Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck (40 page)

7. Dating

26
I wrote in a column, “Men are told it’s a thought crime to ever view women as sex objects. Of course, that’s exactly how women think of themselves when they’re dressing to attract a man. Oh, did you think women wear plunging necklines and a little gold charm dangling in their cleavage to frighten away mosquitoes?”

27
I love how crime novelist Elmore Leonard described romance novels: “full of rape and adverbs.”

28
Note:
Although a photograph of an erect penis initially makes a poor calling card, some women
are
into getting bonerpix
after
they’ve slept with a guy.

29
This is one of those times to break the “Do Not Ever Call” rule I wrote about in “The Telephone” chapter.

30
When a guy who isn’t exactly a Mr. Moneybags is treating a woman to dinner, he’ll be afraid of looking cheap, which will make him easy prey for every waiter upsell in the book. A woman needs to be the one to lead with the frugalities, such as, “Tap water is fine for me,” when the waiter proposes the $112 bottled water, collected from dew that fell off angels’ wings.

31
The first outbreak is often the worst, and beyond some tingling and itching (and those yucky sores), the symptoms are similar to the flu—fever, headache, and muscle aches.

32
As I wrote in my column in 2011, approximately one in six U.S. adults between ages fourteen and forty-eight are afflicted with herpes, and 80 percent of them don’t show visible symptoms, according to herpes researcher Dr. Anna Wald. In research by Wald and her colleagues, even when herpes carriers showed no symptoms, they were contagious 10 percent of the time—on average. Wald explained to me that there’s a range: “Some people may be contagious 1 percent of the time, and others 30 percent, but we don’t have a good way to predict who is who.”

33
My boyfriend, the armchair psychologist, says, “Make a guy sit through
Old Yeller,
and if he doesn’t cry at the end, he’s a sociopath.”

8. Going Places

34
Google this: “I park like an idiot stickers.” The stickers to get use Post-it-type stickum so they won’t damage cars.

35
I wouldn’t do this now in Rome, with all the drivers on cell phones.

36
The same goes for grocery shoppers who plant their shopping cart squarely in the middle of the aisle and orphan it there. My boyfriend says, “That’s why grocery carts should have horns.”

37
I got this idea from British psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman. See his terrific book
The As If Principle
.

38
For added protection, because the Bose headphones are better at blocking out low noises than they are at blocking out voices, I sometimes pair mine with industrial-use earplugs and an iPhone app that plays white, pink, or brown noise.

39
The porn star called “Tony Titanic” doesn’t have to spread his legs that wide.

40
Actually meaningful security would involve trained intelligence officers using probable cause to root out terrorists long before they ever get to the airport or another target.

41
In July 2013, novelist Cory Doctorow blogged about the TSA’s Instagram account, where they show off all the “dangerous items” that they, as Doctorow puts it, “
steal
confiscate from air travelers.” Their intended message—they’re keeping us safe from danger in flight—is clear. But Doctorow, at
BoingBoing.net
, notes the essential missing detail:

What they don’t show is all the grand-jury indictments for conspiracy to commit air terrorism that they secured after catching people with these items—even the people who were packing guns. That’s because no one—not the TSA, not the DAs, not the DHS—believe(s) that anyone who tries to board a plane with a dangerous item is actually planning on doing anything bad with them. After all, as New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler said (quoting Tom Wolfe), “a grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.” So if there was any question about someone thinking of hurting a plane, you’d expect to see indictments.

42
I’m thankful that First Amendment lawyer Marc J. Randazza and his team of associates came to my rescue, defending me pro bono, or my groper might be driving to her job at LAX in a Ferrari, which I’d be spending the rest of my life paying off.

43
Think Midnight ExpressJet.

44
Except when the TSA is too busy removing diapers and the dignity of grandmothers with leukemia to notice the occasional machete or AK-47 slipping through.

9. Eating, Drinking, Socializing

45
Child’s remark has been widely misquoted as “Every woman should have a blowtorch.”

Child’s actual remark came from an episode of her TV show, when her guest, pastry chef Mary Bergin, pulled out a blowtorch to put a crème brûlée crust on a chocolate Bundt cake. Child, looking on, exclaimed about the blowtorch, “That’s wonderful! Every kitchen should have one.”

Bergin answered: “I think so. I think every woman should have a blowtorch because men listen to you when you have a blowtorch in your hand.”

“I can imagine,” said Child.

46
Two percent within a restaurant and 4 percent between restaurants.

47
People born before 1960 have a weird tendency to feel almost homicidal when others, typically those in more recent generations, respond to “Thank you” with “No problem!” instead of “You’re welcome.” A friend’s husband, who’s in his late fifties, explained, “The person who says this is indicating that you are not inconveniencing him. This is aggressive rather than polite.”

Um, actually, it’s just lingo, thought by some linguists to be influenced by the Australian “No worries” or similar responses to thank you in languages other than English (such as the French “
de rien
”—“it’s nothing”). Unless somebody says “No problem” in a surly tone, they’re probably indicating a cheerful willingness to be of service. They may also feel “You’re welcome” sounds a little stuffy. So, maybe just try to accept it as a quirk of an age group you are not a part of, tempted as you may be to see it as reason to dock your waiter’s tip or clock him over the head with a bar tray until he sees the light.

48
Researchers Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt, and Clark McCauley are better-known for their work on disgust, but Tybur and Lieberman, in this paper, point out the holes in their thinking, including the odd and unfounded notion that our sense of disgust is based, in part, on not wanting to be reminded of our animal nature.

49
It’s possible somebody hasn’t shown up or called because they had something terrible happen to them, as was reportedly the case with one of those whose name Ellis tweeted.

50
As for flip-flops on the ladies, one of my blog commenters, “Katie,” noted that they “can look really cute!” Cute is good if you’re twelve, but keep in mind that there’s no such thing as “fuck-me flip-flops.” Also, they’ll be serving your dinner at a table and not in a sauna. Dress accordingly.

51
If you opt for Danicki’s approach, I would suggest putting the RSVP cutoff date in the e-mail subject line to strike, um, consideration in the hearts of one’s friends and beloved family.

11. The Apology

52
To be fair, there are many helpful employees who work answering company phone lines. It’s just that when you need the most help, you seem to end up with the other kind.

53
Annals of Internal Medicine
, 131.12 (1999): 970–72.

54
Annals of Internal Medicine
, 131.12 (1999): 963–67

12. Trickle-Down Humanity

55
Aristotle, the eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith, and the Dalai Lama are other members of Frankl’s choir.

56
Online communities do help in some ways, but there, too, we’re often in a sea of “friends.”

57
I prefer the Madalyn Murray O’Hair version: “Marx was wrong—religion is not the opiate of the masses, baseball is.”

58
PopTech is a terrific science-and innovation-fostering nonprofit whose videos, including DeSteno’s eighteen-minute talk on his compassion research, can be seen at
PopTech.org
.

59
I sent the letter via snail mail because I’d heard he sometimes responded to e-mail and I wasn’t looking to have a cancer patient go to the effort to reply.

60
Gregg likes to credit our relationship to “Steve Jobs’s retail strategy.”

61
Chapter 3, “Communicating,”
here
.