What Women Talk About When They Talk About Men

Men, consider this a cautionary tale. Women, whether with their closest friends or with utter strangers, are talking about you. In fact, the word dissecting may be more accurate. While you boys were spending your six-year-old summers torturing tarred frogs, we girls were side by side on our back-yard swings, wondering what it would take to make you stop torturing us. When you were 11 and playing little league, we were setting one another's hair and scheming to get your attention. When you were 16 and greasing old cars, we were cloistered in one another's bedrooms, smoking clandestine cigarettes and wondering how far we should allow you to go with us. What else did we do at slumber parties but giggle and whine and worry about you? What else do we do now, at 20 and 30 and 40, careers or no careers?

What we say about you varies with our age, experience and marital status. But there are common denominators. For one thing, talking is usually synonymous with complaining. We are fearlessly and harshly judgmental about you, taking in every detail from the state of your fingernails to the state of your mind and scrutinizing them mercilessly. When we're not complaining, we're trying to second-guess your actions, interpret your words, manipulate your feelings or, as one 30-year-old woman put it, "make you more paranoid than you already are about us."

What, exactly, do we say?

Drawers. Jenny is 32 and has just slept with Tommy. "Thank God," she says, "he wore boxers and not those skimpy bikinis, sign of the narcissist."

"Oh, Jenny, boxers," groans Kathy, 34. "How fatherly. How preppie. How straight."

"Not fatherly at all. My father's were always solid white or light blue, the kind that came in packages. But Tommy's were striped in great colors. Designer boxers, made in Italy, no less." No one is surprised that Jenny checked out the label.

Deborah, 30, likes boxers, too, because "they make men's bodies look better, especially if they've got any belly." But she can't get her boyfriend, Steve, to wear them. She considers his unwillingness highly symbolic. "He insists on Jockeys. He says he's worn them ever since he was out of diapers, and why switch now? But you know he has a problem making changes of any kind. Look how long he's been in that stupid job he hates."

It's not just the over-30s who like boxers. "They're the cutest," says Michelle, 22. "Bikinis are a definite problem. Jockeys are tolerable as long as they're just plain white. I went out with a guy once who had really ugly underwear, in this garish orange color. It was a complete turn-off. It indicated very bad taste. I never went out with him again."

"Ugh, what about guys with graying old Jockeys?" shudders Cassie, 24. "Don't they realize that we notice? I would never wear dirty old underwear to go out with someone I thought I might sleep with. You have to wonder about the rest of him if he's that much of a slob."

"I won't go down on someone with yucky underwear," says Laurel, 27, "because I'm afraid he'll smell like dirty jeans. Or shit. But sometimes they do anyway, even with decent underwear. I hate that. We're always worrying about how we smell; why don't they? They'd probably get head more often if they did."

"No underwear's pretty sexy," says Terri, 23. "If he's in jeans or shorts or something casual and takes them off and there he is. But it's weird if he's wearing a suit. Then it seems like he's trying too hard."

Body parts. "Please don't write about this," begs Paulina, 37. "My friends and I have told men for years that we don't really care about penis size, just so they won't get all paranoid about it. The women of this world do not need any more men who have erection problems."

"I look at their hands and especially their thumbs," says Wendy, 35.

"I look at their noses," says Lauren, 31. "Big Italian noses are pretty good bets."

"I've found that short, stocky guys have the thickest ones, and I'll take thickness over length," says Peggy, 30. "But there are guys who are not well endowed who know what to do with what they've got."

"In any case, I never let on to a man that there's something less than perfect about his equipment," says Karen, 34. "No matter what, I tell him he's got a beautiful one. That's the best way to get him to relax and really make love well. You have to be supportive, even if you're secretly disappointed."

"My friends call me the Size Queen," says Connie, 38. "Ten years ago, I wouldn't admit to it, because we weren't supposed to care, but now--what the hell. I care, I care. I look at his crotch, and if it's not bulging, I won't go out with him. I've made some mistakes, but usually I'm right. I tip my friends off, too. I'll be in a room full of people and I may say to a woman friend, 'Did you see the guy in the blue shirt?' and she'll always know what I mean, even though sometimes she's too scared to look. Once, I met one of my boyfriends' fathers and I went wild. He was 70 years old and wearing a caftan and I could tell it was huge."

