Barreca Gina - Im with stupid: one man. one woman. 10,000 years of misunderstanding between the sexes cleared right up

Gene Weingarten

Several chapters in this book were adapted from material that first appeared in my column in The Washington Post Magazine . They are included here by permission of Donald Grahamchairman and CEO of The Washington Post Companyto whom I am indebted not only for this kindness but for piloting a newspaper of such stature and integrity that the work of all Post writers carries weight and influence. I hope this book does not betray that trust, but to the extent that it does, it is Ginas fault.

At the Post, I thank editors John Cotter, Brian Miller, and Bill OBrian, and Mary Lou White, the Sam Spade of newspaper librarians. If Mary Lou cant find you, you do not exist. Also, David Von Drehle for his wisdom, Tamara Jones and Hank Stuever for their generosity in letting me pirate some of their funny observations, and Joel Achenbach for simply letting me watch him cope with life. Its a hoot.

I am grateful to our publisher, David Rosenthal, for wanting this book, and for coming up with the perfect title in three minutes after Gina and I spent three months failing to do so. Our editor, Amanda Murray, provided valuable guidance throughout. The magnificent eccentricity of our agent, Al Hart, inspired half a chapter.

I thank my friend Dave Barry, who provided an important impetus at a critical time. Early on, when Simon and Schuster expressed an interest in this book but several of my other friends urged me in a different direction, it was Dave who put everything in perspective. How much are you being offered to write the book? he asked. I told him. Good. Now how much are your friends offering you not to write the book? Gina and I signed the next day.

Pat Myers, the worlds funniest copy editor, has managed to wrestle the words into shape so as to mask my illiteracy and intellectual lassitude; her own humor surfaces in the text time and again. And finally, I thank my friend and boss Tom Shroder, the editor at the Post who has refereed the Gene-Gina wars from the start. Tom is belligerent, arrogant, insufferably intolerant of all views not his own, and in general a sockdologizing old poop who is of no value whatsoever except for being the best humor editor alive.

Gina Barreca

Of course the first person who must be thanked immediately and from the heart is the person without whom this book would not exist: my co-author, Gene Weingarten. Can you even imagine somebody leaving his co-author out of the acknowledgments? No, because that level of insensitivity and self-absorption does not exist on this planet, at least outside the male brain. So, Gene, you come first. Naturally.

Naturally, too, I thank everybody Gene thanks, too. Except I thank them more . And sincerely. I also want to thank Click and Clack from NPRs Car Talk for reading a couple of the columns on their show. It made my relatives think I finally made use of my education.

I also thank the following tribe from Connecticutmany from UConn, where I teachand also New York: Mara Reisman, Barbara Campbell, Margaret Mitchell, Nancy Lager and Tim Taylor, Pam Katz, Bonnie Januszewski, Rose Quiello, Amy Bloom and Joy Johannason, and Fleur and Jerry Lawrence. They read and listened and laughed and gave me my best lines.

Heidi Rockefeller deserves her own line because nearly every Friday afternoon when Gene and I were on the phone yelling at each other, groaning, Heidiwhile organizing the papers on my desk or shooing the cats off my printerwould come up with the perfect solution or idea.

Thanks to Tim and Matthew, my two relentlessly brilliant stepsons, for their encouragement and the high standards they apply to humor. Thanks to my father, Hugo, and my brother, Hugo, and my nephew, Hugoand to my sister-in-law, Wendy, who has a terrific laugh, one she passed on to amazing Anne and fabulous Laura. They made a great cheering section.

And finally, of course, because it cannot possibly be overstated, I thank Gene.

Contents

Introduction

The Phlogiston Theory of Sexual
Relations, or Why This Book
Will Change Your Life

GENE : At this very moment you may well be standing in a bookstore, trying to decide whether to purchase this bookwhich, you deduce from the cover, involves differences between men and women. And because you are an intelligently skeptical person, you are thinking: Why should I spend my good money on a book that is rehashing the most tired subject on earth, a subject long ago chewed into an amorphous goo, like the food in your mouth the instant before you swallow it, a slimy succotash barely distinguishable from vomit?

Come to think of it, wouldnt that be a great diet? You could eat as much food as you wanted, and absolutely any food you wanted, except that just before every swallow you would have to look in the mirror and stare at the slop on your tongue for five seconds. Ill bet that would

GINA : Stop.

GENE : What?

GINA : Thats disgusting. We cant start this book in that disgusting, immature way.

GENE : Its a diet tip! Women love diet tips!

GINA : Kindly do not tell me what women love.

GENE : Diet books fly off the shelves.

GINA : One, thats not a diet, its an eating disorder. Two, this is not a diet book.

GENE : It could be. We havent written it yet.

GINA : Its supposed to be about men and women, and humor.

GENE : Well, Im simply trying to explain how clichd and lifeless this subject matter is. How it has been explored and debated ad nauseam from Aristotle to Woolf, diluted into an insipid, gelatinous soup by communication experts and gender experts, and then salted with poison by every adenoidal comic who ever stood in front of a brick wall with a microphone and an inflated sense of self. I was merely trying to communicate how difficult it is to infuse this subject with anything even resembling originality or insight, and how only a fool or an egotist would attempt it.