Election time has rolled around again, and as ever, the politicians are missing the point.
It's not abortion rights, welfare reform or even a 15-percent tax cut that will make life better for the average American. What we really need are state-sponsored schools on picking up lovers.
Think about your love life. Now think about your love life if you knew how to meet and here's the hard part impress members of the sex you're attracted to. Just like those eggs in that anti-drug commercial, you could go from wet and runny to hot and sizzling in no time at all!
I, for one, would have no problem tacking on one tenth of a cent to the sales tax if it meant I would learn how not to blurt classy lines such as "duh . . . " or "um . . ." whenever I speak to a beautiful potential lover. Witticisms such as "Heh! Heh!" might make fans of "Beavis and Butt-Head" laugh, but no one wants to have sex with them anyway.
Call this tax the Sex Surcharge or the This-Is-What-Makes-Life-Worth-Living Fee or even the Lover Levy. It could work.
I hope.
Of course, I may be so bad off that I would be the only person in history to flunk out of the Pick-Up Parochial.
What is it about meeting new people that makes our tongues swell up and our feet elongate and our coordination disappear? An astonishingly beautiful woman approached me in a bar last year and asked me to light her cigarette. So nervous my hands were shaking, I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to strike the match. I needn't have worried. The match flared up immediately, and so did her hair.
She never did call me.
The year before that, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life approached me in another bar. We're talking model looks here, and if she had camaro hair from hell, I was more than willing to overlook it. Not that I even expected her to acknowledge my existence.
She leaned against the bar next to me and ran her fingers through my curly, shoulder-length locks. "You have beautiful hair," she breathed in a voice that could have converted Liberace.
My response?
I looked behind me to see who she was talking to.
Turning back around, I whipped off this snappy response: "Me?!?"
Her nod, when it came, was more sexy than a tango. She politely ignored my strangled question, though I could see in her eyes that she was wondering if I had just hit puberty.
It was do-or-die time. Bottom of the ninth, three runners on, two out. A home run here would win the game and leave me with a grin that would last a lifetime. Even a weak single would take me further into the sexual diamond than I had gone in months. All I needed was a good line. Words raced through my head.
"If you like that, you ought to see me naked," didn't get much consideration, thankfully. "So do you," was discarded as too obvious and "I'd really, really like to see you naked" as one step ahead of the game. What I finally came up with was a stroke of genius.
"Thank you!" I ejaculated. Then I turned, red-faced, and melted into the crowd. Playing hard to get, I figured. Well it worked. She never got me. Minutes later I saw her leave with a short-haired football player type.
This week an attractive woman came into the record store I own and asked me out. Keeping in mind that I'm in a relationship, albeit a long, long-distance one, I dutifully let the woman know.
"I can't have sex with you!" I blurted.
She looked at me. She blinked. She raised an eyebrow. I began to stammer.
Why is it that some people can speak volumes with body language while I can't even spit out monsyllabic grunts?
"Not that I don't want to have sex with you!" I cried, trying to explain myself. "You're beautiful. You're intelligent. Anyone would like to have sex with you. I'd love to have sex with you!"
Her other eyebrow went up.
"Not that you'd want to have sex with me of course," I continued. "You certainly might not be the kind of girl who would do that ... ."
She folded her arms.
"Oh! Not that girls who do have sex are bad! I love girls who have sex. You can have as much sex as you like, and I'd never think a thing about it. Have sex. Don't have sex. That's fine by me. It's your body ... . Did you still want to go out?"
I needn't have asked. My repartee had failed me again. Unfortunately, there are times when it doesn't, such as earlier that same week, when an 85-year-old man came into my store in a plaid leisure suit. He was, as Jerry Seinfeld puts it, a "low-talker," who kept mumbling incomprehensibly. Ever the nice guy, I simply smiled and nodded every time he spoke. Every third or fourth burst of mumbling, he would pronounce loudly, "Nice day for it."
Relieved that I understood something at last, I would agree. "Yes!" I exclaimed. "Yes, it's a very nice day for it!"
And every time I did so, his smile would get bigger. Suddenly I realized he was looking in the very specific direction of my, um, crotch. At the same time, he was, well, how to put this delicately? He was enjoying his own company.
"What did you say?" I demanded.
"Do you want to have sex?"
"NO!"
He left. If there's one thing I know how to do by now, it's drive people off. I just need to learn to attract them. With the election coming up, it seems reasonable to start a school that would teach that skill.
It's a good year for it, wouldn't you say?
While most of the personal anecdotes are fairly accurate, Todd Foltz's love life isn't near the catastrophic condition of the Dole Campaign.