Red Green's Beginner's Guide to Women Read online

  POSITION AVAILABLE

  • Eligible bachelor looking for wife.

  • Applicant must be young, attractive and personable.

  • Full time position—24/7. For life.

  • Duties include cooking, cleaning, laundry, intimacy, birthing, breastfeeding, nursing, parenting and assorted household chores.

  • Successful applicant will be expected to also have a well-paying job outside the home.

  • Remuneration will be on a profit-sharing basis. Wife will contribute her entire income to the central fund and will then share in any profits once all household bills have been paid.

  • Engager is offering 50 per cent partnership position, redeemable through divorce or death.

  • Retirement is not an option.

  • Days off will be determined through mutual agreement or marital argument.

  • Employment will commence with official ceremony (wedding) followed by celebratory welcome-aboard party (reception). Size and duration of party to be based on what the applicant’s father can afford.

  • Equal-opportunity employer.

  • Female lawyers need not apply.

  You’ll never have to worry if your bride loves you. She must if she’s taking that job.

  ANOTHER WORLD

  Before you get too far along towards your goal of closing the deal on a life partner, you have to realize that you’re not just adding a person to your life, you’re adding a world. The fully realized adult human being ends up living in five different worlds and, although you live in them simultaneously, it is very dangerous to have any two of them collide.

  The first world is yourself. This is the person you know the best and have spent the most time with. There are things you say and do, to and for this person, that you would never say or do to or for any other human being. You have many thoughts that you never share, which is good because it allows you to keep friends and stay out of prison. Your own self is the first world you arrive in and the last one you leave. It is the world of your ego and, although very important, it needs to be a home base from which to explore other worlds. Historically, men who remain in this first world have bizarre lives—Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan, Donald Trump.

  The second world is your family. You treat your family differently than anyone else in the world. They created you, fed you, clothed you, educated you, disciplined you and empowered you. They are your investors. When you’re talking to your family, you’re talking to your shareholders. They don’t think it’s funny that you never pay your parking tickets and have a beer keg in your bedroom. You have to keep reassuring your family that everything’s fine. Keep reminding them of other great people who struggled early and then finally made it. Make Colonel Sanders your role model. That will buy you time and keep the investors investing. If you stop here at the two-world mark, you’ll be a lifetime victim of arrested development and never reach your true potential. Remember the Cartwrights from Bonanza? If you’re too young, just think of the Kardashians but without the dress code and fake weddings.

  The third world is your friends. Actions and opinions that your family finds disgusting, your friends find entertaining. As the ultimate compliment, when you do something incredibly stupid, instead of criticizing, your friends will attempt to top it. And sadly, you encourage each other. Whenever you hear about some prank that involves alcohol, nudity and the principal’s car being found on the roof of the gymnasium, it’s rarely the product of one kid working alone. This third world is the most dangerous because there’s no “voice of reason.” That’s why, when the cops ask the bunch of you why you packed the school bus heater with pig manure, there’s no voice of reason. Heck, after ten minutes on the bus, there’s barely a voice.

  The fourth world is optional. It’s made up of your business associates. It’s optional because to live in that world you have to have a job where you work with other people. Ranger Gord does not live in that world. Or, in fact, in any of these worlds. But if you’re lucky enough to have that kind of job, you know that you have to watch yourself to keep it. You don’t want your boss to see you at Hooters. Especially if his daughter works there. You have to put on airs with these people. These are not the same as your friends. You can’t tell these people the funny jokes. Just the clean ones.

  And now you’re contemplating adding a fifth world to this menagerie. Because once you find this girl and start courting her, you will say and do things that you’ve never said or done in any of the other worlds. If all goes well, it will be the best world yet and there will be a temptation to abandon the other worlds and just live in this one. Don’t do it. She may want to be the most important thing in your world, but she doesn’t want to get there by being the only thing in your world. She wants you to have plenty of choices and to pick her, rather than just set her as your default. And it doesn’t make you a better person by excluding yourself, your family, your friends and your workmates. Instead, it makes you a weasly little pathetic, spineless love slave, working 24/7 and being paid with sex. And when you get older you won’t even be able to cash the cheques.

  But it’s not enough to keep all the worlds—you have to keep all the worlds apart. You can’t go out with your buddies and bring your girlfriend along. You can’t have your workmates go bowling with your family. Even mixing your girlfriend in with your family is dangerous and something that should only be done on special occasions like Christmas or whenever your family is mad at you. To me, the perfect day is when you go to work and have a few laughs with the crew, take your mom out for lunch, have a beer with your buddies after work, be home for dinner and the evening with your sweetheart, then set your internal alarm for 2 a.m. so you can wake up and think about things. Just make sure you don’t wake her up. Unless you want to.

  BUYER’S REMORSE

  You’ve been going steady for a while. You have shared a lot of your secrets and have made a bunch of good and bad discoveries about each other. You are no longer seen as two individuals. You are what they call an “item.” But just like in a department store, there are lots of different kinds of items. There are good-quality items, there are poor-quality items, there are damaged items, there are even discontinued items. What you won’t find are items sitting on the display rack for years on end.

