Before I reveal the information that will put Dr. Phil, Oprah and a multitude of other hacks who claim insight into human relationships in the poorhouse, a few words about my laboratory, the Purple Martini. This bar falls into the scientific category of "cheesy." It's got cheesy lighting and plays cheesy music that sounds like Muzak for people who think that listening to techno makes them seem cooler than they really are. While I don't have the wardrobe to fit into the Martini crowd, I have something that 90 percent of the guys there obviously don't: a comb. Their hair looks like a chimpanzee just searched through it, looking for lunch. To make matters worse, the bar has no draft Guinness. In fact, the waitress had no idea what I wanted when I asked her for a black and tan. So I had to go with a martini.
Let's face it: A martini consists of gin, vermouth, turpentine and an olive. Made properly, it should cause temporary blindness. But the Purple Martini realizes that no one under sixty really likes a proper martini, so it concocts radioactive green drinks that taste like an apple soaked in turpentine. Given the number of scantily clad women drinking them, though, we figured the Martini gave us a good shot at finding a girl with a morally casual attitude.
Unfortunately, there was no way we were going to meet somebody to share a bar tab with -- much less a life -- because of what should be my Nobel Prize-winning discovery: Men and women are out of sync.
To my knowledge, no one else has come up with such a simple, elegant explanation for why the hell men and women are always at odds. But the proof is all around us. Women display their complete ignorance of "sync" and a total disregard for common courtesy whenever they start a conversation at the opening kickoff. While a guy is looking for a girl who's checked her standards at the door, a woman is looking for a "man" she can take home to her parents. After a guy and a girl have gone out on two dates, she's picking out curtains for their new place while he's wondering when they're finally going to have sex. Once they do, when a guy reaches the moment of truth after five minutes of serious passion, a woman is just starting to think that she might be in the mood. And when a guy hits his midlife crisis and wants to get a muscle car to show the world just how manly he is, he's suddenly inundated with demands to go out and buy a Dodge Caravan.
At the Purple Martini, I spotted a guy who was carrying two drinks and was probably still out celebrating his high school football team's victory the previous evening. Needless to say, he was dressed in what passes as high fashion in that crowd: ratty jeans and a stained sweatshirt, with hair that looked like he'd rubbed a balloon against it. And then I watched as this young fellow delivered that extra drink to a very attractive fiftyish woman, who thanked him with a not-so-brief game of tonsil hockey.
At that instant, I realized three things:
1) Men and women will never be in sync;
2) God is a woman; and
3) She has a vicious sense of humor.
We all know that men and women differ in their sexual makeup. Once a guy hits puberty, sex becomes his driving force, and he doesn't regain any control of his life until the erection that starts in junior high and continues into college finally peaks. Women hit puberty earlier than guys, and are more mature about the whole thing as a result. They peak sometime in their thirties. Do the math, and you will see that men and women are doomed when it comes to relationships -- meaning sex. When women are in their sexual prime, men the same age are interested in younger women. And while a more mature woman is congratulated by her friends when she lands some young plaything, they ridicule more mature men who desire to land a Britney Spears look-alike. The young guy, in the meantime, becomes a minor god in his friends' eyes because he's bagged an older woman.
You'd think that my out-of-sync discovery would discourage me, but it has not. Because right now, I am the perfect age. On the one hand, I can always look forward to coming across a girl straight out of a music video. On the other, I'm the same age as many women hitting their prime, and if I can connect with just one during that particular two months of her life, everything will fall into place. If not, I'll just make myself a martini.
