Why Men Behave Like Morons

We’ve been trained to…

Semi-recently a friend flew to meet me at spring training and he was flying on one of those airlines with a Hunger Games seating policy and since an Alaskan Airways jet had just lost an emergency door, nobody wanted to sit in the emergency exit row so my friend took one of those empty seats.

My thrill-seeking buddy said he didn’t worry because he kept his seatbelt on the entire way, but – never knowing when to leave well enough alone – I pointed out that the reason nobody got sucked out of that Alaskan Airways jet was due to the fact that the plane hadn’t reached altitude yet so there wasn’t much loss of air pressure, but if my friend’s jet lost a door at 20,000 feet not only would he get sucked out, but it would probably take the seat he was strapped to with him.

Because if the James Bond movies have taught me anything it’s that with enough air pressure even fat slobs like Auric Goldfinger can get sucked through a window the size of a coffee can.

And if the James Bond movies have taught me two things, it’s that there are loads of hot women named things like “Pussy Galore” and “Honey Ryder” and “Holly Goodhead” and “Bond Girl #10” that are just dying to have sex with guys in tuxedos who order martinis shaken not stirred and introduce themselves last name first, as in:

“My name is Zerr, Lou Zerr.”

Followed by a cool one-liner like:

“If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against that woman next to you while I watch and make a video that I promise not to show to anybody except all my ‘friends’ on Facebook?”

ATTENTION WOMEN: If you wonder why men behave like morons while hitting on you it’s because movies and men’s magazines and TV commercials tell us behaving like morons works.

And we have at long last arrived at today’s topic…

The Media Encouraging Men To Be Idiots, So It’s Not Totally Our Fault

We’re going to start this explanation of idiotic male behavior with a story from the 1970s about an art exhibit in San Diego and for the life of me I can’t remember why I was there. Probably a female-related activity because as all guys know, we do a lot of stuff we don’t really want to do to please the women in our lives which you might think would result in a national surplus of highly-satisfied women, but doesn’t seemed to have worked out that way.

As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself…

I’m at this art exhibit consisting entirely of ceramic tiles that look like something left over after remodeling your bathroom and the tiles are wrapped in copper wire and when the woman in charge of the exhibit asked me what I thought of the display, I said:

“If you were walking through the city dump and saw one of these on the ground would you stop and say: ‘Oh, look…art!’ ”

To her credit, she burst out laughing.

As sometimes happens, one thing led to another and the next week we went out on date and after a cocktail or two she confessed she was one of the people who made extra money by writing those fake letters for men’s magazines that start out:

“You’ll never believe what happened to me…”

Which is a pretty logical opening statement because if you’ve got a three-digit IQ you don’t believe those stories where a guy takes a night class in accounting and the hot accounting teacher asks him to stick around after class for some “personal instruction” and they wind up having sex on her desk, eventually joined by her even-hotter roommate. Those stories are bullshit, but go a long way in explaining why guys act like morons and think yelling obnoxious shit at women on the street will result in having sex.

Men think women are just dying to have sex with complete strangers because over and over again we’ve been told that women are just dying to have sex with complete strangers and we’re incredibly gullible on this subject, mainly because we want it to be true.  

(If you’re a woman who enjoys having sex with complete strangers, bless your heart and any other body part you care to name, but like college pitchers who throw 100 MPH fastballs, there aren’t nearly enough of you to go around.)

In any case…

Start paying attention and you might notice a whole bunch of commercials where a geeky guy has a smoking hot girlfriend (or, if the commercial’s director had the budget for it, two smoking hot girlfriends) and the subliminal message being sent is that if we just use the body spray, hair gel or torque wrench being advertised, Salma Hayek will immediately drop her bag of groceries on the sidewalk, strip off her clothing and want to get busy in the back of your 1994 Ford Escort. 

Of course, those movies and ads and TV commercials were probably made by men (more idiots) so it’s the blind leading the blindly obnoxious and on some level we know the world doesn’t really work that way, which doesn’t stop us from buying body spray, hair gel and torque wrenches.

Hope (among other things) springs eternal.

The Double-Edged Sword of Pornography

When I was in grade school we spent a mortifying week on “sex education” featuring charts, graphs, slide shows and embarrassed teachers attempting to explain how babies were made and the program’s lack of clarity was demonstrated when, at the end of the week of obscure instruction that by comparison made the Rosetta Stone seem easy to comprehend, one of my fellow students said he understood the role played by sperm and eggs, but didn’t understand how the sperm got to the eggs.

Our flustered eight-grade teacher spent the next five minutes sweating like he was being interrogated by the Gestapo while explaining the sperm delivery process and included the memorable question:

“Did you ever get a funny feeling while riding a horse?”

When you’re trying to avoid words like “penis” and “vagina” and “ejaculation” explaining sex is at best difficult and at worst impossible, but nevertheless through the use of hand gestures, smoke signals and hastily drawn blackboard art (he may have also mentioned the Infield Fly Rule and Brown versus the Board of Education) our teacher managed to convey the idea that a man’s penis went inside a woman’s vagina and then they both danced the Hokey Pokey until “the train arrives at the station” to which my confused classmate said:

“Well…OK, but my sister’s pregnant and I don’t think she would do that.”

The sister in question went to the local high school and I’m pretty sure she didn’t want her little brother announcing her pregnancy in a grammar school Sex Ed class.

My most vivid memory of the incident is our teacher putting his head down on his desk and laughing until tears streamed down his cheeks and all things considered, it was a pretty great way to end our formal sexual education which nevertheless left a lot of us with unanswered questions.

Questions that weren’t fully answered until I saw my first porn film which showed you exactly what went where and what you did once you got it there.

So that’s the upside of pornography (graphic clarity) but the downside is men being left with the impression that women like to do things that many women aren’t interested in and wouldn’t do unless they’re paid a significant sum of money which they really need because they’re trying to pay back that drug dealer their boyfriend ripped off.  

And – once again – most pornography is made by men whose often sophomoric and sometimes misogynistic work encourages other men to act like idiots.

In Conclusion

Guys, quit yelling obnoxious shit at strange women on the street because they don’t like it unless you’re yelling that obnoxious shit from a Ferrari 812 GTS which might improve your odds of picking up women, but then you’re going to wind up with women who will date a crude imbecile as long as he’s a rich crude imbecile and we’ve all seen how that’s worked out for Donald Trump’s wives.

I’m also under the general impression that pick-up lines are considered stupid and women will decide if they’re interested in you before you ever open your mouth and if you’re dressed like your current home address is Cardboard Box # 4, Under A Freeway Overpass, Anywhere, USA, smell like you have part-time job herding camels and appear to get your haircut at the local Benihani a great pick-up line isn’t going to help.

But a bad pickup line can ruin a good first impression, so maybe just say something witty like:

“Hi, my name’s Bob.”

Because if a woman is interested she wants to talk to you already and any excuse will do and if woman isn’t interested performing the “You Complete Me” monologue from Jerry McGuire isn’t going to help.

I also think instead of telling a woman all about yourself you might want to ask a few questions about her instead, although I have to admit I’m way out over my skis on this one.

(OK, I’m starting to realize I may be yet another idiotic male giving moronic advice to other idiotic men, so women, feel free to weigh in with comments, which – being a man – I might ignore because I’ve been trained to do that, so get off my back, it’s not my fault and now I’m going to a sports bar to sulk and pound boilermakers.)

So that’s my advice to men and here’s my advice to women:

Be patient, you’re working with damaged material.