Young women seem much more eager to discuss the kind of clothes a man wears or the car he drives than the dimensions of his love muscle, unless it is remarkably small or remarkably large. Says 22-year-old Colleen, "It just never comes up." So to speak.

Trade-offs. "I wouldn't mind a more exciting man who didn't fall asleep at ten o'clock every night and was more interested in sex," says Molly, 35, married eight years. "But what's the point of trading him in if there's no one else to go to? He's sweet and good to me, and I don't care to be on my own at this point in my life, thank you."

"Michael's not it for me; I know that," says Suzanne, 38 and single. "But I continue to see him because it's nice to have someone around, and I don't like to be without a man in the summer. I'll wait until the fall to break it off."

"Sometimes I'm in tears because I'm so sick of being alone," says Norah, 37. "But I worry that I'll just settle because I want someone so badly. If he's halfway acceptable and has a fairly decent career, I don't care if he's not that ambitious. I'm prepared to pretend passion and sort of go into automatic pilot just to be done with this exhausting business of dating and then having the man disappear on me at the exact moment when I think things may work out for once."

Money, honey. Older women, such as Dina, 38, complain about men who won't pay their own way, who "sponge off you financially, come for the weekend and announce that they don't have much money, meaning you're going to pick up the dinner tabs and the groceries and provide the room as well."

Women in their 20s fully expect their dates to take care of all tabs and consider it an insult if they don't. "When the check comes, I'll say, 'What's my share?' or 'Can I help you with that?' " says Morgan, 23, "but I always expect him to refuse my offer. In most cases, I consider him a real dork if he accepts. The only time I insist on splitting the check is if I get halfway through dinner and realize I don't want to be with him. Then it's a signal to him that I'm not interested."

On the other hand, Isabel, 22, said of a recent date, "He wasn't that cute, but he took me to a great restaurant. That made me more inclined to sleep with him."

"My first date with this very rich guy was for lunch," says Nicole, 24, "and afterward, he took me shopping and bought me a $600 leather outfit. I figured, So what; the guy can afford it. And he'd always take me to dinner at expensive places. But he ignored the little things. In the morning after we'd spent the night together, he would never ask to take me to breakfast, which I thought was very strange. Once, I was fixed up with someone else by a mutual friend, who warned me that the guy didn't have much money. The guy came to my door holding a white cane, wearing dark glasses and bearing this ornate tray with champagne in an ice bucket and a three-course Hungarian meal. I was impressed that he had put that much thought into the evening, much more impressed than I was with the guy who bought me the $600 outfit. I mean, that's nice but boring. Anyone with lots of money can spend it, but just spending it on you doesn't show you that you're really special."

Sensitive man or wimp? "Where are the Cary Grants of today?" wails Suzanne. "I never come across men with any character, any real backbone. Mostly, it's married cowards who put their rings in their pockets. There's deception everywhere."

"I can't tell you how many 44-year-old (continued on page 175) What women talk about (continued from page 60) emotional cripples are running around out there," says Sally, 35. "They expect you to wait on them like you're their mother--they have a prince complex. They think the world centers on them, and that's why the relationship usually ends. Either you get fed up with them or they find a better mother somewhere else."

Alison, 30 and recently married, believes that "behind every man who thinks of himself as a great lover is a major wimp." She says of her ex-live-in boyfriend, "He made a big deal of all the women he'd had in the past, to show how desirable he was, but he was one of the most sexually insecure men I've ever known and obviously uncomfortable with women. If I didn't feel like having sex one night, he would hound me incessantly and demand to know why. He couldn't accept the fact that I just wasn't into it at the moment. Of course, the more he bugged me, the more I denied him, and then he'd insist we stay up all night discussing it. He made such a big deal about it, which only belittled him in my eyes. A man who feels threatened by a woman who turns him down sexually has problems."

Many women who've lived with men--especially domineering men--complain that the minute they get sick, they turn instantly into whimpering two-year-olds. "It's like being sick is his only relief from having to be the big, strong, macho guy all the time," says Trisha, 31, of her husband. "If he'd relax with his macho trip in normal life, maybe he wouldn't have to turn into a petulant infant the second he gets a sore throat."

