What Women Want (Bugs Bunny Vs. Lennie)

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Let’s talk about chicks, man.

Dames. Let’s talk about ’em. Yeah. You and me, buckaroo. Let’s talk about women and why we like ’em and HOW TO MAKE IT ALL BETTER and HOW TO TALK TO THEM and everything. Let’s do that here. Thought Catalog. Yeah. This ol’ chestnut.

Now, by no means do I assume myself to be a professional when it comes to talking to members of the opposite sex. It is one thing to be an open book, if you will, the kind of human that goes through life feeling everything. It is entirely another to overcompensate and overdo it and over think it.

“What Women Want” — I guess — is my attempt at rewriting an awesome Mel Gibson movie. I’m kidding. It’s a shit movie. But maybe, just maybe, some little whippersnapper will put down his Beats By Dre and listen up and not make the same mistakes I made.

What women want is someone who will be there for them, and I don’t mean that in a way where they want someone who will be there in the pouring rain on their doorstep with a batch of flowers. Sure, Richard Gere can do that in a movie, but me/you/everybody is not Richard Gere. I’m fairly sure even Richard Gere doesn’t “pull a Richard Gere” — maybe he gets stuck on words and intentions and fails miserably when trying to pull a rabbit out of the ol’ confidence hat.

Women want confidence, but an easy kind of confidence. You know who’s confident? Bugs Bunny. Women want to sleep with Bugs Bunny. Women want a kind of confidence where the person that has it is neither here nor there; he doesn’t HAVE to be there, but he IS there for you, with you, detached a little, and having a good time.

There are Bugs Bunnys in this world and then there is Lennie from Of Mice & Men; the kind of guy that JUST LOVES SOMETHING SO MUCH THAT HE IS GOING TO PET IT UNTIL IT DIES FROM THE SHEER AMOUNT OF LOVE OH GOD I JUST WANT TO HOLD IT AND CALL IT MINE FOREVER. I can almost see some women’s faces when they read the paragraph above: a kind of shocked, if somewhat endearing shock, that men are vulnerable enough to want to have and to hold.

People, we are a generation raised on shitty John Cusack movies and bad Lisa Loeb songs. We were born into this world with the emotional capacity of an aircraft hanger but the tools needed to function a machine are taught, not born. Some are born Bugs Bunnys and some are born Lennies. Somewhere in between is Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. There is, ultimately, a balance between the two that will work: a sense of need as well as a sense of space.

I met a girl, and I went overboard a little in trying to get her to see my intentions, which were good, great intentions. There is nothing more I would like than to see her happy and to see her smile. But the longer I incubate that thought the more I realize that you don’t have to show your hand during this great, big, long poker game we call “romance.” Nor do I have to stonewall her. I just have to let it happen. A cool sense of detachment does wonders for making someone like you back. Be there, but don’t smother the damn thing with your misguided intentionry.

I remember one time she came over and I had cleaned my room, lit a candle, and put on a particularly cheesy album to play to soundtrack my romance that night. And she laughed at it. She really did. I’d spent two hours making everything perfect. I’d Lennie-d.

Another time we went out. I bought her a burrito (as any young squire should). I then proceeded to badger her with “where is this relationship going” talk for three minutes before easing myself off of my own hemorrhoid donut and taking a deep breath and realizing, shit, that that wasn’t my question to ask as much as it wasn’t hers to answer.

Another time we went to the dog park, walked her dog, and made fun of people who looked stupid. Yeah, call it “shaming” or whatever new-age PC “social justice warrior” new-internet shit you want, but it was great. It was a great day to us. I was Bugs Bunny.

What’s up, Doc? Not my own ego, for once. Just the moment, and just being in it with her. Ah, so there’s the lesson, buried about six paragraphs deep. So there you have it.

You will find, young grasshopper out there reading this, that women want you to be you without any of the hubris that comes from excitement that one gets from meeting an amazing woman. Be yourself, with a twinge of Bugs Bunny in there. Cool, calm, collected, and ready to make a joke. Don’t plow yourself by trying to dictate the narrative. You aren’t writing your Wikipedia page. Someone else will. So just be yourself. Sometimes you’re Lennie, sometimes you’re Bugs. The more you understand your choices to be either, the happier you will be, amigo.

Now will someone please tell me about the rabbits, George? 

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image – Of Mice And Men