THE BRO-MAGNET (11 page)

He looks around the table one by one, like he’s expecting an answer somewhere.

Billy shakes his head, Steve shakes his head, I shake my head, Drew shakes his own head.

“Don’t look at me,” Sam says. “I still haven’t figured women out.”

“I’ll tell you what women want,” Big John says authoritatively. He pulls a cigar out of his pocket, chomps one end. He never lights the thing. He just likes to chomp.

“
You?
” I laugh. I don’t mean the laugh to come out quite so mocking. But really. When was his last date – over thirty-three years ago? The only woman I’ve seen him with since Mom died is Aunt Alfresca. And I mean, she’s Aunt Alfresca. It’s not like she’s a real woman. What could Big John possibly know about real women and what they want? 

“I’m going to choose to ignore that mocking laugh,” Big John says, still chomping. “Sure, I could choose to be offended and then further choose to withhold valuable information from you. But that wouldn’t be very big of me now, would it?”

“Yes, but what could you – ” I start to say, but Billy cuts me off.

“Stop mocking, Johnny,” he says.

“Seriously,” Drew says. “We’ve got wives. We need this information.”

“But he hasn’t been married in over thirty-three years!” I object.

“So?” Billy points out. “It’s not like she divorced him.”

Big John jabs his cigar in Billy’s direction. “You make an excellent observation. Francesca died long before she had the opportunity to start hating me, so I think it’s safe to say I know a few things about women.”

Four heads swivel in my direction – Billy, Drew, Steve, Sam – as though expecting me to raise a further objection. Instead, I relax back against my chair, fold my arms across my chest, wave one hand expansively in Big John’s direction.

“Be my guest,” I say. “Educate us.”

“Your basic woman,” chomp, “is a completely different animal than your basic man.” Big John gestures with his hand abruptly, palm down, like he’s telling a dealer in Vegas that he wants no more cards. “
Completely
.” Then he looks at Sam, adds, “Well, except for Sam.”

I snort.

“No, it’s true,” Billy says. He gathers up the deck of cards. “Take what we’re doing right now. When women want to talk about something with each other, they simply say that’s what they want to do and then they go for coffee or a glass of wine and just talk. But when we men want to talk, we have to pretend we’re really doing something else instead. Like we’re doing now.” He starts to deal. “It’s like we can’t engage in direct human interaction. It’s like we always have to be
doing
something, engaged in some other activity, in order to give us an excuse to interact. It’s kind of like we’re still caught in some early stage of development, like kids engaging in parallel play.”

Sam stares at Billy. “Where’d you get all that from?”

Billy shrugs. “Alice,” he says, like it should be obvious.

“Exactly,” Big John says, picking up his cards, arranging them in his hand. “In the entire history of the human species, what man has ever said to another man, ‘Let’s get together and
talk
’? Never gonna happen. Just like I was saying:
Completely
different animals. Women may like to think they want everything to be equal – and I’m sure equal pay must be a good thing – but mostly they’re just fooling themselves, men too. They want men to be
men
,
different
, but then they also want men to be sensitive too. Like in bed.”

“Oh,” I say, not even caring that I’m holding two aces, “you are
not
about to tell us about your sex life with my mother.”

I know it makes me sound childish, like I’m still ten years old, but I don’t care. Who, no matter how old they are, wants to hear anything that will make them picture their parents in bed doing stuff together? 

“They like you to be hard but soft,” Big John says.

“Dad!”

“Hey! I wasn’t even talking about sex anymore. We’ll get to that another time. Now where was I?”

“Hard but soft,” Steve provides, not even pretending to look at the cards he’s holding. So much for parallel play.

“Right, hard but soft. By which I mean, they want you to be a
man
. They want you to be decisive, firm. And they want you to treat them like equals. But they also want you, at least sometimes, to treat them like women. Like that whole door-opening thing? Oh, they want it.”

“Absolutely,” Drew says.

“No, they don’t,” Steve says.

“It depends on their mood,” Billy says.

“How should I know?” Sam says.

“No, they really don’t,” Steve says.