  Being an item means you’re farther along than just dating, but you’re still in a transitional phase. And someday soon you will be faced with the question of how much longer this relationship will go on. You’d like that day to be about ten years away. Your girlfriend was thinking this Friday. Her father was thinking last Friday.

  You might think it’s a lot easier to make a commitment now than it was when you barely knew each other. It’s not. You can’t imagine how something looks once you’ve seen it. Reality is the hardest thing in the world to base a decision on. That’s the whole appeal of blind dates. Everything’s great up until you open that front door.

  The best option, of course, is to not make a decision at all. That’s the manly way. But you’ve been doing that for a year and you’ve just been notified that not everyone in the relationship is really pleased with the status quo. So with Plan A being a nonstarter, you have three options left:

  Plan B: Get more intertwined. Move in together. Propose marriage. Propose something somewhat resembling marriage. Whatever happens, it will be an indication to her, her friends, her family—her father—that this thing continues to move forward towards the inevitable goal of the two of you living together as man and wife, or at least as man and woman.

  Plan C: Take a break. A defined period during which each of you can step back for a few months and not see each other. You can date other people and have total freedom and then, when the three months is done, you will know if this is the perfect partner for you. When this idea is presented, it has to be done in a carefully worded, clear, impersonal voice—which is to say it has to be in her voice. If you say any of this, you are a dead man.

  Plan D: Break up.* Get the hell outta there. Head for the hills.
Tell her it’s not working for you. Tell her it’s you, not her. Tell her whatever you want, just get out of the relationship and never look back. You’ll have to pick the perfect time to do this. Like when her father is away.

  I know you kind of like Plan D. You’ll even tell your buddies that you’ve got a good mind to just dump her and move on. That’s not true—you don’t have a good mind. So chances are you’ll put your doubts and fears and courage aside and ask her to spend the rest of her life with you.

  IS IT LOVE OR JUST GAS?

  One of the toughest problems facing a young man with a raging libido and no acceptable outlet is knowing whether he’s in love or just reacting to some baser instinct like lust, greed or hopeless desperation. I answered a letter from a Lodge Member (L.M.) on this subject and am reprinting it here as a way to help you decide whether you’re looking for a life partner or just a fun way to fill in thirty-five to forty minutes.

  Dear Red,

  I have met a new girl at school and I can’t get her out of my mind. I think about her all the time. I walk by her house three or four times a day hoping to get a glimpse of her. I’ve lost my appetite and have trouble sleeping. I’m hoping one day to get up enough nerve to ask her out or at least talk to her, but before I get too committed to this thing, I wanted to ask you if you think I’m in love or am I just weird.

  L.M.

  Dear L.M.,

  No, you’re not just weird. You’re weird. But you’re not just weird. It’s hard for me to completely evaluate your situation because I don’t ha ve enough information, but for starters, the fact that you’d sit down and write me this letter doesn’t sound like a person with a very busy schedule. So I would suggest that you could just be looking for a diversion from your boring life of playing video games and writing letters to international television celebrities.

  Similarly, when you say, “I think about her all the time,” I need to know what you were thinking about prior to meeting her. If you’ve previously been thinking about cold fusion or genetic biochemistry, that would be more significant than if you’re been thinking about quadruple cheese-bacon burgers and Pamela Anderson.

  You say you can’t get her out of your mind, but that may just be because there’s not much else in there. I also question the loss of appetite. You didn’t send a picture, so I’m just guessing here, but I would say that if you’re under 5’6" and weigh more than 300 pounds, you haven’t lost your appetite, you’ve just worn it out. I’m sure if you let it rest for a while, it will return.

  And when you say you’re not sleeping, do you mean at night or during class?

  I don’t have enough of the facts to make a conclusive decision, but that’s never stopped me before, so here goes: I would say no, you’re not in love. I say that for three reasons:

  1) That’s the easiest thing for me to say and I don’t care.

  2) If you’re not in love, me saying that will allow you to cut bait and move on. And I’m sure the girl will thank me.

  3) (This is the big one.) Even though I say you’re not in love and you believe you’re not in love, if you in fact are in love, nothing you do or say will change that. Some hidden powerful force will make you act on it.

  So start focusing on the girl. She would probably enjoy a letter. At least a lot more than us international television celebrities do.

