I'm Not Gonna Lie Read online

  I tried. I went out with friends, went to bars, clubs, concerts. I looked for women. I was on the prowl. But nothing ever happened.

  One time, in the eighties, I went to a bar with some friends. We found a table, ordered drinks, and started pounding them back. The room got hot and smoky and I started to feel sweaty and a little buzzed. The air smelled of sex. People looking for it. People willing to give it up. The deejay cranked the music so loud you could feel the bass vibrating in your gut. My friends all got up and moved toward the dance floor. Each one found a partner and paired off. I sat alone at our table, watching everybody else, nursing a beer, feeling empty.

  I scanned the room. That was when I saw her, sitting by herself, a few tables away—a woman about my age. A vision. The kind of vision you see lurking around a corner in one of the Alien movies. To put it kindly, this woman was very unattractive. Of course, she had other qualities. She was also fat.

  Perfect.

  I was sick of getting shot down. I was done with good-looking women checking me out, sticking their noses up, and turning away. I had set the bar too high. In order to get into the game, I needed to lower my standards. If you swing for the fences on every pitch, you’ll only strike out. You have to start by hitting singles. Just get on base. Then you can slide into home.

  I polished off my beer, stood up, and strolled coolly over to her table.

  “Hello,” I said.

  I gave her my best, widest smile.

  She swiveled her head in my direction. Close up, she actually looked scarier than she did from across the dark bar. Her lips parted to reveal fangs. I jumped back.

  “Hi, there. So, yes, I was wondering,” I said. My voice cracked and then squeaked. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  She plopped a meaty arm over the back of the chair next to her. She ran her eyes up and down me slowly, as if she were scanning me at airport security. She parted her lips again and her fangs appeared in full and rested on her lip. I think I saw smoke coming out of her nose.

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  I blinked. I coughed. I swallowed.

  “Excuse me?” I said. “I didn’t hear what you said. Loud in here.”

  “I’m good,” she said. “I’m waiting for my friends.”

  She grunted and swiveled her scaly head away.

  “Oh, okay, fine, great, I’ll just, you know . . . I’m a little surprised, but, yes, cool, not a problem, very nice meeting you; enjoy molting—”

  I slunk back toward my table, looking for a way to disappear, hoping that a hole would suddenly open in the floor so I could dive in and flee. As I groped for my table like a blind man, I thought, “Unbelievable. She turned me down? Mothra said no? How can that be? I know how: I’m a loser. No. That’s not true. I’m the biggest loser in this bar. It’s official. I’m the worst dude in the room.”

  When I look back at that night and think about the lull in my dating life, that short twenty- to thirty-year period, I see another guy. I was a different person. I lacked confidence. I somehow felt less than everybody else. And I was so shy that I scared women off. My grandmother always used to tell me, “Shies don’t get shit.” She was right, but at that time knowing I was shy made me feel even shier. That’s the main reason I couldn’t get a date. Women wanted no part of me. I turned them off. I’m talking about all women, even those who were so desperate that they would date anyone who walked upright and didn’t drool. Except me.

  Everything changed when I turned fifty. I experienced an attitude shift—very simple and basic. Since I had arrived at an age that was closer to death than not, I decided first to chill, to slow down, to take it easy, and not to get agitated over little, insignificant things. Second, I decided to live my life my way, to follow my instincts and not be so eager to do what other people said.

  I applied all of this to my relationships with women. I refused to become one of those sad fifty-year-old dudes you see sitting alone at the end of the bar. You know who I mean. There’s always one pathetic old dude nursing a drink, playing with his cocktail napkin, looking lost. For one thing, you should never go to a bar alone at fifty. You need to travel with a pack of dudes, no matter what your age. And it’s important to monitor how you look. Dudes in their fifties walk a tightrope, style-wise. You put on the wrong clothes and you fall right off. You’ve seen these guys. They’re trying to look young, or hip, or at least relevant. They sit at the bar wearing mom jeans and a sport jacket with patches and maybe a scarf. Besides the sad doe-eyed look that creeps across their Botoxed faces, their drink is the giveaway. It’s always an old guy’s drink, a Manhattan or a highball or some cocktail the twenty-five-year-old bartender doesn’t even know how to make. The world is zipping by and this poor guy is standing still. You see him fingering his iPhone, trying to figure out how to send an Instagram. Not his fault. Technology comes at you in a blink. There’s always something new you have to learn, and our fifty-year-old brains don’t move as fast as they used to. Ten years ago he would’ve been able to handle Instagram, no problem. Now he’s sitting in a bar and he’s clueless, holding the thing upside down and sideways, shaking it, trying to get it to work.

