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

by Lewis Grizzard

  —THE POPE: Powerful religious figure who recently said sex is sinful unless it’s being performed for the strict purpose of procreation.

  —JERRY FALWELL: Another powerful religious figure who would like to see sex done away with altogether, but he hasn’t been able to come up with a viable alternative.

  —JOGGING, RACQUETBALL, PLAYING TRIVIAL PURSUIT, AND BACKGAMMON: A few activities that have failed miserably as alternatives to sex, but people keep trying them anyway.

  —S AND M: Odd sexual activity, involving whips and black leather outfits, which may be traced back to former cowboy star Lash Larue.

  —KINKY: Sexual behavior involving the use of duck feathers.

  —PERVERTED: You use the whole duck.

  See what I mean? That’s why so many sex manuals make it to the bestseller list and why the argument for sex education classes in our schools is such a good one. Perhaps if we teach our children all about sex in the schools, then they will be able to explain it to their parents.

  We really didn’t need sex education classes when I was in school, because there wasn’t that much to learn. You could get about all the sexual knowledge that was known at the time from an older classmate in a very short period of time ... say, just as long as it took for an older classmate to explain that all you’ll ever find in a cabbage patch is cabbage and maybe a rat snake or two.

  I’m not certain when sex became so confusing, but I think it was when women decided to take part in it. Frankly, I don’t blame them for that, because sex — with the aforementioned exception of when you’re sunburned and also when you’re very sleepy or there’s a ball game on you want to watch — can be quite a rewarding experience.

  But previously, only men had sex. Women were there when all this was taking place, but theirs was basically the role of a waitress who puts the food on the table and says, “I hope you enjoy it,” and then goes back to the kitchen to have a smoke.

  I suspect that it was a man who got women involved in sex. It probably was the first man who made love to a woman and then wondered if it had been as pleasant for her as it had been for him, so he asked that infamous question: “Was it good for you?”

  Men had never wondered that before. You didn’t ask your bird dog how he enjoyed the hunting trip or your fishing worm how the water was.

  I suppose our previous attitude came from the puritanical belief that sex was basically a rotten thing to do, and if a woman took some pleasure from the experience, she obviously was not the delicate flower she was supposed to be and should be tied to the dunking stool. It took women three hundred years to get over the fear that if they uttered one little sound of pleasure during sex or actually moved, they would be severely punished. I’m not certain, however, if what they feared most was the embarrassment of being dunked in public or the horror of getting their hair wet.

  So when the first man asked the question, “Was it good for you?”, he created a real dilemma for the woman.

  If it hadn’t been good for her and she admitted it, women’s sexual liberation would have been set back another three hundred years, because her sexual partner would have gone out and told all his friends, “Aha! It’s just as we expected. They really don’t have any fun when they have sex.”

  But if she had enjoyed it and she said so, that same creep would have gone out and told all his friends that she was some sort of brazen hussy who actually enjoyed sex. By the time the gossip got around, the rumor would be that she had said she not only enjoyed sex but often spent ten or fifteen minutes a day thinking about it, and that kind of rumor could get you kicked out of the Junior League.

  I admire that first woman who admitted she had, in fact, thoroughly enjoyed the experience of sex. It might have gone something like this:

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “You want me to run to the store to get you a pack of cigarettes?”

  “No, not at all. I just want to ask you a question.”

  “I really don’t mind going to the store. I don’t have to start dinner for another half hour.”

  “That’s not it at all, sweetheart. There’s just something that has been on my mind.”

  “You’re wondering whether or not I would mind if you went bowling Friday night and then stayed out and had a few beers with the boys and came in all sloppy drunk and passed out in the floor of the living room. Of course, I don’t mind, dear. I know you need some time of your own.”

  “That’s not it at all, Sugar Love. See, some of the guys down at the plant and me were talking and this one guy wanted to know, well....”

  “If I would bring my delicious brownies to the union hall for next week’s meeting?”

  “No, he wanted to know, uh, he just wondered if women enjoyed sex, too.”

  “Marvin!”

  “No, Lovey, I mean it’s something guys think about a lot. I mean, was what we just did, I mean, you know ... was it good for you?”

  “It was great.”

  “It was?”

  “I loved it.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. It was absolutely wonderful and let’s do it again right now.”

  “I can’t right now, Honey. I’ve got to run down to the plant and tell the other guys.”

  You can see the trouble this started. Marvin told the other guys, and then they asked their wives, and their wives said they enjoyed sex, too, and soon the word got out all over. Suddenly women all over the world were no longer ashamed to admit their interest in lovemaking, and that’s how the sexual revolution began.

  The sexual revolution may have liberated women sexually, but it put a great deal of heretofore unfelt pressure on men. Sometime after the first publication of Playgirl magazine, where handsome men posed nude for the now-accepted prurient interests of women, women not only were admitting to men that they enjoyed sex, but they were answering the was-it-good-for-you question honestly. Men never have been the same sexually since.

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Yes, Marvin.”

  “Was it good for you?”

  “Want to know the truth?”

