Tim Allen - Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

"Go ahead. You think we don't talk to each other during the day?"

Does sex change after marriage? I take that back. Isn't that the silliest question in the world? Of course it does. Only you don't want to tell your single friends the truth, because then no one would get hitched. And you don't want to think about it much either, because it's just too damn depressing.

The good thing is that reduced frequency just sort of creeps up on you, and stays with you, like midriff bulge. One day your pants are tight, but you know you don't have the time or energy to do anything about it. This is bad, but not as bad as one day realizing, as you're doing it, that two adults crawling all over each other and making funny noises are a ridiculous sight. Somehow you can't quite remember why this stuff ever seemed so damn important, why it drove you nuts and made you do crazy things just to quell that burning sensation.

Don't let this happen to you:

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Me? Look at you!"

I called a good friend of mine once to talk about this, because I was so worried about my libido's falling asleep. I didn't exactly know how to broach the subject. So I just blurted it out.

"When you're in bed, how much do you do it?"

He laughed. "Oh, I don't know. Last time must have been four months ago. Maybe five."

"What?"

"Tim, I have three kids, two jobs. You both want to, but the kid comes in, the kid's sick. Every time a Saturday night seems free, something else happens. And all these magazines say you've got to dedicate a night. Yeah, well, that's great; it's all good in theory. But if you're mad at your wife-and you're mad about, what, thirty percent of the time? or just irritated-then making love is the last thing in the world that you want to do. So there's a lot of things working against sex in marriage."

Suddenly I realized it was marriage working against sex.

Some wise guy with a small bank account once said that if you put a penny in a jar every time you make love the first year you're together, and take one out every time after that, no matter how much you have sex in subsequent years you'll never empty the jar. Maybe so. That is one reason why I used silver dollars. And when I took them out of the jar, I put them in another jar. I've got my golden years to think of.

Look, if we're hungry we eat. If we want to make love badly enough, we do it. But as life goes on and kids come and responsibilities grow, time becomes precious and there's not all that much room to fit in both lovemaking and a couple hours for the little lady to read Cosmo.

- -

Sometimes a man has no control over himself.

My wife and I once walked into a real‑estate office looking for a house in Los Angeles. Right away I sensed something. It came in below my defenses. I got a giraffe neck, twisted around, and saw a woman sitting in an agent's booth clear across the room. She did a hair toss and started rubbing her neck. Before I knew it, I postured: my chest went straight out, my shoulders straight back. We locked eyes. The chemistry was instantaneous.

Meanwhile, my wife was discussing second trust deeds with our agent, but I had a tough time paying attention. Every time I looked up, the woman was staring at me. She'd moved into the liplicking phase. We were like two pacing animals. She could have been the mother of six, and I'd have still wanted her.

Finally, I turned to my wife and said, "Do you smell anything weird?"

She goes, "Why? Did you fart or something?"

"No. I smell something. Is there anything going on here that you can recognize?"

She looked around and said, "Other than that woman staring at you?" A smile played over her lips. "She wants you, Tim."

My chest inflated another millimeter and I said, "I know that."

"And you're telling her that you want her," she said, looking at my pathetic pecs.

"What? I didn't do anything!"

"Look at the way you're standing," she said. "You're posturing."

"Oh."

"Sit down."

"I just want to smell her, to be near her. It's nothing personal."

"Sit."

That's why I love my wife.

What happened had almost everything to do with smell. It's that pheromone thing, the little chemical agents we all give off that pretty much say, "Hey! You over there. If you like my aroma, I'm available." Or "Hmm. What's that cologne you're wearing?" It's always a good idea to have an agent do your negotiating for you.

"No cologne. But I didn't shower this morning."

Oh.

Dogs are really good at this. Fortunately, people are sufficiently evolved to restrain themselves from sniffing each other's behinds. But it's the same thing. It's out of control. It's animal. It's what that book The Bridges of Madison County is all about. It's why women swoon over big‑screen male sex symbols like Robert Redford and Tom Cruise. Either that or the theater owners finally figured out a way to put pheromones in the popcorn butter flavoring.

When this happened to me at the real‑estate office, my body wanted to find a way to stay there-alone. The evil lunatic inside said, "Take your wife home. Say you left your jacket behind-it worked at Gilbert Dennison's house, didn't it? Come back here and fulfill your biological destiny."

My mind was churning. I began to rationalize the emotional consequences. "I've got to see her. So. . I'll kill my wife, quit my job, and take the real‑estate lady and all my money and we'll go live in Indiana. I'll get a job in a hardware store and we'll just do it, do it, do it, all day and all night!"

I finally snapped out of it, but only because I heard my wife mumbling something about the thighs on the pool guy.

- -

In school, if one girl was mad at her boyfriend, all the other girls were mad at theirs. Things haven't changed much.

Women's systems run better warmer. Men are like slow‑pumping diesels and women are like high‑test motors. They run better when they're hot. Men are more lopey, like Harleys. Women are like Ferraris. Those engines have to be heated up. I don't mean this sexually. I mean women seem to overheat a lot. They run better when they're angry. Anger does something to them.

This is not something you can avoid by deciding not to get the woman in your life angry. You have no choice and no control. She'll get angry all by herself, and if you just happen to be standing in the middle of her road, you get the full exhaust.

My wife can just stand there yelling at me, calling me names, for no apparent reason. When she finally sees how forlorn I am, and if I haven't apologized for anything out of abject fear or actual guilt, she'll say, "I'm not mad at you."

"Well, you're yelling at me."

Now she's mad at me. "Why do you always think it's about you?"

"Like I said, you're yelling at me."

"Why is it always you?" And now she's pissed off at me.

Women always think they're right. Women think men think they're always right. You hear this all the time. But women really think they're right. Oddly enough, women do have a calmness about them that suggests that they really do know something we don't. Men aren't a total loss, but women are completely confident in areas we're not, like the social graces. We just avoid all that stuff and concentrate on motors, bridge building, shoe shining, and knowing how to section half a grapefruit properly. Women act aloof from this typical male stuff because it frightens them.

And then they need a man around.

Honestly, I get angry always being in the wrong. Worse, I hate it when I realize that women have somehow convinced me of this. It's a very short and dangerous trip to the land of no self‑esteem. Once upon a time a woman could have told me potatoes grow on trees and I would have believed her.