I recently bought and rewatched the Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life on videotape. While I was watching it, I remembered watching it twice back when it was in the theaters... the first time by myself (I was living with Kristy at the time, and it wasn't something she wanted to see) and the second time with Lynn, an ex lover I'd happened to run into a few days previous, who mentioned she'd like to see it.

Nothing happened between Lynn and me on that ‘date’… I’m not sure if it counts as a ‘date’ when two people go to a movie if they’re both seeing other people, even if they have history… although I think something might have if I'd pushed a little. Lynn took me to Victoria's Secret with her after the movie because she wanted to shop for lingerie, which I have to imagine is one of those bafflingly oblique and subtle signals that women seem to think are so astonishingly obvious. I suppose it certainly reminded me of the single weekend years before that Lynn and I had mostly spent in bed together, but I'm here to tell any women who happen to be reading this, taking a guy lingerie shopping with you is not a clear enough signal. Now, had she modeled the lingerie for me, even I would have gotten that. In general, though, ladies, if you'd like to have sex with a guy, say so. That's the signal we understand.

On this signals thing... as in, the oblique and insanely impossible to read ones that women insist are extremely clear signs to men that they're interested in sex... I do more or less understand the psychology behind this. Women in our culture, regardless of what we overtly tell them here in the modern era, are still raised to very much believe that if they want to have sex, and especially if they initiate sex, they're sluts. Now I personally like sluts, but I've never yet said that to any woman and gotten a positive response. Women, at least some of them, do like sex, and occasionally they want to have it (even with me, or, you know, they used to, in my younger days) but if they simply say "I want to have sex" (outside a monogamous relationship, anyway), then, well, they're sluts. They want to be able to maintain a facade that they didn't really want to do it, they were persuaded by the guy, against their better judgement and high moral inclinations, and in the end, they only did it to make us happy, anyway.

Or as some male philosopher once noted, "I have never in my life been to bed with a woman who did not like to have her hands pinned above her head while she was being screwed". Women like to feel like sex isn't their idea, they didn't initiate it, they aren't in control of it, and they can't help it or prevent it. If sex actually occurs involving their sacred female persons, it is in no way their fault or their responsibility. When it happens, ideally, it just happens; something bigger than both people involved, something neither of them could fight, just swept them off their feet, and sex occurred, and no one has to take responsibility for it... but, if someone does, then by God, it's the guy, because, hey, guys are always horny and all we ever want is sex, anyway.

I should say 'most' women up there, because if so much as ten women ever read this thing, I'm pretty sure at least nine of them will say to themselves while reading it 'well, okay, maybe a lot of women are like that, my girlfriend Dierdre, for example, or my sister Susan, they're the sort of silly, weak minded girls he's talking about who can't admit to themselves or anyone else that they like sex and they get horny and when they do, they want to get laid, but hey, I'm more liberated than that, I initiate sex all the time, even outside a monogamous relationship... by God, if I get horny and there's a good looking stud handy, I'll just walk up to him and let him know what I want'.

I don't know why, but it seems to be important to a lot of very smart, competent women to tell themselves this... that they don't play these sexual games with always forcing men to make the advances and take all the risks, no, they're Modern Women and they take responsibility for what they want.

And it could just be that I'm not a very attractive guy and never have been. But I can only speak from my own experience, and in my experience, women simply do not take the initiative... not with sex, and not in starting relationships. What women do, if they're interested in a guy, is they contrive ways to give this guy plenty of opportunities to ask them out or make a pass, and they will also do everything they can to make this guy think of them as a sex object... but they always do it in ways that they can deny if they're called on it. “Just because I put on an outfit that you happen to think is sexy doesn’t mean I’m saying I want sex!” says the goddess in the halter top and leather mini skirt. And just because she keeps walking by the cutest guy in the office’s cubicle and dropping stuff so she has to bend over to pick it up and flash him some cleavage while she does it, that doesn’t mean she wants sex either. Well, it doesn’t mean she wants sex with me, anyway. But that goes without saying.

None of which is news; women have been making men do all the work so they can feel innocent and overpowered and helpless for thousands of years. But I am here to say, and I do not hesitate to speak for my fellow men in this... it would be a relief if every once in a while, a woman would simply say, "you know what, I'm horny. Let's go to bed.".

But, I don't know. Maybe women do say that, a lot, here in the 21st Century... just, you know, to guys who have better jobs and much nicer cars than I do.

While I’m on this subject, let me also add that I’ve had a few relationships, and one of them lasted, on and off, for six years. (Hi, Kristy!) And one of the many, many things I learned from that relationship is that the reason couples stop having sex after they’ve been together a while… or one of the reasons… is not necessarily lack of excitement. It’s because most women never initiate sex, and, well, that’s annoying enough… but what really causes the sex life to dry up is when the guy tries to initiate sex and gets shut down a couple of times.

Ladies… rejection sucks. It sucks from a hottie we don’t even know in a bar, it sucks from the babe receptionist where we work who only dates guys who make $60,000 a year and drive Jags, it sucks from a cutie we try to chat up at the bus stop. But you know who it especially sucks from? OUR GIRLFRIENDS. That’s who rejection especially stings from, because you know what? The basic deal is, you guys get the relationship, and WE GET SEX. This is the exchange that men and women have been making for millenia. This is the unspoken bargain, and you all know it, but you’ll deny it forever. Nonetheless, that’s the deal… you get the monogamy, which we pretty much fucking hate, and we get sex (which, apparently, a lot of you girls hate, a lot of the time).

When our monogamous girlfriend shoots us down because she’s not in the mood (and, ladies, we guys simply do not understand this… we may pretend to, but honestly, we don’t… we are NEVER ‘not in the mood’, or, if we happen to for some four second interval not be in the mood, trust me, if our girlfriend wants sex, we damned well GET in the mood pretty much instantly), it’s a pain in the ass. It hurts and it’s aggravating. Not least of which because, well, this is supposed to be the deal… we don’t date everything on two legs, and, you know, you give us sex.

And it’s not fair when you don’t give us sex, because you know what? We don’t get to go get it somewhere else when you’re not in the mood. We can’t say ‘okay, you’re not in the mood to fuck me, I’m not in the mood to be your boyfriend right now. I’ll be your boyfriend again when you want to get into bed with me’. Oh no. That would be horrible, and only a shallow selfish prick of a guy would even think such a thing.

So chicks get to say “I’m not in the mood right now honey” and then go into work the next day and talk about their boyfriends, and we still have to remember your birthdays and Valentine’s Day, and put up with you bitching at us if you catch us checking out your hot sister in her tank top… even if, you know, the last three times we asked for sex, you shot us down.

So, rejection sucks… and believe me, after a guy has tried to get sex off his girlfriend three or four times and gotten the ‘I’m not in the mood right now, babe’ spiel, or, worse, the “holy shit don’t you ever think of anything else my GOD what’s wrong with you” speech, well… we’re going to stop asking. And since most women will nail their own hands to a table rather than initiate sex, even with their boyfriends, well… after the guy stops initiating sex, sex stops happening.

And I’ve alienated all my female readers quite enough at this point, so I’ll stop now.