Manslations Page 15

  And that isn't necessarily how men behave in the movies and TV shows that were designed to get you to watch them. If you want a man to behave in ways that they do in the shows you like, it's going to be a struggle, because (a) he might not have watched them, so he doesn't know what you want from him, and (b) they're not real in the first place. No more real than Jack Bauer.

  The best way to use this information is to know what you're up against here. Just know what the images are that he's been watching since he was a kid. And know that they're not so similar to the stuff that they've been showing you.

  __________________

  * Please, please, don't become emotionally wounded just to attract such a man. That's just nuts. And besides, if you're even considering that as a “plan,” well, I'm sure you're plenty emotionally wounded enough already. Lucky!

  CHAPTER 9

  twelve months of holiday

  confusion, solved

  with special bonus section: gift giving

  from the mind of a genius

  Ho ho ho, and happy holidays to you all. I have no idea what holiday is the closest where you are. But even if you are not approaching a major holiday, God knows that I am, so here we are. Stressed out.

  I would like to run through a quick survey of all of the major holidays and how they relate to our subject matter. More specifically, I would like to show you how manslating can really help put many of the major holidays into perspective. Let's just go through the year, starting with one of the most terrifying of all:

  VALENTINE'S DAY

  This is the holiday on which a couple celebrates their love for one another, right? Well, ideally, sure. But in actuality, this holiday is all about the exploitation of male fears perpetrated by the makers of red objects.

  Red teddy bears, cards, mugs, all kinds of candy, teddy bears holding mugs filled with candy. Roses of all shapes, sizes, and prices. Candy roses. Candy roses in the teeth of teddy bears that fit into giant red mugs that say “Cup o' Luv!”

  I used to have a hard time with this holiday. Why? Because this is a holiday in which men are guilt-tripped into opening their wallets to guys in suits who have decided to say, “What do you mean you don't like Valentine's Day? You must not be a very good boyfriend/husband/lover. Shut up and buy something red, will you?”

  Sometimes I would like to go to the corporate headquarters of Hallmark or Russell Stover with a shotgun and a list of demands and go out in a Dog Valentine's Day Afternoon blaze of glory.

  And the diamond commercials. Whew. When I see one of those diamond commercials around Valentine's Day… I can't believe this is true, but it works. I feel like I am failing as a man for not buying some weird S-shaped diamond pendant that they have concocted for my woman to pine after.

  And that's such a shame, given that I am failing as a man for so many other, far more practical reasons.

  Valentine's Day is also one of those checkpoint moments where we have to attempt to reduce the complex question of the overall status of our relationships to the level of a gift. Are we at the “homemade card and mix CD” level? Are we at roses? How many roses? Is twelve too many? Is one too few? Or is one classy and twelve just tacky?

  Basically, we end up spending this one playing thoughtfulness defense.

  (See also “Gift Giving from the Mind of a Genius” at the end of this chapter for more on how men operate on such a terrifying day.)

  After Valentine's Day, there aren't too many holidays that require any manslation for a few months. I don't see too much gender-related confusion on Easter, for example. Unless… your man really, really likes to put on an Easter bonnet and skip around the yard naked, hiding Easter eggs in places that will get him arrested in the South.

  But really, that's less in need of a “manslation” than maybe a “shot of thorazine.”

  FATHER'S DAY

  Father's Day is a great example of how little men are impressed by “meaning” vs. actual function. It's interesting, in the sense that it differs so much from Mother's Day. On Mother's Day, there are flowers and brunches—or at least there had better be, lest there be big, big trouble.

  On Father's Day, what does he get? Maybe an ugly tie or a “World's Greatest Dad” mug? Who knows? Do people even do anything for Father's Day anymore? Most dads probably don't even know when it is.

  What does this tell you? Look at it this way: If your man forgets Mother's Day, there will be much sorrow, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments—it's a total poopstorm. What if you forgot Father's Day? Nothing. He might even be relieved that he's spared the ordeal of pretending that he loves that ridiculous tie. But even if you got him the most meaningful gift in the world, he might be just as happy if everybody just left him alone for a few friggin' minutes.

  But honestly, is anyone here because of their massive, crippling Father's Day troubles? No? Let's move on.

  FOURTH OF JULY

  If there's anything manslatable about the Fourth of July, I suppose that it's one of two holidays on which the man is expected to do something in relation to the food (the other being the carving of the Thanksgiving turkey, which we'll get to in, you know, November).

  Barbecuing. I'm not sure why this is a manly activity, but I think it has to do with the inclusion of an open flame and a chance for serious injury. Makes us feel a little wild and tough to be taming such an element as fire, even if it's just for the purpose of a few hot dogs.

  It's also one of the holidays on which a man is legally allowed, nay, required to watch sports. If he doesn't get to drink beer, eat grilled animal carcasses, and watch a ball-game on the friggin' Fourth of July, we might as well be kicking George Washington and Thomas Jefferson right in the balls.

