Men, p.1
Men, page 1
MEN:
A USER’S
GUIDE
(From toilet training to bedtime battles)
Kathy Lette
LONDON • TORONTO • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND • JOHANNESBURG
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409080763
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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Kathy Lette 2010
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ISBN 9780593060117
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Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Also by Kathy Lette
Introduction
1 Dating
2 Sex
3 Love
4 Commitment
5 Marriage
6 Domesticity
7 Parenthood
8 Infidelity
9 Divorce
10 Murder
11 Men
This book is dedicated to the comedic coven, otherwise known as my mum, Val, daughter Georgie and my three sisters, Jenny, Liz and Cara. And to all my Aussie girlfriends, especially ‘The Gerts’ (our home is girt by sea), Catherine Dovey, Jean Kittson, Alison Magney, Susie Carleton, Angela Bowne, Jenny Bott, Emily Booker and Shaz Allan.
Also by Kathy Lette
PUBERTY BLUES
HIT & MS
GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT
THE LLAMA PARLOUR
FOETAL ATTRACTION
MAD COWS
ALTAR EGO
NIP ‘N’ TUCK
DEAD SEXY
HOW TO KILL YOUR HUSBAND
(AND OTHER HANDY HOUSEHOLD HINTS)
TO LOVE, HONOUR AND BETRAY
For more information on Kathy Lette and her books,
see her website at www.kathylette.com
Introduction
God, apparently as a prank, devised two sexes and called them ‘opposite’. The sex war has raged for 5,000 years. But surely it’s time we called a truce . . . starting with men negotiating their terms of surrender.
Why do men like intelligent women? Because opposites attract. Just look at the evidence. What excites most men? Food, footy, a beer and the Playboy channel. The trouble is, women get all excited about nothing . . . and then we marry him.
Men are just like those gadgets you buy which read ‘A little assembly required’ – then sit in the corner all in pieces for centuries. If only blokes came with some operating instructions.
With regard to the male of the species, I often feel like a zoologist who has dropped in on a bunch of gorillas and forgotten my tranquillizer gun. How much easier if men were given descriptive names, as in ye olden times, like Attila the Hun and Ivan the Terrible. Cheating Ratbag Misogynist the Third would so take the guesswork out of dating.
We women need a user’s guide. Having dedicated myself to years of in-depth research into the subject of men (I’m named after a diary and I’ve had many entries), and with a Ph.D. in the glaringly obvious, in this owner’s manual I offer you my top tips on how to understand, house-train, tame and, in extreme cases, bump off your bloke.
P.S. I do all my research in the most scientific fashion – over cappuccinos with girlfriends. (Well, a writer can’t have all work and no plagiarism!) But if I’ve given away any secrets please address your complaints to my nom de plume – Miss Quote.
CHAPTER 1
Dating
There are many good things about being female.
1) You get off sinking ships first.
2) You don’t have to readjust genitalia in public.
3) You can scare male bosses, policemen or aged judges with mysterious gynaecological disorders or the mere mention of the word ‘tampon’.
The only bad thing is that there is only one other sex available to us.
Dating means gambling with fate and losing so many times that a girl gets roulette rash. Men problems: now there’s a tautology. But you can’t stay cooped up inside all the time on your own. I mean, the Home Shopping Channel operator is starting to recognize your voice.
One thing’s for sure, whether you crave a toyboy or an old guy who is really rich and quite ill . . . when it comes to men you may be a shopaholic, but you’re bound to end up with a bloke you hadn’t bargained on.
Types of date
Internet dating Best not to rely on the kindness of passing serial killers. Internet dating turns you into a marital limbo dancer – your expectations just keep getting lower and lower until you’re scraping the bottom of the biological barrel.
Blind dates I’ve been on so many blind dates I should be given a free dog. Love may be blind, but dates should not be. By the entrée you’ll have discovered that you’re completely incompatible. Your rising sign is Aquarius . . . and he’s a complete bastard. (Tell him your sign is ‘Do Not Disturb’.)
Office sex Even though there is a man shortage, never resort to your boss. He’ll be married, of course. This is called sleeping your way to the bottom. There’s only one reason a man sleeps with his secretary: he just loves a woman he can dictate to.
So what kind of man should you have on your menu?
Toyboys
Pros of toyboy dating
Birthdays are nature’s way of telling a woman to get a toyboy.
*
No woman is ever old enough to know better.
