away. How can I do this without actually, you know, doing it? |
| “Will you please just ask someone for directions?” | Stay on target. We are not— repeat not —lost. We'll get there on our own. For we are mighty! |
__________________
* I imagine that's what those phrase books are like. I took Latin, for which they don't bother making phrase books, since your chances of meeting either (a) the pope or (b) an ancient Roman centurion are pretty slim.
* This one is actually used by both genders.
acknowledgments
F
irst of all, I'd be remiss if I didn't begin with major thanks to my editor, Shana Drehs and her intrepid assistant, Sara Kase over at Sourcebooks. Without these two geniuses steering the process, this book would have ended up the literary equivalent of me walking around all day with my fly unzipped. And not in a good way.
I want to thank my literary agent, the very badassed Holly Bemiss, whose belief in this project and in me as a writer helped make this thing happen. And thanks so much to Erin for introducing me to Holly.
Special thanks to the unbelievably talented stand-up comic, Becky Donohue, who was one of the first manslatees and an early champion of my career as a comic.
A quick nod to JoAnn Grigioni at Comedy Central, who is singlehandedly destroying the image of the “industry douchebag” by somehow managing to be both fantastic at her job and also incredibly fun, nice, and human at the same time.
I'd also like to acknowledge Peter Hedges, a great writer and a great guy, who generously agreed to sit down and talk with me about how to go from “wanting to write” to “actually writing.” (Not that I actually followed his completely sensible advice or anything… but hey, nobody ever said I had common sense. No, I mean literally nobody ever said that.)