  HALLOWEEN

  This is an interesting holiday for men, because it is a day on which all women choose to dress like strippers, once they are past the age at which their parents can supervise their dressing habits.

  Could be a slutty baseball player, could be a cat that wants to jump your bones, whatever—as long as it requires revealing clothing. The kind of outfit that would make Lindsay Lohan look in the mirror and say, “Mmm… too slutty?” We love this holiday.

  Just understand, ladies, that when you leave your house dressed like a nymphomaniac nurse, your intentions are more powerful, and the effects more widespread, than you probably had planned. You might have thought that you were going out to a party to dance with your girlfriends, the nymphomaniac pirate girl and the nymphomaniac Girl Scout, then maybe meet some cute guys and make out with them. That was your plan. And it's a great one.

  However.

  See, the stripper outfit isn't a smart weapon. It is not tactical. As you now know, when inciting a male fantasy (and dressing like a stripper has no purpose other than to be a male fantasy, in case you didn't, you know, notice that), you don't get to pick who you hit. Your chosen outfit has a massive A-bomb area of effect that will cause all men within sight of you to lose focus on the real universe.

  The second you leave your house dressed like someone who might just flop over and have sex with somebody, we are all picturing ourselves as that somebody. I haven't even met you, and I don't even know what your costume looks like, and I'm already picturing it. And remember I'm nice, and I love my girlfriend. Doesn't matter.

  Think about it from this perspective. As I've said, we're all (all) thinking about you like that every day anyway. (All.) Just imagine what we'll be thinking about when you're dressed up like a vampirette with a crippling oral fixation.*

  So when your boobs are hanging out there at the bar and you are beset by slack-jawed idiots staring at them and compulsively talking to you, just understand that this is just the way that it will always be on Halloween. And it doesn't matter how quickly or harshly you shut these guys down—the second they are home alone, your memory will be theirs for the humping.

  YOU-CENTRIC HOLIDAYS

  These are your birthday and your anniversary. Lots to learn from some manslation here. Quite a few holi
days smack you right in the face with the “means vs. does” stuff, but these two are the biggest. Your birthday and your anniversary, in fact, are only meaningful. (They are obviously not “functional.”)

  And what's the most common joke made about men and their anniversary/wife's birthday? We forget these things. Why? Well, sometimes we get a little fuzzy on the “abstracts” of a relationship.

  Even though I love my girlfriend 100 percent, I don't really “get” the whole anniversary thing. But I know that she does, so it's cool by me. Hey, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I participated in something that didn't totally make sense to me in order to make sure I didn't get into trouble. (Now that I write that sentence, I think that's a reasonably accurate description of my entire life.)

  The manslation of these holidays comes down to this: Just because he doesn't totally “get” them says absolutely zero about how he feels about you. He doesn't necessarily connect those two things in the way that you do. Now, that doesn't mean he should get a free pass on ignoring these days. But you might have to help him understand that they're important to you without making him feel like a jackass for not making that same connection.

  THANKSGIVING

  The second holiday on which the man must handle the food in some way. He must carve the turkey. He doesn't know how to do it. He doesn't really even want to do it. But if a woman does it, he suddenly doesn't have a penis. I have no idea why this is, but just let him cut the bird, even if he is terrible at it.

  Thanksgiving is also one of the big “visiting the family” holidays. This is always complex. For one thing, men have an interesting relationship with the woman's family. Why? Because in many cases he is shaking hands with the man whose daughter he nails on a regular-enough basis that she feels like bringing him home to meet the family.

  If you watch carefully, there's an interesting moment, however brief, while these two men are shaking hands, when the father has a big, big smile on his face, but his eyes are betraying an urge to cut this guy in half with a chainsaw. And not in a magic trick cabinet kind of way, either, where everybody's okay afterward. And in the eyes of the boyfriend, you can see a moment of, “Hello, sir. Sorry I'm totally banging the holy hell out of your daughter pretty much any chance I get.” This is just good entertainment, if you get the chance to observe it.

  This brings us back to holiday-related sports, only this time combined with visiting the family. If you can manage it, let the man watch sports on Thanksgiving. Even if he's not a big sports fan, after a few hours with your extended family, there seems to be nothing more appropriate than watching a bunch of guys smash into each other as violently as possible. I don't even like football,* but somehow it makes me feel a little better.

  Like, “Hey, if anybody says one more thing about which highway he took to get here as opposed to some other highway that he is not going to take to get home, I'm going to tackle him, and spike a ball on his forehead.”

