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| Einstein Impressing the Ladies |
"Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey," she said after tending to one of the blinking lines.
Oddly, she seemed to put everyone on hold except line three. After suspending all the incoming calls, she resumed her preferred conversation.
"I went out with Carrie and Sharon to Septembers. Carrie was wearing that totally cool black dress. Sharon went casual even though I told her not to. I looked way hot. So I met this guy, and he was a really, really good dancer. Wait..."
She poked her finger on a flashing button then recited, "Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey. Hold please," then resumed her story.
"He was so good that we almost cleared the floor, but then he had to leave. Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey. Can you hold please?"
Returning to the recap of her latest love interest’s Saturday Night Fever, she continued, “He wasn't feeling good. His stomach was bothering him or something. He took my number."
My buddy and I were eves dropping on her phone dance.
"Susman, Shapiro, Woburn and Grey. Can you hold please?"
Thinking I might be able to ignite a light banter, (I wasn't yet married), in between line switches, I asked, "How many times do you say that a day?"
"About 100 to 150 times a day," she answered mechanically signifying that I was far below her standard, unlike the Dancing Queen who went home with a tummy ache the night before.
I whispered to my friend, "That dude had to leave because his girlfriend was getting off her shift."
"You know it!" he exclaimed.
Being men, we intrinsically knew something about our kind that our receptionists friend hadn't yet learned, namely, no dude is going to leave a woman he is interested in on the account of pain. Men are hardwired for procreation. If it wasn't that way, the human race would be one of those dead ends branches on the evolutionary tree. Right there with homo erectus.
You probably haven’t a clue who homo erectus was because we descended from homo sapiens. Homo erectus was hominids who went extinct. An evolutionary loser who stayed in their cave when their belly ached while homo sapiens were out on the frozen tundra or scorching deserts trying to get them some action. Homo erectus would be around today, fighting for equal rights, if only they lived up to their namesake.
If the receptionist at the law office wasn't so short with me, I would have told her that her new guy is not going to call, but I'm sure she would've never taken the word of a poor dancer like me over a dude who almost cleared the floor.
Nature is all about fleetness of foot and fighting with fists to figure out who is the fittest entity. To become the dominant species, you can't call in sick or phone in your performance. You have to go out there and make a doormat out of the competition. The food chain isn't fair. In fact, it whails on the sick and the old which makes room for the alphas who barge through the front door then toss anyone in their way into the gutter.
Now I'm not talking about the fucked up things men do that gets them thrown in jail until years later an expensive team of lawyers finds a prosecutorial procedural error that gets their conviction thrown out. I'm talking about the drive to find a mate to make more of oneself. If it wasn't that way, we wouldn't be here to discuss what assholes some men are. The drive to procreate propels the world forward. Einstein was once asked what was the most powerful force. He answered,
"Compound interest."
I disagree. Compound interest will never get a lazy guy off the couch to mow the lawn or take out the garbage. A man won't paint a woman's toenails for compound interest. Compound interest will never make a dude launch fireworks from his butt crack or cannonball off the roof into the pool at a party.
My buddy told me a story that he was once out with a few girls at a bar doing shots. He had trouble keeping up. One girl showed a lot of interest in him. At one point, after a particularly potent belt, he felt that he was about to vomit. Instead of dashing off to the men's room to blow spumoni which would have certainly vacated his position next to a new potential mate, he explained,
"Like a man, I swallowed my own puke."
That prompted me to deliver a particular poignant knuckle bump. One time to make my point I was telling a story that after knee surgery, I was zonked out on Percocet and unable to stand without terrible pain. My wife, Christine, helped me into bed, then pulled the covers over me. She asked,
"Is there anything you need?"
"Well, there’s one thing," I answered.
"You got to be kidding," she said incredulously.
I was telling that story to a young friend of mine recently when he said,
"I did it once with a collapsed lung."
He continued on how he was camping with his girlfriend when he picked her up and felt his lung pop. Instead of going immediately to the hospital, he took care of business first. When I asked him if he got to the hospital afterwards, he said,
"Yeah, after the third time."
So there you have it. The secret is out, and I said it. Men like sex. I make no apologies for the way I am because I'm doing what is coded in my genes. I am a man trapped in a man's body. I can't go against the prewiring of biology that created the dominant branch in the evolutionary history of humankind.
The fact is the fate of the human race, the very survival of mankind, depends on men not thinking with the big head.
Nature is all about fleetness of foot and fighting with fists to figure out who is the fittest entity. To become the dominant species, you can't call in sick or phone in your performance. You have to go out there and make a doormat out of the competition. The food chain isn't fair. In fact, it whails on the sick and the old which makes room for the alphas who barge through the front door then toss anyone in their way into the gutter.
Now I'm not talking about the fucked up things men do that gets them thrown in jail until years later an expensive team of lawyers finds a prosecutorial procedural error that gets their conviction thrown out. I'm talking about the drive to find a mate to make more of oneself. If it wasn't that way, we wouldn't be here to discuss what assholes some men are. The drive to procreate propels the world forward. Einstein was once asked what was the most powerful force. He answered,
"Compound interest."
I disagree. Compound interest will never get a lazy guy off the couch to mow the lawn or take out the garbage. A man won't paint a woman's toenails for compound interest. Compound interest will never make a dude launch fireworks from his butt crack or cannonball off the roof into the pool at a party.
My buddy told me a story that he was once out with a few girls at a bar doing shots. He had trouble keeping up. One girl showed a lot of interest in him. At one point, after a particularly potent belt, he felt that he was about to vomit. Instead of dashing off to the men's room to blow spumoni which would have certainly vacated his position next to a new potential mate, he explained,
"Like a man, I swallowed my own puke."
That prompted me to deliver a particular poignant knuckle bump. One time to make my point I was telling a story that after knee surgery, I was zonked out on Percocet and unable to stand without terrible pain. My wife, Christine, helped me into bed, then pulled the covers over me. She asked,
"Is there anything you need?"
"Well, there’s one thing," I answered.
"You got to be kidding," she said incredulously.
I was telling that story to a young friend of mine recently when he said,
"I did it once with a collapsed lung."
He continued on how he was camping with his girlfriend when he picked her up and felt his lung pop. Instead of going immediately to the hospital, he took care of business first. When I asked him if he got to the hospital afterwards, he said,
"Yeah, after the third time."
So there you have it. The secret is out, and I said it. Men like sex. I make no apologies for the way I am because I'm doing what is coded in my genes. I am a man trapped in a man's body. I can't go against the prewiring of biology that created the dominant branch in the evolutionary history of humankind.
The fact is the fate of the human race, the very survival of mankind, depends on men not thinking with the big head.
Editor's Note: Originally published on July 24, 2018.