Taking care of business. "I have a job; he has a job; we make about the same money," says Stephanie, 34. "But it's assumed that I'll carry much more of the practical burdens of marriage--paying bills, running our social life and investments and, I'm sure, caring for the kid if we ever have one. Yet I'm also supposed to tolerate his moodiness and constantly reinforce him when he's having difficulties at work. He pretends to be helpless about things he's perfectly capable of doing, just to get out of doing them. His needs are to be tended to first; mine are always secondary. We're just like a mother and child. That's one reason I've been ambivalent about starting a family--sometimes I feel like I already have a kid."

Doing it. "He kissed like a frog!" Susie, 23, is describing her date of the night before, to the howls of her friends. They ask her what she means, and she starts making frog faces and fish faces. Men who don't know how to kiss--who are slobbery or don't use their tongues well, for example--are always game for ridicule. The way a man kisses is evaluated carefully by women of all ages as a clue to the way he will make love.

"I hate guys who immediately stick their tongues down your throat," says Meg, 25. "That tells you all you need to know about their other techniques."

"Fred was the best kisser I've ever been with--the best of everything sexually," says Lucy, 31. "He was so creative. He'd run his tongue over my gums or suck my lower lip or pull my tongue into his mouth, but everything real slow and deep. He's also the only guy I could stand to let near my ear--everyone else would just slurp and drool into it and then wonder why I wasn't beside myself with passion."

"Let me tell you about Alan," says Kim, 24. "He's Yale undergrad, Harvard Law, great firm, great-looking, lots of money, the whole bit. In bed, he's a total moron--acts like he's about nine years old, grabbing and fingering me like we're back in high school with five minutes to go in the back seat, and then he says, 'You have incredible boobies.' Boobies! What kind of baby word is that? Just 'cause of that, I won't go out with him anymore."

"After sex," says Maria, 22, "Ron would do these stupid routines, like standing before the mirror nude and doing the Richard Gere American Gigolo act when he thought I wasn't watching. Men shouldn't reveal their vanity like that."

Barbara, 26, voices a common complaint about an ex-lover that cuts across lines of age and circumstance: "He'd always reach for the box of Kleenex afterward and would literally throw it onto my stomach, as if I were the maid and I was supposed to clean up."

The older the woman, the more accepting she is of boyish, though not crude, behavior in bed. "Sex can be so dreary and serious with men over thirty," says Diana, 29. "They're hung up about their performance, your performance, their ex-wives, their fathers, God knows what. It's nice when you can have fun in bed. When a man is really playful and uninhibited, it can be very endearing and very sexy. One of my favorite lovers would occasionally instigate a pillow fight before sex. Seems childish, but we really let loose, and the sex was always intense afterward."

Haven't I seen you somewhere before? "They have this habit of handing you their business cards and saying, 'Call me, let's have lunch,' " says Linda, 26. "I say, 'I always lose business cards, so if you want to get in touch with me, you'd better call me; I'm listed.' Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact that they're some executive somewhere?"

"My friends and I have to put up with such obnoxious behavior," says Rachel, 24. "We're constantly being hit on by guys in their 20s who are successful and have an inflated sense of themselves and live a high lifestyle. They assume you're thrilled to be with them. They'll take amazing liberties; they'll hug you in a restaurant or try to run their hands up your leg. I'll say, 'Get your hands off me,' and they'll say, 'Hey, mellow out.' That makes me furious. Since they'll grab any pretty woman in the room, it's not even flattering."

Marianne, 25, says, "You don't want to hurt their feelings if you can help it, but sometimes they force you to be mean. The other night, I was at a club and this guy asked me to dance and I said no. The more I said no, the more he hassled me, so I said, 'You're boring; leave me alone.' He kept asking, and finally I used this line I got from a friend of mine: I said, 'You have a small dick, asshole.' I mean, wouldn't you think a guy would slink away after that? But not this one. It was so pathetic. The guy had no pride, or else he was the biggest idiot in the universe."