  When you turn fifty, you have to learn to accept the natural flow of life. You must accept who you are.

  And, brothers, you have to accept your penis.

  If you live long enough to get to the point that your penis doesn’t work, so be it. Allow it to stay flaccid, in honor of its previous service. You should not force it to stand at attention. Let’s celebrate this honorable member. It’s fine. And don’t worry about taking the little blue pill. Women understand. If a woman would refuse a fake Louis Vuitton purse, she should refuse a fake erection.

  BROTHERS, YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT YOUR PENIS.

  A lot of dudes use enhancement—call it Hamburger Helper, well, Hot Dog Helper, I guess—and they don’t tell their wives. The wife thinks, “Oh, my God, he’s as vibrant at fifty-four as he was at twenty-four. Of course, he always seems to need an hour notice.”

  Just accept it. Be man enough to say to your wife, “My penis worked for forty years; we had some great times; we traveled; we made love all over the world. So let’s shake hands, get the same haircut, and move on.”

  I’m into younger women. It has nothing to do with their supple, hard bodies. Well . . .

  They’re more open to new things. They’re not set as cement in their ways. Older women come with too much baggage. In the relationship with my current girlfriend, I think it’s so much better that I’m the one with the baggage. I don’t have a big enough place for two people’s baggage.

  At this point, the relationship with my girlfriend is pretty new. I have yet to experience that feeling of dread that comes over you when you wake up in the morning, turn over, see this person sound asleep next to you, and say to yourself, “Look at her. So beautiful, so peaceful. I wish she would leave.”

  I’ve not felt that way. Not yet.

  We’re pretty compatible. She’s young, likes to stay up late and sleep in. I’m old; I like to get up early and play golf. This is ideal. Although like most women, she hates golf.

  I can’t figure out why that is.

  I just know that when a woman sees her husband or boyfriend heading out the door with his clubs, she says, “You’re not playing golf, are you?”

  “Well, yes, I am.”

  “Again?”

  “I play every Sunday; you know that—”

  “Fine. Go. Have fun. Enjoy.”

  I don’t get it. What did we do? We’re going to a golf course, not to a strip club.

  For some crazy reason women feel threatened by golf. It’s almost as if golf is another woman. Or worse: They think our relationship to golf matters more than our relationship with them. Or maybe it’s this simple: Women see that we have a good time playing golf, which means we’re not having a good time with them. They can’t stand
the thought that we might actually have some fun without them. Maybe if we lied.

  “George, where are you going? You look miserable.”

  “I feel miserable. I have to play golf.”

  “Again?”

  “I know, right? What a pain in the ass. If I didn’t have to do this, I wouldn’t. You know that. I’d much rather have brunch with you and then go shopping for shoes.”

  In every relationship I’ve been in, when it comes to golf, there’s always that terrible moment of truth. You have to brace yourself for this question: “What do you guys talk about out there on that golf course for five hours?”

  I don’t want to lie. I want to tell the truth. I want to say, “Well, pussy, mainly.”

  But that would only fuel their hatred of golf. In some cases, God forbid, it might motivate them to take up the sport so that they could play with us. When my ex-wife threatened to take up golf, I told a friend that I would cut off my arms so I wouldn’t have to play.

  The truth is, we don’t really talk about pussy that much. When we play golf, we talk about . . .

  Let me think.