*
Date a toyboy and the tube announcement ‘Mind the gap’ will take on a whole new meaning. But let’s look at the biological facts. The male of the species hits his sexual prime in his late teens; a woman in her late forties. You don’t have to be Einstein to do the maths. I mean, 19 goes into 50 a hell of a lot more than 50 goes into 19. A toyboy’s vocabulary may be small, but who cares when he ends every sentence with a proposition?
*
I once dated a boy ten years younger than me and only lab rabbits had more sex than us. We had phone sex – but in the booth. We did it while listening to music – but in the back row of the concert hall. His headboard should have come with an airbag. I was an FBI agent’s dream – I had fingerprints all over me.
*
Why can’t women grow old disgracefully? Just think, somewhere right now Berlusconi’s next lover is being potty-trained.
*
But just as fashionable clothes date one so quickly, so do some dates. I mean what is Madonna going to do with Jesus? Date him or adopt him?
*
While older male intellectuals have the motor skills of a rust-riddled Lada, a toyboy’s every sperm droplet could be entered individually in a rodeo. The trouble is, he may have a strong libido but can he spell it? He probably thinks it means the words in an opera. Although ‘opera’ isn’t exactly in his vocabulary either. Except next to the word ‘soap’.
*
A part of you knows that sex with a toyboy is an illusion, a sexual chimera. But the other part of your brain scoffs at that notion. It isn’t a mirage . . . It just looks like one.
*
You’ll get lots of caustic cracks about why you didn’t childproof your love life. You’ll jokingly be told to make sure you buy him a booster seat for the car . . . But in truth, age doesn’t matter – not unless you’re a building or a Stilton or a grapevine.
*
The guy may not have any higher education but he has heaps of lower. (Think Rent-a-Bulge.)
You’ll be the envy of all. When eyeing those taut, brown buns in those skimpy bathers – we’re talking the kind of pneumatic buttocks that have done more for female masturbation than Dr Ruth – every woman in a ten-mile radius will prepare to leave her partner pronto and have his love-child, as she watches him caress his chiselled abs with sunscreen Factor Lust.
*
Even though men regularly leave their wives for teenagers, it’s still a scandal for an older woman to take a toy. But don’t worry. Just because you’re running around with a man old enough to be your son doesn’t mean your friends are sniggering behind your back . . . They’re guffawing. Out loud. To your face. If they ask you with disdain, ‘Where’s your self-respect?’ just reply, ‘I don’t know. My toyboy’s the one who puts everything away.’
*
An ad for a toyboy: ‘Must adore me, not bore me and do all my chores for me.’
Cons of toyboy dating
Maybe you’re having an early menopause? And he’s your hot flush?
*
When you told him you wanted him to show more interest in your family, you didn’t mean date your daughter.
*
If there’s one thing the Nouveau Poor need, it’s a niche with the Nouveau Riche. A wealthy older woman fits the bill, literally.
*
Toyboys are so broke, he’s probably only marrying you for the rice.
*
A fool and her money are soon married. And in you he’s found a wife he can really bank on. After all, you’re a woman with money to burn. In a toyboy you may have met your match.
*
Toyboys live on a shoestring – a Gucci shoestring.
*
‘Do you take this woman to the cleaners, for 50 per cent of her income, from this day forth, for richer and richer?’
‘You bloody well bet I do!’
‘I now pronounce you man and mansion.’
*
A wealthy wife is quite a labour-saving device. Make him sign a pre-nuptial agreement you could make into a mini-series.
*
You’ll have so much in common with your toyboy. You have a Caribbean island, and he wants one . . .
*
You’ll feel like a teenager . . . but is that a good look on a woman who is contemplating her first incontinence pad?
*
You’ll have to spend all your waking hours reversing out of rooms so that he can’t see the backs of your thighs and compare them to the last supermodel he dated.
*
He’s so young he won’t remember Michael Jackson before he was white.
*
His pyjamas will have little feet.
*
He’ll have trainer wheels on his car.
*
He chooses his cereal for the toy.
*
When you’re in dominant position astride, your face will fall forward, giving you ten chins. The missionary means your breasts will fall to the side. (Solution? The dimmer switch. Greatest sex aid known to womankind.)
Older men
A beauty therapist recently offered me a massage with hot rocks. I declined. If I’m going to lie under a hot stone, I’d rather it was Mick.
Huon pines are not the oldest living thing on the planet. There are also the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and aged billionaires with a heart murmur.
