Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself

by Lewis Grizzard

  When we reached her house at the end of our date, she said, “I find you so comfortable to be with. You’re so sensitive and you don’t mind sharing your thoughts. You’re so, well, laid back.”

  I thought I spotted an opening and asked if I could spend the night with her.

  “Silly boy,” she said. “My cat would be so jealous.”

  These were trying times for me. With apologies to George Gobel, the world around me seemed to be a tuxedo and I was still a pair of brown shoes.

  Leisure suits. Neck chains. Kinky. Macho. Laid back. Men crying and keeping company with cats. Everywhere I looked, there was upheaval and change. And more was on the way.

  Women’s stated interest in men’s chest hairs, which led to the unbuttoned shirts and neck chains and beads, was followed by another shocking admission — they also enjoyed looking at our butts and seeing us in our underpants.

  Let’s begin with the underpants. The basic rules for men’s underpants always had gone something like this:

  After a boy-child passes the diaper stage, he moves into what is known as “grippers,” or “jockey shorts.” These shorts fit very tightly, since small boys have not yet reached the point where tight underwear can cause discomfort and migraine headaches. Before a boy’s voice changes, it is perfectly okay for his jockey shorts to have pictures on them, as long as they’re pictures of Army tanks or cowboys. Birds and flowers are totally unacceptable.

  Once a boy reaches his teens and begins undressing in locker rooms in front of his friends, he still can wear jockey shorts, but forget the pictures of Army tanks and cowboys. Boys at this stage wear plain, white jockey shorts, but they have to be more careful about shorts that fit too snugly because of the aforementioned headaches.

  Upon graduation, a young man is fully expected to change into boxer shorts. These shorts are white and they hit just above the knees. A young man should wear this type of undershorts for the remainder of his life, even if he eventually winds up with a truss underneath his clothing, too.

  That’s the way it used to be, back in a simpler time. Then came Jim Palmer.

  Jim Palmer is a famous baseball pitcher who is quite handsome. Some advertising genius got the bright idea to take a picture of Jim Palmer in a pair of bikini-type underwear for men and put it in a lot of magazines. Men, or should I say those men who do not make a habit of looking at pictures of other men in their underpants, ignored these pictures of Jim Palmer, but women didn’t.

  They began to say to their mates such things as “Why don’t you get some sexy underwear like Jim Palmer wears?”

  A lot of men went out and did that, but it posed a real problem for others. What good did it do to wear Jim Palmer underwear if you happened to look like Yogi Berra?

  I didn’t know what to do. I had a couple of dozen pairs of normal, white boxer shorts, and even walking past a display of Jim Palmer bikini-type underpants made me feel quite silly. My wife at the time insisted, however, that I try out a pair, so I dutifully went into the men’s underwear section of a large department store.

  Why do they allow women to sell men’s underwear?

  “Can I help you with something?” asked the girl in the underwear department. I wondered if her father knew she had this job.

  “Yes,” I mumbled, “I would like to buy some underwear.”

  “And what type would you like, sir?” she went on.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not really certain. Do you have any of those like what’s-his-name, the baseball player, wears?”

  “Oh, you mean the Jim Palmer jockey brief. Yes, we have all colors in four sizes — Small, Medium, Large, and XLC.”

  “XLC?”

  “Extra Large Crotch,” said the salesgirl.

  I thought of running out the door. I would never see the salesgirl again, and I could tell my wife that when I got to the department store, there were a lot of fruity-looking characters buying Jim Palmer’s underwear and I didn’t want to be a part of it.

  Before I could make my move, however, the salesgirl was standing in front of me with several pairs of Jim Palmer jockey briefs.

  “I can see you’re a little unsure, sir,” she said. “Why don’t you step into our dressing room and try on a pair and see how you like them?”

  “Incidentally,” I said, “what size are these?”

  “Well,” said the salesgirl, “it’s only a guess, but I picked Small.”