  Actually, we don’t talk. We really don’t. That’s another reason we don’t want to play with women: We don’t want to talk when we play golf. We don’t want to talk at all. We just want to play. In silence. Without thinking about what to say, or what we think, or worst of all, what we feel. The hell with that. This is the hardest thing for women to understand. When I go out with three guys to play golf, not only don’t we talk very much; ninety percent of the time we’re not even together. We’re off on our own, hitting our shots, alone, by ourselves, not thinking about anything but golf. My definition of bliss.

  Even my young, understanding, very compatible girlfriend can’t stand that I play golf. Usually I sneak out of the house when she’s still asleep. By the time I get back, she’s just getting up and we’re ready to begin our day. But one morning, I took a shower, slipped into my golf clothes, and slowly, quietly, on tiptoes, started to head out the door. I heard her rustling in bed. I turned back and saw her sitting up, her eyes wide-open.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “I’m going out.”

  She took a moment to look me over. Finally, it registered that I had on my golf clothes. She blew out a funnel of air that hit me like a tornado and roared like an oncoming train, “Nooo!”

  My head snapped back from the force of her scream. “I’m just . . . playing golf. . . . I’ll be back in a few hours—”

  “Nooooo!”

  I can’t think of one thing that would cause me to freak out the way my girlfriend does over my playing golf. Oh, I’ve had reasons to go nuts. But I’ve been cool. I’ve held back. Call it my new after-fifty attitude. For argument’s sake, here’s a reason that might’ve have caused other people concern. Put up a red flag, so to speak.

  One night when we were out—after we’d been dating awhile and things started heating up—she said that if our relationship was to go any further, I would have to share her affections. She reached into her purse and an adorable Chihuahua puppy poked her head out. My girlfriend nuzzled the dog. The dog squealed and barked happily and licked her face. I had to admit the dog was pretty damn cute. My girlfriend lifted the dog all the way out. The dog had on a pink dress.

  “I hope the dog’s a girl,” I said.

  “Of course. Well? What do you think?”

  “Cute,” I said.

  “Hold her.”

  “No, that’s okay—”

  She pressed the dog into my arms. The puppy squirmed for a couple of seconds, then snuggled against my chest, got comfortable, and looked up at me with big round adoring eyes. I caressed her little head gently, and then, I swear, the dog smiled.

  “Hold up. Did she just smile at me?”

  “Yes! That’s the test. You passed. She likes you.” Then she smiled, not so much out of happiness but from relief. “Our little family. This is going to work.”

  • • •

  I like dogs. I’ve had dogs my whole life, starting when I was a kid. They mostly stayed outside, because my grandmother said she was allergic. I guess that’s possible, although I don’t ever remember her sneezing. Whenever I sneezed she told me to cut it out; I was still going to school. In order to skip school, I’d better be bleeding, which, by the way, she said she could make happen.

  I think she just didn’t want to deal with the dogs inside. Today she couldn’t use that dumb allergy excuse, because people breed hypoallergenic dogs. They also combine breeds on purpose. I used to have a dog that was half spaniel, half poodle. We called it a mutt. Today there are no more mutts. That breed is now a very special and desirable breed known as a spanieldoodle. My dog was the result of two dogs that did it in the neighborhood. Today a poodle gets knocked up by a Labrador, you call it a Labradoodle, and it costs you $5,000 for a puppy.

  People plan the mating of their dogs as if they were arranging a canine couples’ retreat. They get the dogs together and let them romp and frolic and fool around like they’re on some doggy getaway weekend in Maui. When I was a kid, you didn’t plan anything. Your dog got out and came back pregnant. I’d say, “Hey, the dog got knocked up.” Then, when the dog gave birth to this spanieldoodle, I’d think, “I don’t want this. My dog got laid by a cocker spaniel. It’s ugly.” Not only does that ugly mutt now cost five grand; it’s considered beautiful.

  Dogs used to be just dogs. Modern dogs have become privileged, even elitist. I’ve seen dogs look at me like they’re better than I am. You can see it in their eyes. They look down on you.