  “Of course, my sweet.”

  “No.”

  “Do what?”

  “It wasn’t good for me at all. In a recent article in Cosmopolitan, eight out of every ten women polled said their sexual partners did not engage in enough foreplay, were not sensitive enough to the female’s needs, and insisted the lights be turned off.”

  “How would you have voted in that poll, my pet?”

  “Turn on the lights, Speedy Gonzales, and I’ll show you my ballot.”

  After this, of course, men had to take special care to please their sexual partners, and this was not an easy thing for them to do because of their backgrounds, and because very few of them read Cosmo.

  This pressure also resulted in some men suffering from impotence and in the eventual creation of ESPN, the twenty-four-hour all-sports cable television network, which gives men something to do at night after their sexual partners have begun holding up rating cards like judges at diving meets. This, of course, eventually causes them to be too nervous to do anything but watch rodeos and college hockey games on the tube until three in the morning.

  The sexual revolution and the revelation that women actually enjoyed being part of the sexual experience also sent sex into a fad stage, where it remains to this day.

  Having simple sex isn’t enough anymore. The various sex manuals have revealed there are many kinky positions in which to have sex, such as with your favorite shortstop in the dirt part of the infield so you won’t get all scratched up on the artificial turf, and there are all sorts of extracurricular activities that may be interwoven with the sex act.

  Today’s trendy magazines are filled with examples and instructions regarding such matters. Read the Penthouse Forum, for example, and you will wonder if you’re the only person left alive on earth who hasn’t had sex
while riding in a Ferris wheel or standing on your head at a Tupperware party.

  It seems that something new and confusing comes out everyday with regard to sex.

  And for somebody like me, who was reared in the sexual naivete of the fifties and who always had a great deal of trouble understanding and getting along with women in the first place, the entire sexual scene has become totally baffling and frustrating.

  I’m not certain how I should act around women anymore in order to attract their attention or to arouse any sort of physical interest in me.

  I’ve tried to be sensitive at times by pouring my beer into a glass before I drink it, but all this usually gets me is a long discussion about how her ex-husband used to make love with his socks on.

  I’ve also tried to be like Clint Eastwood and stare at her with my cold yet lusty eyes and not say very much, but all this usually leads to is my being terribly uncomfortable. I mean, sooner or later a man needs to go to the bathroom, but you never saw Clint Eastwood putting the move on a beautiful woman and suddenly announcing that he had to go to the bathroom. He’s much too cool for that. Of course, the reason he’s always clenching his teeth and has that stern look about him is that he hasn’t been to the bathroom in a week, and it’s killing him.

  I never know what to say to girls in bars anymore, either. Bogart and those guys used to walk over to a woman, light her cigarette, and say, “Sweetheart, where have you been all my life?” and that was it. My generation countered with, “What’s your sign?” and “I hate to see anybody drink alone,” but then women wised up to those. Now, I think the only men who ever meet women in bars and something actually comes of it are those weirdos who write to Penthouse Forum:

  “I’m twenty-three and quite a handsome guy, if I do say so myself, and let me tell you what happened to me one recent night when I was on a business trip to Toledo.

  “I walked into a bar and there was this gorgeous blonde, wearing a tight-fitting pink sweater and black leather pants and roller skates, standing alone nursing a pina colada.

  “I took a spot next to her at the bar and ordered myself a gin and Pepsi. She took off her Sony Walkman and skated closer to me. I could feel her hot breath with the faint scent of coconut against my flushed face.

  “We finished our drinks, and without saying a word, this voluptuous creature and I walked (she skated) out of the bar and went back to my hotel room.

  “I have never spent such a night of ecstasy. She took off all my clothes and tied me to the bed with a rope she carried in her handbag, and then she skated up and down on me until I was driven out of my mind with passion.

  “The next morning, my back looked like they had run the Indy 500 time trials on it, but I will never forget the gorgeous blonde at the bar, and now every time I see Roller Derby on television, I’m aroused. I would be interested to know if any of your other readers have ever had such an experience.”

  Not me, although a girl did nearly run me down on her Harley one afternoon outside a bowling alley in Houston.

  Women are simply too sexually aware today for anybody to sweep them off their feet, especially in a bar where they dress seductively and go to see how many men they can reduce to sniveling idiots. It has been my experience that such women especially enjoy making vulnerable, recently-divorced men feel as though they need to go back immediately and crawl under the rock from which they obviously sprang. This story requires a little background:

  I got one of my divorces when I was living in Chicago. I distinctly remember the conversation with my wife when I first learned that she was terribly unhappy being married to me. I called home one evening from work.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” I began. “What’s for dinner?”

  “What did you do for dinner before you got married?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “A perfectly good question. What did you do for dinner before you got married?”

  “Ate a lot of fish sticks. Why?”

  “Here’s a hint: Frozen fish sticks are on sale at the Jewell Store. I’d advise you to stop there on your way home.”

  That was just her funny way of saying she was splitting.