Big John ignores him. “Oh, and here’s another tip. When it comes to Valentine’s Day, their birthdays, or any of a million dates they say are important but really aren’t to you? You are
dead
if you forget.”

“Word,” Drew says, like Big John’s just spoken the wisdom of Solomon or something.

“Oh! Oh! I almost forgot about – ” Big John starts, but he doesn’t get a chance to finish because I cut him off.

“This is ridiculous,” I say.

He looks hurt. “Which part?”

“All of it. Hard and soft at the same time, dates to remember, the whole door-opening thing – which, may I point out, none of you can seem to agree on. You don’t really know anything, do you?”

“Honestly?” Big John says.

I nod.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I have no idea. No one does.” Then he brightens. “But I know one thing.”

This ought to be good.

“You have to figure out on your own what a particular woman wants,” Big John says with certitude, “’cause they’re sure as fuck never going to tell you.”

Finally. Something we all can agree on.

“I know something too,” Sam says.

Et tu, Sam? Really? Sam, who’s had more failed relationships with women than I have, chiefly because I’ve had almost zero relationships
to
fail at, is going to educate us all on what women really want?

“If the women in question are adults,” she says, “they don’t want a man called Johnny.”

“Oh, gee. Thanks.”

“They don’t want one named Billy either,” she says. “Grown women don’t want men with little boy names.”

“She’s right,” Big John says. “That whole E-sound thing.”

“The E-sound thing?” I echo.

“The E-sound thing! The E-sound thing!” he says impatiently. “Like names that end in ‘y’ or ‘i-e.’ Back when I was on the market, in the late sixties and early seventies, chicks loved the E-sound thing. If your name was Vinny or Bobby or Robby or Billy or Jimmy – ”

“I get the idea, Dad,” I cut him off before he can name every guy’s name he can think of that ends with an E sound. Christ. The E-sound thing. He says it like it’s a documented syndrome or something.

“Some guys,” Big John goes on, “would even purposely E their own names just to get chicks, like if they’d been Sam for the first fifteen years of theirs lives, all of a sudden – bam! – their names are Sammy.”

“I’d pound anyone who tried to call me Sammy,” Sam says.

I can’t believe I’m taking part in this conversation.

“Some guys would even take it too far,” Big John goes on, “transforming names that should never have the E sound at the end, like this one guy I knew who kept trying to get us all to call him Briany. Briany!” He snorts. “Can you believe it?”

I can honestly say, I cannot.

Billy looks concerned. “Do you think I should change my name to Bill?”

“No,” I say.

“No? Why not?”

“Because Alice already married you even though you have the whole E-sound thing going on.” I can’t believe I just said that. “Obviously, it doesn’t matter to her.”

“
Or
,” Billy says, considering, “maybe it’s
always
bothered her but she’s never come out and said anything, making this like one of those things your dad was talking about before – you know, the things men are supposed to figure out on their own because the women are never going to say anything?”

Big John ignores Billy’s concerns, continuing with his own nostalgia trip. “Even I went by Johnny back then. Your mother loved it when we first met. She said it made me sound like a rock star.” His wistful look dissipates as he heaves a heavy sigh. “But those were different times. That was then, and this is now. Now, no adult woman wants a guy named Johnny.”

“But you’re the one who named me Johnny!”
“I know, right?” He sighs again. “Christ, what the hell was I thinking?”

And what was
I
thinking having this crew of screwballs over for a night of poker? Oh, right. We do this every week. Still, next week, I’m doing something different. I don’t care what it is, it’s going to be different.

Who knew the source of all my problems with women, all these years since I became an adult, was my name?

* * *

As people are moving to depart a few hours later, after we’ve finally managed to get in some solid rounds of poker, with minimal interruption from people’s wives phoning cells, Steve hands me a slip of paper.

“What’s this?” I ask, reading the scrawled handwriting on it. “Allenty?” Underneath whatever the hell Allenty is there’s written a phone number.

“Sorry.” Steve looks embarrassed. “I’ve got a lawyer’s handwriting. That’s supposed to say Helen Troy.”

“Who’s Helen Troy?” Sam asks.