The old double standard. "Girls are damned if we do and damned if we don't," grouses Lisanne, 22, who's a year out of college. "Guys are into this nice girl/bad girl thing, especially cute Yuppie guys with money, because usually girls fall all over them. Like, this one guy, Ted, who's known for screwing any woman who's not horribly fat or really old. He slept with a friend of mine and then told all his friends, 'Don't sleep with her; she's a slut.' If anyone's a slut, he is."

Ashley, 22, an unusually confident college senior, and her friends retaliate in the old-fashioned way: They play hard to get. "My criterion for having sex is how much of an effort a man makes to be with me. He has to run the gantlet even if I know right away I want to sleep with him. I start the game between the first meeting and the first date. Take this one guy I met at a party. I gave him my number but made sure not to leave the party with him, because I wanted him to sweat for my company and I didn't want to be talked about. He called a few days later. My roommate answered the phone, and I told her to tell him I was out, even though I was sitting right there. I wanted to see how soon he'd call back, because that's a clue to how much he wants to see me. He called the next day, so I got on the phone and agreed to go out with him." Ashley, who lost her virginity at 16 with "a much older guy," will require at least four "very well thought out, very creative dates" and "no hassling" before she'll consider sleeping with a man, though she'll definitely allow some "fooling around, but never to the point of being naked."

Lisanne and her roommate, Joni, 23, say the double standard is maintained only by young men. "Older" men (over 30), according to Joni, are "less judgmental about sex, and they bide their time about it. They come on real worldly and sophisticated and try to intimidate you. They'll say, 'Come on, let's be grownups about this. Don't think you can get away with all the cute games you play with your little boyfriends. You and I knew from the start where we were heading.' I try to ignore them or pretend I don't know what they're talking about, and since they're always trying to act cool and detached, they usually don't push it."

Hang-ups. Annie, 36, has "specialized" in younger guys since she was 30; her current boyfriend is 22. "They have less experience to get anxious about, so the sex is usually better, even if the two of you have nothing to talk about. You've heard the joke about the woman who had sex with a 17-year-old--you know, if you have seven seconds, I'll tell you about it. But a sweet young guy who comes fast seems full of desire and really turned on, while men my age have slept with 3000 women and have had so many problems it's like, 'Hey, what a drag.' There are men who do multiplication tables in their head so they can last a long time and make you come, but they haven't the faintest idea how that works or that they're driving you up a wall. They don't understand that sometimes you're just not gonna come, no matter what, and in the meantime, you can lose all the skin on your vagina."

Betsy, 24, reports a "weird" experience with this "rich Palm Beach guy, about 30, the silent type, who seemed to fancy himself a James Bond. Sexually, he could go for, like, three hours and never come. I'd call my girlfriends and ask them if it was my fault, what did it mean, and none of them could figure it out. My male friends said it had never happened to them. I'd say sarcastically, 'Do you think you're the Bionic Man or something?' and he seemed to think that was a compliment. We made love three times on different occasions, and he never came. I'd get bored, sore and tired and think, There has to be an end to this, but there never was. So it's not my dream to have a man who's endlessly hard." But then, Betsy, like many younger women, hasn't yet come across a man who's endlessly soft.

"It makes me angry when they can't get it up. It's so goddamned irritating," says Jennifer, 33. "Especially when they try to persuade you to go to bed with them and then they can't do it. It feels like a tease--a cunt tease. It makes me want to scream. But you can't scream, because all your life you've been taught that men's sexual egos are fragile and you have to pamper them, and it could be dangerous if they had a sexual breakdown in your bed. You're supposed to be understanding and supportive.

"It's not that I can't be sympathetic; I'm sure if I were a man, there'd be lots of times I couldn't get it up, just because some days can leave you feeling burned out. But most men won't consider the fact that being flaccid also indicates ambivalence about being with you. They refuse to acknowledge the ambivalence. They always say it's because they're too tired or too drunk. And, of course, always, always, it's the first time it ever happened to them--which you know is a lie, or you have to think it's a lie; otherwise, it means there's something wrong with you."