*
I do suggest you stop this side of the grave (although with upper-class English men, how do you tell?).
*
Frequent auction houses. A collector of expensive antiques often turns out to be one. All a girl needs to do is pepper her conversation with ‘Jacobean’ this and ‘Georgian’ that and she’ll soon be sending him ‘baroque’, while he furnishes her for life. So what are the pros and cons of becoming an antique cock collector?
Pros of dating older men
The best thing about marrying an older man with a coronary condition is that ‘till death do us part’ is less of a commitment.
*
Where there’s a will, you can definitely be in it. There are three signs of senility – memory deterioration and . . . the other two have slipped his mind, right? ‘Just sign on the dotted line, darling.’
*
What does it matter if the face has slipped, as long as the penis is in the right place?
*
Cons of dating older men
The man’s not distinguished, he’s extinguished. He’ll be wheeled into bed sucking on an oxygen mask.
*
Because he has a walk-in wallet, occasionally women risk bedroom botulism by going out with a man who has passed his amuse-by date. But older men are often cut from the same tweedy mixture of snobbery and violence that supplied the warp and weft of British empire-builders.
*
Refrain from correcting his jargon and slang. Try not to laugh when he brags that he ‘went high’ and got ‘on his face’. And remember, after he delivers an enlightened spiel on marijuana legalization, don’t gush, ‘God! I wish my dad was like you!’ Or ‘When you were young . . . gulp . . . ger.’ Such slips send them scurrying off for double doses of Viagra and ginseng.
*
You’ll have to put up with people making cracks along the lines of ‘What’s he got? The 70-year-old itch?’ or ‘He’s so ancient. I mean, how did you meet? No, no. Let me guess. You bid on him at an auction?’
English upper-class men
In England, even the letters travel first and second class. Do the first-class letters get a little in-flight movie and a cocktail with a paper parasol on the way? Upper-class men prefer their dogs to their children. They keep their dogs at home and send their kids off to high-class kennels called Eton and Harrow.
The trouble with upper-class English blokes is that they don’t speak English. They speak euphemism. It’s a surrogate mother tongue. You need those little United Nations headphones to decipher what everybody is saying to you. For example, ‘You Australians are so refreshing’ decodes as ‘Rack off, you loud-mouthed colonial nymphomaniac.’ (I know, how dare he call you a loud mouth!)
*
They’re Conan the Grammarians. He’ll even correct your grammar when you’re talking dirty in bed.
*
The voice of the upper-class male is so brittle it qualifies for osteoporosis pills. He has an accent sharp enough to draw blood if you’re shaving your armpits with it.
*
English men pluck their highbrows. They are poetry-quoting brainiacs. Been there, Donne that. You’ll have to swot up on the bleeding heart plots of operas – a case of vocal haemophilia, in which the leads invariably get stabbed and then can’t stop singing.
*
He’ll never do anything spontaneous without a warning . . . Well, he may be planning a little spontaneity – perhaps tomorrow. His condoms are practically pinstriped. And he’s not good at personal grooming. Piles of dandruff form around his ankles.
*
If an upper-class man puts you in the ‘blue room’, it’s because this will be the colour of your lips as you freeze to death. At least you won’t have to go outside for a breath of fresh air. Their plan is that you’ll have to have frottage, just to stave off frostbite.
*
Upper-class men don’t marry for love. There’s always a lifeguard by their gene pool. Their bible is Debrett’s, a book listing everybody who’s anybody. It’ll tell you all about their property and pedigree. (In Australia, breeding is something we do with sheep.)
*
You have to perform open-heart surgery before knowing what goes on inside an upper-class Englishman.
*
The trouble with such Englishmen is that they’ve all got corrugated bottoms from being beaten so much at boarding school. Put it this way: he’ll make an impression on your mind . . . from the bottom up.
*
Even though he’s constantly rushing off to brothels to be whipped with bits of wet lettuce, he’ll have you arrested for wearing underwear above your station.
*
His approach to co-parenting is that it should be divvied up equally – between the boarding school and the nanny.
*
They have facial expressions by Taxidermy.
*
What he sees as compellingly eccentric, you may see as full on certifiable.
American Men
American Romeos don’t romance any more, they ‘relate’. Many belong to the Iron John movement, where they hug trees and get in touch with their ‘fundamental masculinity’ . . . Basically I’ve never known a man to take a hand off his fundamental masculinity for more than two minutes a day.