God, I’ve got nosy friends.

“Just some woman I sort of met when Steve and me went to the game yesterday,” I say.

“You met some woman at the game yesterday,” Billy says, or maybe I should start calling him
Bill
now, “and this is the first we’re hearing about it?”

Really nosy.

“I didn’t
meet
her,” I say, exasperated. “We were never even formally introduced. I just sort of, you know, fell in her lap and knocked her drink all over her when I was trying to catch a tipped ball.”

“You
like
her,” Big John says, getting excited.

“I don’t even know her!”

“But you want to, right?” Drew says.

“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Hey,” Steve says, tapping the card. “It’s no big deal. You’re single, she’s single, and she needs some painting done on her house. So I told her I knew a guy who did good work and that I’d have him give her a call. I even told her it’d be my treat – you know, to make up for me opening up a can of constitutional whupp-ass and kicking her ass in court over that case you helped me with.”

“Who are you?” I laugh nervously. “The fairy fucking godmother?”

“Just call her,” Steve says. “What have you got to lose?”

Hey, even I wonder about me sometimes, why I do the things I do, wonder about the choices I make. So I can’t very well blame you if you’re doing it too right around now, can I?

Like I can’t blame you if you’ve been wondering all along just what I’ve seen in Alice for the last quarter century, why I’ve carried a torch for that woman. After all, it’s not like I’ve ever been unaware that, at least where I’m concerned, Alice is the prickliest pear ever.

What am I saying, prickly pear? Alice can be a real bitch.

Oh, you thought I didn’t notice? Believe me, I noticed.

And now here comes this Helen Troy person. While maybe not quite as prickly as Alice upon first meeting, it’s not exactly like she was all warm and fuzzy toward me at that Yankees game either. Well, I did sit in her lap and spill her drink on her. What were her words when I asked her if she’d like to go out sometime? Oh yeah, right. She said, and I quote, “I’m not crazy.” Not exactly words of encouragement, I’ll grant you that. Why, then, have I not been able to stop thinking about her since? Why, then, when Steve gave me her number and told me to call her about that paint job did my heart beat just a little bit faster?

Who knows why we love whom we love?

Not that this is love, yet. I mean, I only met the woman once. But I do have this whole quarter-of-a-century thing with Alice to account for. Plus, it’s not just a matter of why we love whom we love but also why we’re even attracted to these people in the first place.

Most people blame just about everything on their mothers. But I don’t have that luxury. Me, I blame it all on Aunt Alfresca. Sure, Big John tried to be both father and mother to me, what with all his din-din talk, but Aunt Alfresca was really the
in loco
maternal figure. And what kind of example did she set me?

It was always tough love with Aunt Alfresca, but somehow, I knew it was love nonetheless. All that harshness, all that talk about me killing her sister. Over the years I’ve come to realize that maybe Aunt Alfresca thought that if she was too soft on me,
I’d
be soft. Maybe she thought if she showed pity, I’d pity myself.

The thing is, I never pity myself. I may get briefly angry with the world or frustrated, but I never pity myself. Even when things go spectacularly wrong, like with women, I just figure that’s the way things are and move on.

Me with women: it’s like me with the Mets and the Jets, how you have to learn to like defeat or you’ll go crazy. Looks like, under Aunt Alfresca’s tutelage, I’ve learned to love defeat, which is why I accepted it and even expected it all those years with Alice.

Of course maybe I liked Alice all those years and like Helen now because I prefer a challenge. On the other hand, my whole love life has been one big challenge, so that can’t be it.

I think I’ll stick with the Aunt Alfresca theory.

All of the above: this falls under the heading of Nurture. 

There’s just one problem. This time, with Helen Troy, if I ever do get a real shot?

I want to beat Nature and Nurture.

I want to win.

Call?

Don’t call?

Call?

Don’t call?

Ca –

“I can’t believe you’re being such a girl about this,” Sam says.

“Girl?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re acting like a girl. Call; don’t call. Call; don’t call.
Call her
. It’s not like it’s a date or something. It’s just a paint job.”

“Right. Just a paint job.”