Women try to talk about a man's sexual problems in generalities, because (A) unless he's a jerk (or you are), you don't want to expose him to your friends, because it's just too cruel, and (B) his failure to perform seems to denigrate you as well. Nevertheless, indiscretions do happen. "Remember Robert?" asks my friend Ricky, 29. Of course I remember Robert. Ricky had regaled me with tales of his wondrous lovemaking, his chivalry, his adoration of the female body, his enthusiasm about cunnilingus even during her period. But they'd stopped going out a few years back, so it seemed safe to talk now. "You know this image he had of being this manly Italian Romeo. It turns out he was just ... flagging. There were times it was halfway there, but not enough to work with. But I wouldn't tell anyone, because I was embarrassed. I was sure it was just me, since he had this great reputation.

"I told a friend of mine to be sure to fuck him if she ever had the opportunity, because he was so terrific, but the truth was, I wanted to find out if he had that problem with her, too. She did fuck him, and I asked her how he was, and she said, 'Great, even though he was really drunk at the time,' which usually means even the best of them are in trouble. Then I knew it must be me. But now I wonder ... maybe she said he was fine because she didn't want me to think it was her. Maybe that's how the myth of his being a sexual god gets maintained."

The other woman. Other women tend to be older women. "Doesn't he realize how manipulative she's being, with all that if-you-leave-me-I'll-never-emerge-from-the-house-again crap?" explodes Tanya, 30. She is talking about Carl, her married lover, and his wife, Felice. Carl has told Felice (who knows, or pretends to know, nothing about Tanya) that he's unhappy with the marriage. Felice has countered by getting hysterical. Now he's all torn up and guilty. Keeps saying what a saint she's been all these years, and now all she does is cry and it's all his fault. "My biggest fear," Tanya says, "is that she's stopped taking birth-control pills without telling him, and she'll manage to get pregnant, and then he'll never leave her. Carl insists that she would never try to trick him. He says it's 'not her style.' But men are so obtuse about women."

Jean, 34, tells about the time she helped her married lover, Mark, run a few Saturday errands, including a drop-off of his wife's castoff clothes at the local Salvation Army outpost. "Of course, I checked out all her stuff. She didn't have very good taste--too many pastel colors, too many synthetic fabrics. But later that day, I went back alone and bought one of her blouses and took it home and played voodoo with it. I mean, I literally stuck pins in it and chanted evil prayers. Sick, maybe, but it gave me some satisfaction, which this kind of affair doesn't give much of."

Alana, 28, spotted her lover's live-in girlfriend at a shopping center. "The first thing I noticed," Alana says, "was how shlumpy she looked. She didn't have on any make-up, and she was wearing a very structured, tailored, boring beige jump suit and flat sandals. So I decided that next time I saw him, I'd dress like the opposite of this woman he says he's tired of. She's very strong and athletic and healthy-looking, so I went all out to look frail and feminine and soft, but also sexy, not mannish, like her. I wore high heels and a white-gauze dress and make-up. He couldn't wait to rip my clothes off."

Tricks. "Guys are so oblivious. They make it easy for girls to do sneaky little things," confides Jessica, 23. "Like, you get up while they're still sleeping, wash your face, brush your teeth, put on mascara and then go back to bed and make believe you woke up that way. And my friends and I always make sure to have male friends call us when guys we're dating are over, so they'll know we're in demand and will try harder. Of course, I never tell my male friends the real purpose, 'cause that would ruin the trick for another girl who might be dating one of them. I always play back my answering machine if a guy is over and make believe that any guy's voice on the machine is someone asking for a date. If a girlfriend calls while I've got a guy over, she'll say, 'You've got someone there?' and I'll say, 'Yeah, Thursday night sounds great for dinner.' Then I hang up and smile sweetly."

The answering-machine game isn't limited to youthful players. Maggie, 34, resorts to it on occasion, "but only when I'm feeling insecure about Jon," her boyfriend of six months. One night, Maggie and Jon returned to Maggie's apartment after seeing a movie. They'd been fighting that day, and Maggie was feeling unloved. She immediately checked her machine, in her bedroom, and saw from the flashing light that there were several messages. "I waited till Jon went into the bathroom, which is right next to the bedroom, and I turned the volume down low until I heard a male voice. Then I turned it up high and, sure enough, Jon heard it and asked me who it was. It was actually a gay friend of mine, but I told Jon it was Tony, my exlover, which got Jon jealous. Once I saw he was jealous I felt better."

