Man Law and Flirting

I recently read and commented on a post written by Teri. If you read the comments here you may have seen that she mentioned my terse comment. Those that know me understand that being a good sport is a requirement in my peculiar world of observations. In fact, Teri was a very good sport about the comment. The comment was made when I was in a slightly combative mood and wasn’t as tempered as it could have been.

The post was about flirting. Most of it was tongue in cheek and well written in an upbeat manner. My comment was “That is so remarkably confusing that an analytical genius like myself is left scratching his head.”

Teri may have thought I was talking about her writing. I wasn’t. I understood what she wrote. What confused me is the female ‘take’ on flirting. I think the explanation and observations of flirting described in the post would confuse any male. In fact I have seen the damage created by this attitude first hand.

In this way I represent the approximately 1.5% of males blogging. It takes great energy to refute 98.5% of popular blogging opinion…..….but, as usual, here goes.

If you read the post, and I recommend it, you will see that the major theme is that flirting is a fun form of word play with the goal being to be quicker and smarter with words than the target with whom you are flirting. The post also contains these quotes:

“Just because you acknowledge the sexuality of someone else, doesn’t mean you have to—or even want to—act on it.”

“Sometimes we flirt with one another and it means absolutely nothing”

“When I put it that way, I could be describing several of my married friends—guys and gals. And why not? Why should the single folks have all the fun?”

Now remember I’m not picking on the writing, and Teri will need to be a good sport again. But……….Here’s the thing. None of this makes sense to American males in my opinion. The gender gap is greatly widened at this juncture and trouble is quite likely. I have seen this trouble over and over.

What I am trying to tell you is this concept of flirting belongs solidly in the ‘women think’ camp.

First off men are far too analytical to let ideas like ‘acknowledging someone else’s sexuality doesn’t mean you have to act on it’ pass without examination. At least this male is such. If you walk up to a man, feel his biceps and tell him he has a sexy butt with a sparkle in your eye, even when done in double entendre style, he understands this differently than you mean it. That is, if what you mean is that you are acknowledging his sexuality and feeling his biceps for ‘smart wordplay’ reasons, he will not ’get that’ on an intuitive level.

Or, if you are a male friend and you flirt openly with my wife, you have seriously violated a cardinal ‘man law’ and are going to be dropped from my circle of friends in a Texas heartbeat. Who needs friends like that? Maybe things are different in California? Sometimes in Texas we jus shoot your ass.

If a married woman flirts with me, BEG usually lets it go, but it is duly noted to me later and it is not a happy notation.

Most men would look at the statement “Sometimes we flirt with one another and it means absolutely nothing" and wonder …OK…and the point is what? Trust me I’ve been a guy all my life.

Two life examples addressing no particular point:

Example 1:

I have a platonic girlfriend that is a huge flirt. She needs it for her ego apparently. She will arrange clothing in ways that parts and pieces are made available for observation, make off color comments, feel biceps and chests, and use ‘wordplay’. Later she will call me on the phone and tell me how just totally horrible these men are because they suddenly think she is available and ready to sleep with them. Yammmer…yammer…yammmmer……and just how am I supposed to keep these men off of me? All the while, my brain is simply saying “What the hell do you expect? They are men responding to aggressive marketing.

Example 2:

One of BEG’s acquaintance/friends named Kristen is forever laying hands on me, using ‘wordplay’ and innuendo. It only happens if BEG is absent from the room or situation. Feeling biceps and saying things like “yum”, running her hands down my butt when she hugs me goodbye, saying “if BEG ever gets tired of you, let me know” and so forth.

On New Years Eve she was in high form. I decided to test my own odd male ideas. Fair is fair, eh? In a quiet moment sitting alone at a table with Kristen, I said “Kristen, you look great these days. Can I feel you up sometime?” She was stunned for about 5 seconds at my intended and challenging bluntness. Her answer was as bizarre as my presentation. She said of course I could, but to do it when it wasn’t noticed so much, like she does when she hugs me. Or maybe I could mistake her for BEG while swimming in the pool and it would seem innocent. She had a couple of other ‘innocent – sure you can feel me up’ ideas that you can imagine on your own.What I take from this is the results are the same, but for Kristen the fun is in the sneakiness.

What the heck, now I have myself confused. And this is all I was trying to say to Teri. Men don’t think this way and so please be advised you are flying on female radar, not universal gender radar. If you want to engage in ‘wordplay’ it is much more sensible to a man if we play scrabble. That way we know when we have won or lost because you keep score with numbers. That’s just the way we are; literal, analytical and straightforward. We are remarkably simple in a consistent way. Sexual wordplay can and will confuse us. We don’t know its just a game because there isn’t a scoreboard.

My reader’s gender ratio represents blogdom, being about 98.5% female. They are all comfortable telling ol’ Seven that he is paddling a canoe up ‘ignorant creek’ on Valentines week. So, what are you waiting on? Get started. Confuse me additionally, but please do it with some respectable sneakiness.