  Red Green

  LOOK FOR THE SIGNS

  I was driving down the highway the other day and I noticed the usual array of traffic signs—speed limit, cattle crossing, etc. And it struck me that most of these signs are not there to inform the motorist, they’re there to remind him of things he already knows. That’s because men in particular are easily distracted and need reminders to keep them aware of their environment. It also struck me that the same approach would be helpful in the bedroom. A man is never more distracted than when he’s feeling amorous, so some highway signs in the bedroom might greatly improve his performance. Here are a few to start with:

  WHY MEN WON’T COMMIT

  Now, I’m going to say some things here, and I know some people are going to say, “Well, that’s not true because not all men are like that—my George is not like that,” and I’m sure he’s not, but let me address those concerns while trying to hide my actual reaction, which is extreme apathy. So, okay, maybe not all men are like the following. Maybe not even most men. Maybe not even some men. Maybe it’s just me. But that’s all I’ve got and it’s gotten me this far, so I’m going to stick with it.

  Okay, here’s my point: men are hardwired not to commit. If you look at almost every species in nature, the male dominates a herd of females and treats them all pretty much the same, not really committing to any. Oh, I guess a certain bull might prefer a certain cow based on the sexy way she chews her cud or the size of her udder, but it’s very unusual. By design, the man’s role is mostly superficial and almost unnecessary. Other than the minute and a half of fertilization (or three minutes for those sensitive French bulls), the male is not really a factor in the propagation of most species. So it’s only natural that, as men, it’s very difficult for us to think about the long term. We look at Grandpa, and if that’s long-term thinking, yikes.

  Even the toys we choose are for the short term. We’re pretty much bored with them as soon as we open the box. Nobody buys a Corvette thinking they’ll drive it forever. I know men buy minivans, but I think they’re forced to. How many single men buy them?

  I also think part of the problem is that men have more trouble dealing with disappointment. Women can take it in their stride. Men, not so much. Disappointment is personal and it hurts. And for men who aren’t good at feeling emotions, disappointment may be the only one you get. So after years of watching commercials or sending away cereal box tops or having Ed McMahon tell us we may already have won, it’s understandable to see why men avoid opportunities to be let down. When we see a toy or a trip or a woman advertised, we’re so gullible we imagine how much fun we’re going to have and how great it’s going to be and we get wound up. Our parents try to warn us not to get too excited, but it’s no use. It’s our job to get excited. If men didn’t get excited, the human race would have ended fifty thousand years ago. We’re programmed to get excited, which also makes us programmed to be disappointed.

  And that’s why commitment is so hard for us. We really enjoy the excitement part, but that other thing is hard to take. So men need to be coached in that area. Rather than criticize us for being too excited, I think women need to focus on our disappointment and convince us that our eventual disappointment in them will be far less than our disappointment in any other life choice we could make and will absolutely be more pleasant than our disappointment in ourselves.

  When it’s time to commit, it’s also time to decide what you’re committing to, and by how much. Be aware that women’s liberation created a lot more power for them and a lot more choices for men. Cohabitation was no longer thought of as living in sin. In some rare cases, having a purely physical relationship became acceptable to women. (It had always been acceptable to men.) And with the rise in the divorce rate, there were financial considerations—marrying a divorcée meant her losing her alimony payments, which might be the couple’s only income. Also, if you suspect the marriage is not going to go the distance, it’s a lot cheaper to not even start the trip.

  In my personal view, I prefer being married because it’s a legally binding contract, and I didn’t think a woman would ever put up with me forever unless the courts got involved. And marriage demands a lot more of you. Being married is like serving a prison term. Living common-law is like being under house arrest.

  If you decide to live together, it’s obviously less of a commitment but there are even different levels within that arrangement:

  Most Committed. Suggest that the two of you find a new home and live there together. This is going to take more time and involves each of you making a life change.

  Less Committed. Ask her to move in with you. You make no sacrifice
s. Your only changes are you’ve added a free cook and cleaner, with benefits.

  Least Committed. Move in with her. You get all of the above, rent-free.

  I’m thinking these relationships have to be less stable. I know the divorce rate is up there, but after watching Judge Judy for seventeen years, I’d say the living-together thing has an even higher failure rate. So I suggest you man up and do the proposal thing.

  But it’s tricky. You have to pick the right moment and do it in the right way, and mainly, you have to be absolutely sure that she is going to say yes. Moose T. tells of his unfortunate experience with Cindy M., the star of the Possum Lake intermediate women’s softball team. Moose was umpiring the game and had arranged for a Cessna 172 to fly over the stadium when Cindy was up to bat. It was trailing a banner saying, “Cindy, will you marry me?—Moose.” Cindy hit a soaring pop fly that brought the plane, and Moose, down. He revoked the proposal and called her out on the infield fly rule. He forgot to make sure she would say yes.

  Stinky P. had the complete opposite experience. He was standing next to his girlfriend when his trick knee let go and he dropped to the ground. He reached up for her hand and said, “Will you carry me?” She burst into tears and said yes. She thought she was marrying him; he thought she was carrying him. Ultimately they were both right.

  THE PROPOSAL

  One of the best ways to ensure a positive outcome is to keep the whole process very traditional. Start by asking her father’s permission—even if you have to do it during prison visiting hours. And stick to the script. Tell him you’d like to ask for his daughter’s hand. Don’t add that you’re also interested in a few other parts.