LOVE: WHAT MEN AND WOMAN WANT

What do women want? Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but I called up a female friend of mine the other day and posed the question "What do women want from men?" She was genuinely excited and began in earnest to address some of the issues. That was three days ago. She's still talking. I had to pull the phone cord out of the wall and cut down the pole outside my house. Let's see, the myth is that women want Brad Pitt in the bedroom, Brad Pitt in the kitchen, Brad Pitt around the house, Brad Pitt during a game, Brad Pitt when they're sick, Brad Pitt in conversation, the body of Brad Pit in Legends Of The Fall combined with the voice of Brad Pitt, and to top it all off the IQ of Fabio on two bottles of NyQuil. Another myth is that a woman must be married by a certain age or she'll never find stability. Hey, I've got news for you, ladies, looking to men for stability is like going to Crispin Glover for psychoanalysis, all right? And yet a third myth is that men think that women like guys who are dangerous. As a result, guys will often smoke cigarettes, drink too much, and ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Women don't like guys who are dangerous. Women want us to think that because women are trying to kill us. And finally many of the myths between women and men concern sex. Sex is an area that increases the chasm between the genders. You know, it's insulting to her that you persist in going right to sleep after sex, and you resent that she dismisses your desire to have midgets film your lovemaking. If you want to know what women want in bed, it's very simple. Women are really not that exacting. They only desire one thing. Take off your socks. And by the way – they're not going to invite their best girlfriend over for a threesome, so you can stop asking.

As for what men want from women, hell, most men don't even know what they want from Ben & Jerry's, much less from women. But I can't speak for the entire male collective, which is so diverse it makes the bar scene in Star Wars look like and IBM management seminar. I will say that one constant theme in man's interaction with women is the Madonna/whore complex, and believe me that's just the tip of the Oedipal iceberg. Quite frankly, I think when you get a guy alone he'll readily confess he not only has a Madonna/whore complex, he's got a Mother, Au Pair, Catholic Nun, Hullabaloo Dancer, Julie Newmar-Cat Woman, Asian Cigarette girl, Pamela Anderson in a Plexiglas House, Miss Hathaway with a riding crop-complex.

And you should also understand this about men. Men aren't designed to be Introspective. We don't always know how we're feeling. We don't know how you're feeling. Your vagina goes inward, you introspect. Our dicks point outward, we want to knock shit over with it, all right.

I know the myth is that men want Traci Lords in the bedroom, Julia Child in the kitchen, Hazel around the house, Lesley Visser during a game, Mary Poppins for the children, Cha Cha Muldowney in traffic, Dr. Quinn medicine chick when we're sick, Mary Richards at work, Mother Teresa when we come home with leprosy, Gertrude Stein in conversation, the body of Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin combined with the voice of Sade, and to top it all off the IQ of Anna Nicole Smith, because, of course, we don't want to feel too threatened.

So that's the myth of what we want, what's the reality? Well, first off, put that Cosmo article down right now and back slowly away from the magazine!

Now go to the window and take a deep breath. You must clear your head of bullshit articles like "How to Trick Your Man into Cooking Tex-Mex." Trick me? How's about asking me? And then I'll be able to tell you I don't have a fucking clue what Tex-Mex is, okay?!

But what I look for in a woman is what most guys look for in a woman, and what most women look for in a guy: somebody I want to be with. Somebody who's fun, intelligent, attractive. Somebody it won't be hard to spend time with. All that other stuff is just details.

Failing that, let me also advance the following immodest proposal so we can all get on with our goddamn lives; I think we should pour all our time, energy and know-how into genetically engineering a third sex that we can both fuck indiscriminately without feeling the need to phone the next morning.

We could call them...Recepticants...and they would heal the world. And while this solution might appear silly, it's no sillier than what we're doing now, which is a tentative, sexual two-step in which neither partner wants to lead, neither partner wants to follow and everybody's feet are getting stepped on.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.