Rita, 30, gets nervous when her boyfriend, Paul, goes out bar hopping with his buddies, so she takes certain precautions. "On those nights, I make up an excuse to see him just before he goes out; usually, I pretend I left something at his place that morning. I go over there dressed very seductively, and I either get him to make love to me or I give him a great blow job--all so he's less horny when he goes out and maybe less likely to pick someone up." As further insurance, whenever Rita spends the night at Paul's, she makes sure to "carry perfume in my purse, and when he's out of the room, I dab it on his sheets. That way, long after I'm gone, he'll smell me. And so will any other woman who happens to be there."

"Sometimes I'm so sexually bored with Peter," says Bonnie, 32, of her husband, "that I'll purposely try to hurry things up. I'll speed up my body movements and make lots of noise to get him close; and if I have to, I'll fake an orgasm so he'll know it's OK to have his. I'll draw on every little trick I know about turning him on, like stroking the skin between his balls and his anus or holding his balls as he thrusts, so he'll come faster."

Carolyn, 26, describes the methods she used to find out if Phillip, her almost-live-in boyfriend of one year, was cheating on her. "He seemed preoccupied when he was with me, he didn't want to make love that often and when he did, it was halfhearted. He snapped when I asked him what was wrong, and he seemed to be having a mysteriously large number of emergency meetings at his office.

"I stopped at nothing to find out what he'd been up to, which turned out to be exactly what I'd suspected. I had a key to his apartment, and when he was out, I'd go over and go through all of his pockets, his trash cans and especially his answering-machine tape. If I heard women's voices on the tape, I'd call the numbers they left to figure out if the call was business or personal, what type of voices they had and stuff like that. If I found phone numbers lying around on pieces of paper, I'd tear them up. If I found receipts in his pockets for nights when he was supposedly working late, I'd try to get him to slip up. Soon enough, he did."

Mr. Cool. "Next time around," says Barb, 32 and divorced, "I want someone who can talk. I'm so sick of silent men. And even the noisy ones can't seem to express their feelings. I can't stand not knowing what's going on inside the head of someone I live with. My husband complained that I asked too many questions, but maybe if he'd volunteered more information, I wouldn't have had to ask so many."

Younger women who are simply dating around aren't as concerned about deep emotional communication; in fact, as one 25-year-old put it only half-jokingly, "I don't want to know too much about them--I don't want my illusions spoiled yet." But young women do complain about men who won't talk.

"Some guys use openness as a line," says Denise, 22. "They pretend to be interested in you and what you're thinking and pretend to confide deep secrets to you about themselves--things like fear of failure or their relationship with their fathers. But once you sleep with them, they close up."

"I can't stand men who aren't willing to get into a good conversation with you," says Marilyn, 27. "It's a sort of passivity, a lack of energy or curiosity that's very unattractive. You can meet a man at a party who assumes that you'll lead him to your bed with no particular conversational effort on his part. That kind of man usually turns out to be sexually passive as well--passive in general about relationships, even with his own friends."

What do women want? "A man who takes the trouble to select one single perfect flower for me rather than grab the bunch with the rubber band around it."

"A man who can perceive the nuances of a situation, who can be sensitive to the undercurrents of what's going on instead of just the obvious things."

"A man who doesn't freak out if I start crying about something, especially if I'm crying about him."

"A man who's in control but who's subtle about it. A man just a little stronger than I am."

"A man who doesn't try to hit you over the head with his goddamn logic."

"A man who knows where the clitoris is and doesn't yank at it like it's a bottle cap."

"A man who will drop everything to give you emotional sustenance when you really need it."

"A man who calls when he says he will and shows up when he says he will."

"A man who is turned on by everything you do in bed."

"A man who invites you to dinner, cooks it himself, brilliantly, doesn't try to rope you into helping him by acting incompetent and refuses your assistance if you ask, leaves the dishes in order to carry you into his bedroom à la Clark Gable, makes love to you passionately and slowly and afterward holds you and talks to you into the night."

"A man who knows exactly what I want all the time without my having to tell him."

Of course, if we had all that, we wouldn't need to talk about you. And that would be a real problem.

"The way a man kisses is evaluated carefully by women of all ages as a clue to the way he will make love."