What Women Talk About When They Talk About Men Men are so naive sometimes. My boyfriend and I were having one of our liberated discussions about men, women, love, and lust, and in relating a conversation he'd had with "the boys" the other day, he disclosed some illuminating truths to me. They were in an intensely reflective mood, as men will be after splitting a fifth of Jack Daniels. They waxed obsessive, so he reported, on that junction between thigh and belly revealed by a high-cut leotard, on suntanned blonds, and on blue eyes on raven-haired women. The usual anatomical accessories - T-and-A - were only briefly mentioned and then set aside. Too obvious, my lover said scornfully, for men like these, with eyes for the finer qualities women's bodies had to offer. The kind of qualities you mull over when you purchase a ham, I thought. I asked him if men always discussed women only in sections, like a butcher's pinup of prime cuts. "Sure. That's the fun stuff. Don't tell me you don't! Women go wild for those male dancers. You guys like the parts too. Don't you and your friends talk about men that way?" I thought for a moment and said, "Well, we talk about men, always, but not in that way." How did we dissect men? I actually hadn't had one of those discussions since senior year in college, and I remembered how much fun they were. So the next time a few of my girlfriends and I got together, I subtly scoped in. We'd had about three glasses of wine and thirty Doritos apiece. I started out slowly, like any good seducer, with an ancient topic that has plagued women for centuries: "So which do you think are cuter, firemen or ball players?" I had 'em, and the discussion began in earnest. Ellie had no hesitation. "Baseball players, of course," she insisted. "You get to watch them in those cute uniforms, crouching down on the field, diving for those impossible line drives, and walking that pigeon-toed jock's walk." "But that's not even the sexiest stuff," I offered, pouring another glass of wine. "The real thrill is when they take off their hats and shake their heads and run their fingers through their hair. It's when they're getting ready to hit, and they're weighing the bats like there's some secret to it and knocking the dirt off their cleats. It's when they run on and off the field and high-five each other. That's such guy stuff." Joanne sighed. The details of men being men, she agreed, really got to her. We also decided that firemen, as a group, have the highest average of "10"s, and we admitted to theirs being the only catcalls that flattered us, made us smile and look for the source. "Hey, honey!" from a fireman speaks volumes more than the same salutation from a construction worker. Firemen are heroic. You hardly ever see them unless they're on their way to risk their lives or returning from saving some. They are scruffy as a function of their jobs, as opposed to just being slobs, so their stubble and matted hair are thrilling. These men would pick you up and carry you. They probably carry their dates to dinner. They almost certainly carry them to bed. We felt it necessary to organize men into categories based on our various passions, fulfilled or unfulfilled through the years. Men in suits (doubtless Freud and our fathers had something to do with this). Men in uniform. Men in faded Levi's. Men in cowboy boots and hats. Men in tweed with patches at the elbows. Men in sheets. This discussion was truly aimed at solving the great questions of our time. Never mind Stonehenge, black holes, the missing link. How about athletes versus artists - in particular, musicians? A debate over intellect versus deltoid development? Hardly. It came down to what turned us on most about men. To Sue and Joanne, it was the jock's ability to concentrate on his work without wondering if his stomach was sticking out. For Ellie and me, both partial to music men, it was concentration of a different kind: the knitted brow, the eyes as he reaches for the high notes on the neck of an electric guitar or the far frets of a violin. We realized the issue wasn't brain versus brawn so much as how we imagined each kind of man would be in bed. An ability to sight-read music, I mused, somehow translates into very slow, very exploratory lovemaking. Sue felt that a single-minded devotion to physical excellence would guarantee intense sex: athletic, acrobatic, forceful. Ellie brought up the valid question - "What about an athlete-musician?" We decided this would be a phenomenon unparalleled in bed but disastrous for a relationship. Intensity in two directions would probably make for a nut case who would wake up at dawn to bench press his bassoon. The stories, the admissions, the fantasies about men untapped, had us mourning the passage of the pre-AIDS buffet-style freedom to experiment. As we ate to forget, I decided to get down to it. "So!" They all turned to me, their hostess. "What do you think of penises?" The expressions on their faces filled a silence you wouldn't expect from women who were clearly familiar with the things. "What do penises have to do with anything?" I read there. Joanne broke the silence. "I don't know about you guys," she said tentatively, "but when I'm hot for a man, when I'm dying to rip his clothes off and have wild sex, I'm not thinking "His penis! I must get to his PENIS!' I sure hope he's got one, but it's not why I'm tearing his clothes off." She looked at us hoping for confirmation. She got it from all of us. We want to make love to the body, sure, but not just the bones and joints, not the flesh. It's him we want. It's his essence. And his body is the most direct way to claim him, to communicate with what's inside. We had all noticed, of course, how men like us to communicate with certain parts more than others. But ultimately, it isn't the parts we're after. It is the whole. Women cheer the dancers at Chippendale's, but in all likelihood, they don't see a man as really sexy until they watch him play an instrument brilliantly, clinch a tough deal, deliver a moving speech, or just open the door for them with a winning smile. He's thinking, Great legs! Great hair! What a piece! She's thinking, How smart! How nice! What a man! But you know what? We're both thinking, Let's make love! My boyfriend was disappointed when I repeated the results of our gabfest. "You mean you didn't talk about Stallone's biceps? Tom Cruise's smile? Don't tell me Newman's eyes didn't get in there somewhere." Actually, they did, but in context: Tom Cruise is devilish - that's why he has a devilish smile. Sly is heroic - he needs those biceps. And Paul, well? hell, he's Paul. "So how does it ever work out that men and women end up in bed together?" my lover asked. He was so cute. You just had to see it. His head was cocked, and he had this perplexed look on his face. What could I do? I felt a practical demonstration was called for. I led him to the bedroom, where the most effective communications between lovers are expressed, and once again, we went over the differences between men and women. Not too surprisingly, we agreed on everything.
Debra Victoroff is a humor essayist from Manhattan whose work has appeared in The Village Voice, Penthouse Magazine and Cosmopolitan. She is currently a music editor on the HBO television show, Sex and the City. |