  I once got involved with a woman who really loved her dog, a huge German shepherd named Hans, who I swear didn’t like Mexicans. Shortly after she moved in, I got a bad feeling about Hans and their relationship, which should have been a red flag about her as well. Right away I got the sense that Hans didn’t like me. There was something about the way he looked at me. He would sniff in my direction, turn his nose up, and make a face like I smelled. He would sort of frown, as if he accused me of farting. Usually you blame the dog. This dog blamed me.

  I mentioned this to my new girlfriend. I told her I thought her dog was jealous of me. She laughed it off. “You have a great imagination,” she said.

  “I do,” I said, “but I’m not imagining this. I’m telling you the dog doesn’t like me. I know I’m right about this.”

  I was so right that one night I came into the bedroom and found the German shepherd lying in bed spooning with my girlfriend. They were both sound asleep, snoring loud enough to wake the neighbors.

  I froze in the doorway. “What the hell . . . ?”

  The dog lifted his head, glared at me, gave me a disgusted look that said, “Oh, it’s you,” then dropped his head onto the pillow and went back to sleep.

  Now, I know some people like to spoon with their dogs, but this didn’t sit well with me. I realize people are just being affectionate with their dogs, sharing a moment, and it’s no big deal. It’s not like that woman I read about a while ago who used to drink wine and watch TV in bed with her pet orangutan. Every night she’d pour herself and her orangutan a couple of glasses of a good cabernet, drop a sedative into his glass, and they’d snuggle and watch a movie, something they both could relate to, like Rise of the Planet of the Apes. One night, she decided to change things up and poured the orangutan a pinot noir instead. He got pissed and tore her face off.

  I don’t want to say, “Lady, hello, what did you expect?” but what did you expect? I’m not putting a panther or a chimp in my bed, even if I gave him a bottle of Scotch and a couple of Vicodin while we watched HBO. I know where to draw the line. Spooning is far enough.

  I didn’t think I’d have to worry about any weird behavior with my new twenty-something girlfriend and her Chihuahua puppy. This dog was into me, and the three of us liked to hang out. I did have to adjust to one minor quirk that kind of threw me
off.

  My girlfriend liked to dress the puppy up in dresses, skirts, and other girly doggy outfits. Come on; it’s not that bad. Actually, dressing the dog up didn’t really bother me. I kind of got into it. One day I put a Lakers jersey on the dog—same one I had on, only smaller—and the two of us settled onto the couch to watch the game. I even let the dog sip my beer.

  Then a few months later, tragedy struck.

  The puppy got sick and died. Just like that. The poor little dog contracted some rare illness and that was the end. Doggy heaven. Unbelievably shocking.

  My girlfriend fell into a terrible depression. The loss of her little puppy knocked the wind out of her. She couldn’t get out of bed. She just lay there, day after day, comatose, sobbing, not eating.

  I was determined to do something to snap her out of her funk. I tried cheering her up with jokes, inviting her friends to visit, spending as much time with her as she wanted, giving her as much space as she needed. I even tried listening. Hard as hell for guys to do, but I did it. I didn’t interrupt or nod off or reach for the remote. Not once. Nothing helped. I was at a loss. Then my friend RJ told me about a pet psychic.

  “You won’t believe this woman,” RJ said. “She converses with the dead.”

  “By converses, you mean . . . You don’t mean . . . What do you mean?”

  “She talks to people’s dead pets.”

  “Okay, see, right there, I’m suspicious, because dogs can’t talk,” I said.

  “True, but they have thoughts. Supposedly. This pet psychic reads their thoughts.”

  “I see. She reads their dead thoughts,” I said. “They can’t be the dog’s current thoughts, because the dog is currently dead.”

  “I don’t know how it works.”

  “So, after a dog dies, the thoughts live on? Is that it? Where do they go? Do they get captured in a thought bubble? Or maybe dogs continue to have thoughts even after they die. Maybe their body passes on but their mind keeps going. Is that how this works? Help me out here.”