What Every Woman Wants.

    How the hell would I know?  I can talk to a man for 10 minutes. I'll tell you pretty much what he likes, what he doesn't like.  I can tell you what will make him happy, what will likely piss him off.  I can tell you if he's a cat person or a dog person.   Is he a Prius driver or a pick 'em up guy.  I can tell you how he's likely to vote.  Apparently, I can spend over 20 years with a woman and never have a clue.  Not the slightest.
    Here's just two small examples:  My wife, one day, looked at me and said, " Sometimes, I just hate you."
    To which I kind of jokingly replied,  "Jesus, we've been married for 10 years if you don't hate me you just haven't been paying attention. This is a marriage, not a prom date."  To this day,  all I have to do is say, "prom date," and she gets madder 'an hell.  I figured she knew familiarity breeds contempt from time to time even among friends. I guess not. That guessing thing seems to be as close as I get.
    Ten or so years later at the celebration of some anniversary or other I, as a joke, said the longevity of our relationship portrayed a remarkable lack of imagination on her part.  It was meant as a remark on her charm, poise and beauty and my oafish lack of any grace.  I have pretty forcefully been given to understand she took it as me saying she was slow witted.  When I figured out how she took that innocent remark I didn't say any of the things I was thinkin.  I may be insensitive but I'm not effen stupid.
    It got me, of course, to thinking about Andrew Dice Clay.  Men are terribly misunderstood. Nothing Clay said years ago would be funny if he had been serious.  Someone should have explained reductio absurdum to Nora Dunn and of course Sinead O'Connor passed from the ridiculous to the sublime long ago.
    Clay, one time said, a man only argues when he knows he's wrong.  If he knows he's right he just says, "Shut up."  That is true but I sure can't see, in retrospect, what good it does to know it's true.
     I'd like to say we should treat the fairer sex as though they are speaking some imperfectly understood foreign language.  Unfortunately, most American men react to someone speaking a foreign language  by speaking louder and more slowly, mixing in a few words of the foreign tongue in incorrect, tortured context sometimes with tragic but usually just hilarious result.  It's sort of like a republican politician endorseing feminism.  Everyone is much better off talking about what they understand.  If the word, "whatever" wasn't taken as an insult it would be the best response.  I've tried several times to say it with sincere feeling. Yeah, that don't work.
    In the end, I think Ambrose Bierce said it best. True Love is a mental disorder usually cured by marriage but I also like Thurber, who inspired the very funny " The War Between Men and Women."  It is a war and we as men, bring to the battle better resources, strength, wealth, maybe even intellect and therefore are destined eternally to lose.
    See, I told ya I didn't know. 

    Whatever.