Dave Barry - Guide To Marriage And/Or Sex

A. That depends on your individual situation.

Q. Listen, I, ummm, I have this kind of weird sexual hangup, which is that I, ummmm ... this is very embarrassing ...

A. Go ahead! Say it! Don’t be ashamed! That’s what we’re here for! To help!

Q. Okay, but I want to whisper it. (whisper whisper whisper)

A. My God! Really?

Q. Um, yes.

A. The joint Chiefs of Staff?!

Q. Well, yes.

A. How do you get the hamsters into the accordion?

The big problem with necking is figuring out whether or not your date wants to Do It. On the Planet of the Ideal Women, your date would just come right out and tell you. She’d say: “What do you say we lie down on the couch and neck like crazy?” Or: “Although I like you as a friend, I frankly would not neck with you even if the alternative were death by leeches.”

But here on the planet Earth, she won’t say anything. Sometimes this means she isn’t interested. But sometimes it doesn’t. Generally the way a guy finds out specifically what his date is thinking is at some point he lunges at her, lips puckered, and she responds by either puckering back, or quickly turning her head sideways, in which case the guy winds up sort of licking her hair, looking like a world-class dork. There is no face-saving way for a guy to get out of this situation, other than to have an instantaneously fatal seizure.

Assuming your date is responsive, your next move is to attempt “French-kissing,” which is when you stick your tongue into her mouth, and she sticks her tongue into your mouth, and so there the two of you are, with your tongues in each other’s mouths. This is a really sexy thing to do, according to French people, although you should bear in mind that they also like to eat snails.

Anyway, assuming your date seems to be responding positively to you, in the sense that she has not yet kneed you in the groin, and also assuming that you really and truly respect her as a human being and love her and plan to marry her, it’s time to move on to ...

The big problem here is the bra strap. You cannot casually unhook a bra strap. The bra-strap industry sees to this. Scientists over at the Bra Strap Research Center in Amarillo, Texas, work night and day with volunteer males and lifelike female dummies coming up with newer and more complicated fastening devices, devices where the first hook actually re-hooks itself after you go on to the second one, such that nobody can get these bras off, especially not a lust-crazed male in a dark room. Many priceless jewelry collections are now protected solely by bra straps.

If you get through the bra strap, your next challenge is the undergarments, which you will probably have to ask your date for assistance with, because they can be complex beyond human imagining, but I strongly advise that before the two of you tackle them, you should leave the restaurant.

Guys, you should definitely use a condom. All major health authorities agree on this. The whole nation has become violently pro-condom, not just for guys having sex, but also for guys puttering around the yard, domestic animals most vegetables and all major war monuments. Better safe than sorry!

The best source of reliable information is romance novels, which you can find in better bookstores and supermarkets everywhere. You know the books I mean—the cover always is a picture of a handsome and of course brooding man embracing a woman with green eyes and a bosom that is clearly heaving, sometimes most of the way out of her dress. The title is always something fairly humid, like Loins of Passion .

You sexually inexperienced couples should get hold of one of these books, because inside you will find a number of passages that are chock-full of explicit, down-to-earth, practical “straight talk” about the sexual act:

“As Sabrina gazed upward at Baron LeGume, whose dark, brooding eyeballs were turgid with passion, she felt the tormented tenseness of his throbbing, pulsating malehood, and she knew, with a knowledge borne of knowing, that she could no longer hold back the surging waves of passion that washed over her, like waves of something, as his brooding throbbing pulsating highly engorged lips sought hers, not that she wanted to hold them back, we’re talking about the waves of passion here, although she knew that somehow, somewhere, perhaps deep within the shuddering throes of yearninghood that even now gripped the very core of her womanhood, if you get what we mean, that she must find a way, through the hazy mists of desire, to end this sentence, although she sensed somehow that ...”

And so on. You young couples should study these helpful and realistic passages thoroughly, so you can use them for guidance when you are attempting sex (“You mean to tell me that’s the tormented tenseness of your malehood?”).

After a while, the sparkle tends to go out of a relationship. I don’t care how passionate you are. I don’t care if you’re like those couples in romantic movies who, in the scene where they finally realize they’re in love, lunge into each other’s arms and fall to the ground, wherever they are, even if it is a pasture, and roll around amongst the cow doots in a sexual frenzy. You don’t think those couples keep that kind of thing up, do you? Throughout life? Of course not. What would their clothes smell like?

The point being, a relationship can survive on pure romance for only so long. Sooner or later, Mundane Reality starts to seep in, and you need to make a decision:

* Do you break up with this person and look around for another one in hopes of once again experiencing the searing surge of unbridled passion, ideally in a carpeted environment? Or,

* Do you accept that your relationship can move to a more mature stage, a stage based not so much upon impulse and romance and physical attraction as upon liking the same television shows? In short, do you get married?

One way to find out if another person is “right” for you is to spend a lot of time with this person, talking and sharing experiences, so that you really get to know him or her as a human being. This is what we call the old-fashioned, or “stupid” way. The modern way is to take a Compatibility Quiz.

The Compatibility Quiz is a concept that was developed by top research scientists at Cosmopolitan magazine, a highly informative publication whose cover always has a picture of a glamorous woman, wearing an extremely low-cut outfit, whose breasts appear to be pointing straight up. In fact, they are pointing down: Cosmopolitan suspends these women by their feet from the ceiling. That is the price you have to pay, if you truly wish to be glamorous.

Anyway, if you want to know whether your relationship will work out, you need to sit down and answer these questions:

Who do you feel should be the “breadwinner” in a family?

A. The man.

B. The woman.

C. H. Ross Perot.

Which of the following statements best describes your feelings toward children?

A. “Put that down this instant!”

B. “I said put that down!”

C. “Never put your finger in that part of the doggy!!”

In a modern marriage, who do you feel should be responsible for the housework?

A. Nobody.

B. It should be divided up fairly and equally among the servants.