  When nobody was looking, I slipped out of the dressing room and left my Jim Palmer jockey briefs there. I would explain to my wife that they were all out of my size, and she would understand. She would realize that they probably didn’t make many XLC’s for guys, well, guys like me.

  “All out of Small, huh?” replied my wife.

  Jim Palmer was recently released by the Baltimore Orioles and his baseball career is likely over, so I hope he’ll put his pants back on and leave the rest of us alone for awhile.

  The second part of the problem, as you remember, was that women enjoyed looking at men’s butts. They even had calendars with pictures of naked men showing off their buns. This feminine interest in men’s hindparts led to another problem regarding the wardrobe, but first some background:

  Previous to the revelation that women enjoyed the aesthetic qualities of the male hindpart, men spent little time considering the shape of their hips, much less the presentation of same. They selected a pair of trousers on the basis of comfort alone. Consequently, most men walked around in baggy pants, which offered the ultimate in comfort and free movement, but which also totally veiled the male rear and suggested on some occasions that a family of gypsies had moved out of the seat.

  Women’s liberation came along, however, and the baggy pants industry went bust, but a boom followed in the blue jean game.

  Before, only cowboys and young men under the age of seventeen had worn blue jeans. There was an obvious reason for cowboys’ wearing this attire. You can get all sorts of substances on a pair of jeans, like what cows leave all over the dusty trail, and still not have to wash them for weeks at a time ... especially if all the other cowboys’ jeans are smelly, too.

  Most little boys wanted to be just like the cowboys back then, so their mothers dressed them in jeans. I not only wanted to be a cowboy when I was a child, I was convinced I was one. As a matter of fact, I was convinced I was Roy Rogers, who was my favorite western star.

  Before we moved to tiny Moreland, we lived in a large apartment complex in Virginia while my father soldiered. I got lost one day. I began to cry. (Cowboys never cry unless they’re five and hopelessly lost and hungry and want their mothers.) A kind lady attempted to find out where I lived so she could take me home.

  “What’s your name, little boy?” she asked.

  “Roy Rogers,” I said.

  She called the resident manager’s office and asked where the Rogers family lived. There was no family by that name in the apartment complex.

  “Are you certain your name is Roy Rogers?” she asked me again.

  “Does Trigger have a long tail?” I asked her back.

  Finally, the lady began calling all the apartments asking if anybody had a retarded child who thought he was Roy Rogers. Thankfully, my mother claimed me when the lady reached her.

  After high school, a male was expected to step out of his blue jeans and into a pair of baggy pants. It was in this style of dress that he then would leave home for the serious effort of educating himself further, learning a trade, or joining the armed forces, which strenuously objected to any form of tight-fitting trousers since they would deter swift movement on the battlefield.

  That has all changed, however. Today, men normally have a closetful of blue jeans, because nothing shows off the hips better than a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans, and they’re considered appropriate attire for practically every occasion except state funerals.

  Most men, raised under the old rules of loose-fitting pants, had to learn a number of new rules about buying jeans:

  1. They
had to remember to buy their jeans at least two inches smaller in the waist than the jeans and trousers they bought before Women’s Liberation. Some jeans advertised a “skosh” more room in the seat, but I don’t think they sold very well. That one little “skosh” just might be enough to cause you to go unnoticed by a gaggle of gimlet-eyed legal secretaries hip-watching during a Friday afternoon happy hour.

  2. They had to remember that if they decided to bend over for any reason while wearing tight-fitting jeans, they should take a deep breath first to avoid passing out. Rule 2-A is, if you bend over and hear a ripping sound, place both hands over your backside and run backwards towards the nearest restroom. At an outdoor function, cover and run backwards towards the nearest heavy growth of kudzu.

  3. It was important to note that tight-fitting jeans could be the devil to remove from your body. Men had to remember always to carry a pocketknife with them when they were wearing their tight jeans, just in case it became necessary to cut them away from their bodies in an extreme emergency ... such as if they were sick and tired of sleeping in them.