  Years later, I figured the whole thing out. Being a housewife had caused her to lose her identity, and what she needed was to find her own space and establish a relationship with someone who didn’t mind preparing fish sticks for her once in a while.

  At the time, however, I was yet languishing in the idea that it should be enough for a woman that I worked hard and provided for her and didn’t talk ugly about her kinfolks. That belief I had picked up from role models during my youth. The old people at home would talk about marriage and the duties of the partners in such conversations as this:

  “Heard Clovis Niles is gettin’ married.”

  “Who to?”

  “Grover Turnipseed.”

  “He’s a fine boy.”

  “Don’t drink much.”

  “Works hard, too.”

  “Don’t lay out in beer joints all night.”

  “Owns his own double-wide trailer.”

  “He’ll make a good provider.”

  “She’s a good cook.”

  “Sews, too.”

  “And cans.”

  In the seventies, of course, women began to want a lot more than a man who owned his own double-wide, but somehow I missed that announcement. So there I was, stuck in Chicago, the snows of winter just around the end-of-October corner, my wife gone, and fish sticks up to my ears.

  I had very little luck getting dates in Chicago after my wife left. The biggest problem was that when I went into singles bars on Division Street, I usually was confronted by a lot of people wearing huge furry coats and hats and gloves — they were still trying to thaw out from the cold on the sidewalks outside. (Chicago is the coldest place on earth where polar bears don’t roam free.)

  The drawback to all that cold-weather gear was that it was often difficult to determine male from female. Everybody looks basically alike when they’re dressed like Nanook of the North. That’s why Eskimos spend a lot of time cutting holes in the ice and fishing — it’s safer than making the wrong move in the igloo and winding up putting the make on the guy with whom you share your kayak.

  My next problem, once I had distinguished the men from the women, was my previously admitted inability to think of anything clever to say to a total stranger in a bar. This problem was amplified by the fact that Chicago women — know affectionately as “Michigan Avenue Marauders” — were anything but gentle to poor souls like myself, who were simply looking for someone with whom to huddle against the cold.

  Imagine this scene: I’m lonely and far from home. My wife has split and I’m crawling all over thirty, and whatever speed I once had on my singles bar fastball is now only a memory. But a man has to try. A man simply has to try.

  She’s sitting there on a stool at the bar at Butch McGuire’s, and for some girl who’s probably from Indiana and works for an advertising firm, she’s not bad at all. (She could have been from North Dakota and pumped gas, for all I cared at the time.)

  “Gee, it’s cold outside,” I used as an ice-breaker, if you will.

  “What was your first clue, Dick Tracy?”

  “That’s cute. Could I buy you a drink?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “What will you have?”

  “Cutty rocks.”

  “Cutty rocks, bartender. I like these Irish bars, don’t you?”

  “They’re okay. Except you have to talk to a lot of weirdos.”

  “Speaking of Irishmen, hear the one about the two Irish gays?”

  “No, but I get the feeling I’m going to.”

  “Yeah, there was Michael Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzmichael. Get it?”

  “Thanks for the drink, Tex. I gotta catch the train to Skokie.”

  There was one night in Butch’s when I thought I finally had scored. She was a lovely thing, standing over at the corner of the bar. Just to be
sure, I looked down at her feet. She was wearing pink galoshes. Normally, the men in Chicago, even the strange ones, don’t wear pink galoshes.

  She was staring at me. I was certain of it. I continued to glance over at her. Each time our eyes met, she smiled. This was it! All I had to do was walk over, introduce myself, hit her with a few quick stories, and I would be in.

  I didn’t want to rush it, however. I ordered myself another drink, casually lit a cigarette, blew out a couple of perfectly-formed smoke rings, and tried to look slightly bored, so that when I said to her, “I really hate these kinds of places; they’re nothing but meat markets,” she would not doubt my sincerity.

  When I thought the time was right, I strolled toward her. Her eyes were still staring directly into mine, her lips curved in a knowing smile.

  “I really hate these kinds of places; they’re nothing but meat markets,” I began.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I tell you something,” the lady said.

  “I know you don’t usually come on to men like this,” I replied, trying to make her feel at ease with her obvious advances. “But don’t feel bad about it. It’s okay for a woman to do things like that today. We aren’t living in the Stone Age anymore, you know.”

  That would do it, of course. She would recognize me as a very aware person — sensitive, caring, with a beast inside me somewhere, just waiting for the right woman to come along and awaken it.

  “I don’t want to embarrass you,” the woman said, “but your fly is open.”

  I went back to my apartment, crawled under the bed, assumed the fetal position, and had a nervous breakdown.

  * * *

  One of the things militant feminists say about men is that we feel threatened by the new feminine aggressiveness and assertiveness. They’re right, especially when they say things like that about men who remember women the way they used to be.

  We’re terribly confused about what women want us to do, when they want us to do it, and for how long. And we aren’t certain that one day they aren’t going to ditch us altogether, when somebody invents a computer that can do about three or four things at once with the proper mixture of tenderness and boldness, and after women are finished using it, it won’t roll over and snore and keep them awake all night.