  CHRISTMAS

  This is a scary one for men. It combines the thoughtfulness required of Valentine's Day, the meaningfulness of an anniversary or birthday, the family interaction of Thanksgiving. Throw in the terrors of gift giving, travel, weather, and possible responsibility for setting up all Christmas lights, and you're looking at a level-five holiday emergency. I haven't even created a “level” system, but this one jumps straight to a five. That's how serious it is. I never realized how much Christmas stressed me out until recently. I just thought it was a coincidence that every year around December 12 or so I would begin a stream of curses that lasts until, say, January 3.

  Christmas is pretty much all about gift giving. Yeah, yeah, yeah—peace and love and good will toward—sure, fine, sure. But for a man in love, hoo boy, it's all about what presents to get. Now that we're here at the Bar Exam of Holidays, the Doctoral Thesis of Thoughtfulness, it's as good a time as any to discuss the male brain as it relates to the giving of gifts.

  SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: GIFT GIVING FROM

  THE MIND OF A GENIUS

  The stress of giving a woman a gift shows up regularly throughout the holidays we've previously discussed: Christmas, Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. It's everywhere. And there's no help in sight. We've got commercials telling us one thing; we're pretty sure you're dropping hints, but we're not positive; all our guy friends are as clueless as we are; and all our female friends ask questions to which we don't know the answers (i.e., “What's her size?” “What colors does she wear?” “What kinds of things does she like?” etc.).

  If we get it wrong, we of course know it immediately. But even if we get it right, we know it's only a temporary reprieve; and soon enough it's present season again, and we're going to be back on the hunt.

  I want to start off by explaining just what it is that gives us such trouble, and then we'll talk about several male “solutions” to this problem.

  First, let's look at how men view the whole process of giving/receiving gifts so that you can understand the issue and maybe even help out.

  What Is a Great Gift?

  If you ask your man for his answer, it will likely be very different from the answer you would give if you were to ask yourself. And why bother? You're you—surely you must know already. In fact, I'd say not to bother asking yourself any questions at all and just focus on what he's thinking, since that's the part you don't know yet.

  As we've discussed several times in this very book, a man is likely to view a gift in terms of what it does, and most women are likely to see a gift for what it means, right?

  How does that help us here? First of all, the ideal gift to get him will do something cool. Most guys love gadgets, technology, and tools. Lots of women don't want to give these things, because they're “not personal” or they're “just useful.” And you can certainly give him whatever you want. But know that he loves stuff that is “just useful.”

  For example, I once saw a man receive a “voltage meter” from his wife for Christmas. It's just what it sounds like—it checks voltage and tells you stuff about it. You know, for when you look at one of your wall sockets and think, “Wonder how much juice that sucker's putting out?” Now, I know that sounds like the least personal gift in the history of the universe. But I swear, the look on his face was like those women on the diamond commercials.

  Once again, let's go back to imagining a dog and yet another way in which your man is like him. If you're going to give your dog a present (and for the love of all that is holy, why do that?), what's he going to prefer? A really beautiful collar with his name engraved on it and the date when you first picked him up from the pound? Or how about a steak?

  So that's what gift receiving is like for a guy, and it makes it very difficult when he wants to buy something for you. Most of the things that you might want for a gift? Yeah, he doesn't even see a lot of that stuff. As a gender we don't care very much about clothes, jewelry, and things that smell nice. Well, some men do. And they are called “gay.”

  Seriously, if your man can pick out a really pretty dress for you, make sure that he had help with the purchase. Personally, I don't even know what a scarf, say, is for. Do people still wear them? Is it like a Boy Scout neckerchief kind of a deal? And don't get me started about earrings, or I'll break out in hives.

  And of course there's the actual act of shopping. We don't shop in a “thoughtful” way, for the most part. We look at “browsing” as a failure and waste of time. My goal in a store? Get in, get what I came for, and leave before a salesperson thinks to ask if they can help me find something. If I'm just looking around, I'm not doing it right.

  The Appropriate “Gift Level”

  Depending upon how long you've been together, your man might worry that he's going to miscalculate the level of the gift as it relates to how deep into the relationship you two are in at that particular holiday.

  If you have been dating for a month, what does he get you? How about six months? How about a year? We have no idea. All we know is, if our aim is to
o far off the mark in either direction, we're in for a really uncomfortable time.

  Men often find themselves playing defense. As in, “Okay, I can get her earrings, I guess. That's safe. But they can't have diamonds in them, or else I'm in big trouble. But they also can't be plastic, or she'll never have sex with me again.”

  Complicating matters further, when you are in the very beginning of a relationship, we know that we could give you a ring from a crackerjack box, and you'll love us for how sweet and thoughtful that was. But we also know that there is a moment when we graduate from that time. We're not sure when it happens, but we know when it does, we've got to get you something for real.

  A Word about Thoughtfulness

  I think I have finally learned what a woman means when she says that she “just wants her man to put some thought into a gift.” I still can't actually do it, mind you. But I can mimic it in such a way that we're both happy.