Men who understand women

I learned one very important lesson from this 6 minute instructional video (NSFW; hat tip: Anna). I will paraphrase it this way: To get a woman [mother] to drop her vaginapanties, give her little ones [children] a muthafuckin freezepop.

Concrete. Simple. Measurable. I like it.

But, after much internal deliberation, I think I’ve identified the hole in the argument: How do you convince the woman to come to your manpalace in the first place? A freezepop is not gonna do it. I’ve tried that.

It should come as no surprise that I am puzzled by the female half of the species. For instance, just tonight I ran into a dilemma at the Bojangles drive-thru window. (For you non-North Carolina peeps, Bojangles is the crack cocaine of fast food joints.) The dilemma will be familiar to the average fellas in the audience: Was that girl flirting with me, or mocking me?

It’s so hard to tell. She seemed really happy when she handed me my Supreme Dinner, but just as it’s really hard for a casual observer to figure out whether two animals are fighting or mating, it’s really hard for the average guy to figure out whether a woman is flirting with him or mocking him. I couldn’t tell whether Miss Bojangles thought I was cute or whether she was laughing at the fact that I am in bad need of a haircut and that I haven’t shaved for 4 days. Or, more likely, her giddyness had nothing to do with me. Damn it.

But I am equally as puzzled by the subset of males that seem to understand the female half of the species.

Last year my parents provided food and shelter to a German high school student named Lars. Lars gets women. Every time you leave the kid unattended for 5 minutes, you look back and you think for a moment that he has disappeared. Then you realize that he is just somewhere in the middle of that cluster of lustful young women. It’s at this point that we start making plans to either helicopter him out of there or get a baseball bat.

The best way I know how to describe Lars is that he is like Justin Bieber without Usher as a crutch. He doesn’t necessarily look or act like the Biebster, but he has that kind of effect on young women. When we shipped him back to Germany, there were girls at the airport weeping like their life had just been taken from them. I’m exaggerating less than you think.

I wish I could tell you his secrets (or do I?), but I haven’t been able to figure them out. He’s not particularly tall – he’s actually pretty short – and he has no discernible characteristics that, to my eye, exude wealth or power. I am trying to think of some traits that might separate him from the average male. Here are some ideas:

-- Thinks watching sports is lame, but loves to play them.
-- Will try anything once.
-- Very approachable. Has an easy smile.
-- Incredible (ridiculous) attention to detail with his clothing.
-- Does gymnastics.

At this point you’re probably thinking you’ve got it figured out: He’s gay. That’s what I thought when I read his bio for the first time. But you need only see him with women for a few minutes to realize that these were not platonic relationships.

Lars certainly makes me jealous, but there’s another guy I don’t even know that makes me even jealous-er. My sister Meg was just in Brazil taking some students there, as she does. As part of the trip, they spent a weekend in the rainforest. This section of the rainforest covers 1,235 acres and there is exactly one person who lives there. Let’s call him Steve. Steve grew up in the rainforest, the son of an indigenous mother and a German immigrant, but at some point – I don’t know when – he was the only person left living there. Let me make this perfectly clear: Other than some occasional tourists, Steve is the ONLY person in the rainforest. There are no women to be courted.

And yet, Steve has been married. NINE times.

I may not so much as touch nine women in my life. This is humiliating.

I asked Meg if she knows his secrets. She's not even sure where he got his women from. There’s only one tiny little fishing village anywhere near the place.

I have no conclusions or insights to leave you with. But if I learn the secrets, I’ll be sure not to tell you.