  4. Men had to accept the fact that while they were wearing tight jeans, they absolutely had to hold their stomachs in at all times, even though doing so would cause their faces to turn red and their eyes to bug out (not to mention the possibility of swollen ankles).

  It was in the late seventies that I finally relented and went out and bought my first pair of adult blue jeans. I was surprised at the varieties available. Even the noted snooty designers Bill Blass and Calvin Klein had jeans lines, which suddenly cost what a man used to pay for a Sunday suit.

  I bought myself a pair of tight-fitting Kleins and wore them out of the store and headed to the nearest singles bar. I ordered a drink and made certain I kept my backside pointed toward the tables of legal secretaries sipping pina coladas, figuring the sight of my new jeans hugging closely to my hips would knock the umbrellas right out of their glasses.

  Unfortunately, no action was forthcoming. A man standing next to me in a pair of tight-fitting Bill Blass jeans finally turned to me and said, “How long you been here?”

  “Couple of beers,” I answered.

  “Me, too,” he replied. “I don’t think I’ve gotten one glance.”

  There was something terribly wrong here. We had both spent half a week’s salary on a pair of designer jeans that we had stuffed ourselves into, and all the women who were supposed to go wild at the sight of men’s hips hadn’t shown the slightest interest.

  “I guess it’s like my old grandpa used to say,” said Bill Blass. “‘It don’t matter what kind of rifle you have if you ain’t got any ammunition to load it with.’“

  I finished my beer, went home, and cut myself out of my Calvin Klein jeans. I spent the remainder of the evening attempting to learn to breathe normally again.

  * * *

  I have never ceased to be amazed by the lengths men will go to satisfy a feminine whim. Take aftershave lotion. God gave men Old Spice aftershave lotion, and that should have been enough. But, no. Women decided that Old Spice, which is what everybody’s daddy wore, wasn’t nearly the sexy aroma they wanted, and so men had another problem — What sort of aftershave should I use to set my woman’s blood to boiling?

  There was English Leather. You know what the sexy lady on television says about that — “My men wear English Leather ... or they wear nothing at all.”

  I can just see it now. I go over to have dinner with her and her parents, and I show up naked as a jaybird.

  “Are you crazy?” she screams at me.

  “Well,” I attempt to explain, “I was all out of English Leather and the stores were closed, so like you say, either I wear English Leather or I wear....”

  Somebody later figured out that what a woman really wanted to smell on a man was his natural odor with a little perfume thrown in. The upshoot of that revelation was something called “musk.” I could never bring myself to splash anything called “musk” all over my face. It sounded too much like the way it smelled in the kitchen after I hadn’t taken the garbage out for a week.

  Pete Rose tried to get us back on track and away from all those exotic perfumed potions when he claimed “a man wants to smell like a man” and urged us all to buy Aqua Velva, first cousin to Old Spice. Of course, with Pete Rose’s money, he could splash tobacco juice on his face and still make out.

  The big question facing men today is, if I use Paco Rabanne cologne, will I score as much as the guys in their advertisements obviously do?

  I never have actually smelled Paco Rabanne, but their ads, which also appear in a number of women’s magazines because women are the ones who buy most of the cosmetics for men in the first place, are something else.

  Get the picture: This muscular fellow is in bed and covers are all askew. It’s obvious that the only thing between him and butt-naked is the sheet he has pulled up just enough to avoid embarrassing his parents, in case they happened to stumble across the ad.

  He’s on the telephone, talking to the woman who spent the night with him but who had to get up early for an appointment with the board of directors. She is a totally New Woman, who doesn’t want children until she has been made a partner in the firm. She also is very open about her sexuality, which means she always carries an extra toothbrush in her handbag just in case.

  In a Paco Rabanne ad, you read the dialogue between the man naked in the bed and the woman on the other end of the telephone. It goes something like this:

  WOMAN: “You animal.”

  MAN: “I was just thinking about you.”

  WOMAN: “You beast.”

  MAN: “So it was good for you. I was embarrassed to ask.”

  WOMAN: “My toes are still tingling.”

  MAN: “Down, girl.”

  WOMAN: “What are you doing right now?”

  MAN: “I’m naked under the sheets.”

  WOMAN: “You devil.”

  MAN: “Are you coming back over tonight?”

  WOMAN: “Can Burl Ives sell tea?”

  MAN: “I’ll splash on a lot of Paco Rabanne.”

  WOMAN: “Forget my career. Forget my partnership in the firm. I’ll be right over.”

  MAN: “Sure you don’t mind?”

  WOMAN: “My mind might not be sure, you hunk, but the rest of me is.”

  Paco Rabanne for men. What is remembered is up to you.

  How are men supposed to stick to something simple like Old Spice when they can pop for a little Paco Rabanne and maybe stay naked under the sheets for weeks at a time?

  Sex. It’s everywhere. It’s in the music, it determines what clothes we wear, and even what we splash on our faces after we shave.

  Do we really have it better than our parents? Sex was simple for them. All they had to do was memorize one position and remember to turn the light off.

  But sex has been a whole new ball game for my generation. I’m still not certain if a ménage à trois is some sort of French cooking with lots of sauce or something you do naked under the sheets with a girls’ volleyball team. And with my luck, about the time I find out, I’ll have ulcers and will be too old for it to really matter.

  9

  One Table Daintz to Go

  SEX TODAY IS just as scrambled as everything else. You can’t even talk about it without getting confused. As evidence, I present a glossary of modern sexual terms:

  —LOVER: Somebody you aren’t married to, but you’re sleeping with them anyway.

  —COHABITATION: When your lover moves into your apartment and brings all of his or her clothes and starts getting his or her mail at your address. You still aren’t married but you’re telling your parents that any day now you will be.

  —PALIMONY: What you have to pay your ex-lover monthly, even though you never did get around to marrying her.

  —GAY: Formerly “queer,” “fruit,” or “fag.” Means you and your lover can go into the same bathroom together when you stop at service stations during long trips.

  —AIDS
: You and your lover can share the same hospital room together, too.

  —PLATO’S RETREAT: Club in New York City where anything goes, including having sex with any number of total strangers.

  —HERPES: A little something to remember your last night at Plato’s Retreat by.

  —RELATIONSHIP: What you tell your friends you’re having with your boss because “affair” sounds so tacky.

  —G-SPOT: When you touch a woman there, she makes very loud noises. The next morning the kids want to know if there was a panther in your bedroom last night.

  —HUNK: What women call exceptionally attractive men.

  —RICHARD GERE: Hollywood hunk who has never appeared with his shirt on for more than two minutes at a time in any of his movies.

  —BATTERY STOCKS: Really have nothing to do with sex, but have you noticed how much they’ve gone up since modern women discovered vibrators may be used for more than soothing the tired feet they used to get from standing at the ironing board?

  —PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE FORUM: Where readers write in to tell of their unusual sexual experiences. Many of these experiences are totally sick and perverted, and the magazine is nothing more than a blight on public decency. Nice people would never be caught reading such trash.

  —PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE CIRCULATION: It’s somewhere in the millions.

  —X-RATED: Movie industry rating for film that includes explicit sex scenes.

  —R-RATED: Movie industry rating for film that includes explicit sex scenes, but there is some semblance of a plot.

  —PG-RATED: Movie industry rating for film where the sex scenes are not quite as steamy, the plot may actually make sense, and your parents won’t be totally embarrassed to watch it.

  —PLAYBOY CHANNEL: Cable television channel that features X-rated films in your very own home and usually shows the most explicit sex scenes after your parents are asleep. The sound tracks on these films are optional, so there’s no need to turn up the volume and risk awakening your parents.