Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

by Tim Allen

  I think this memory is actually getting me aroused.

  One kid we knew had built a pillbox in front of his house out of piano boxes. It was impregnable. So I took a Mattel bazooka, which actually fired hard little red plastic things that wouldn't hurt you, stuck a sparkler in the end of it, and shot it at the fort. It stuck in the side and set the pillbox on fire. They were stumbling to get out and I was the big hero because I had actually knocked out a pillbox. And nearly burned and shot four children in the process.

  It was an accident, I swear.

  I built a lot of model airplanes. I gained respect for the Faulkwolf. I loved it when the two sides would talk about their opponent's airplanes with respect; something about that still turns me on. "He was the best I ever fought against." It was like shaking hands after a hockey game or the Superbowl. It shows you're bigger than the conflict.

  Conflict is something men must do, but you're bigger in the end. We've lost that sense of sportsmanship in battle, now. We've becomes dupes of ideology. No longer do the last two soldiers meet after the devastation and salute each other.

  Today it's just called Miller Time.

  - -

  It's amazing how fast childhood went. And yet every now and then I'll get a scent, an odor, a taste-and the feelings, emotions, sights, and sounds of childhood come rushing back.

  Bob Hope once was asked this question: "If you didn't know how old you were, how old would you be?"

  For me, the answer is thirteen. I'm frozen there. I may look like an adult, but inside there's a teenage boy just becoming aware, in charge of the equipment. While this may seem alarming, it's actually good news. See, there's a lunatic in me (and all us guys call it the animal inside), who, unfettered, might do things like oh. . murder, cheat on my wife, hurt my child, quit my job, drive into groups of people on the sidewalk. There's still a part of me that goes, "I can't believe this is happening. Cool. Neat. Wow." At my most basic level, fm still that kid on the day I became aware that I was in charge. It happens differently for every kid. For me, my father's death on November 23, 1964, crystallized it. I realized there is no one here to protect us; that life can be taken from us at any time. Life is a great gift. God is to be both loved and tremendously feared. And the balance between the two is what it's all about.

  It was a sunny November day. My father, mother, and brothers were driving home from a college football game when they were hit by a drunk driver. Where was I? Playing kick‑the‑can with a neighbor boy. For some reason, I had decided not to go to the game.

  Mom and my brothers made it, but my dad didn't. I was eleven and a half.

  This loss stretched every boundary I knew. I wasn't king of my universe anymore. In fact, I felt helpless, useless, pathetic. I had no control, and my scramble to regain some made me grow up very quickly.

  Today, my dad's death reminds me of earthquakes; things that shake your foundation. I'll never forget January 17, 1994, in Southern California. With the first rumble and shake, a knife went in and touched my soul and scared me at a psychic level. Sometimes I hear a creak and I immediately expect the big slam. The pain of my dad's death was the same. All of a sudden my world changed overnight. One day he was there, and the next he was gone.

  My mom was stronger than we could have expected. She remarried-an old flame-and their love rescued us all. It took my brothers and sister and me awhile to finally recuperate. I don't think I took the time to grieve until much later in life, when I suddenly realized how much I missed the guy.

  I would like to have known him now that I'm a man.

  gilbert dennison's older brother's room

  It was a cold, blustery fall day. Football practice was over and I was walking to my friend Gilbert Dennison's house. I was ten years old. The word was out that there was something there I had to see. Little did I know that it would change my life forever.

  Gilbert and I tromped inside. There in the hallway was his dad's new gun rack. In the dining room, his mom's new china cabinet. Nice, but hardly the stuff to make young boys speak in excited whispers.

  In his room, Gilbert opened the closet and pulled out a new model airplane kit. Surely this wasn't it. I had seen many P‑51 Mustang kits in my day.

  "So, uh, Gilbert. ." I stammered. But Gilbert already knew what I wanted.

  "It's in Bob's room," he said, nonchalantly, like this happened every day. Bob was Gilbert's older brother who had just gone away to college. "You can look for a sec," said Gilbert. "But if you hear my mom coming, get back in here quick."

  I made a beeline for Bob's room, opened the door, and stepped inside. I saw it instantly. There it was. On the fiberboard wall, above the bed. In plain view. A Christmas picture. A Christmas picture?

  Well, like no Christmas I had ever seen.

  It was a Playboy centerfold of a young woman hanging mistletoe. And she had no top on!

  Nothing could have prepared me for that sight.

  Boom. Birth of a chubby. Unintentional. Uncontrollable. I didn't even know what a Playboy centerfold was. I didn't know what a chubby was. Had I understood the importance of that day, I would have taken a shower, put on a fresh shirt, and grabbed a couple of soda pops for the big event. I was experiencing my sexual awakening. Something inside me had stirred and come to life.

  I mean, I'd seen my mom. But that was my mom.

  Looking back, I'm amazed Gilbert's folks let that thing go up on the wall in the first place. Now I hate myself for not asking them if they were interested in taking in a foster child. In any case, I suppose I owe them and Bob and Gilbert a belated thanks.

  My life has never been the same since.

  - -

  I know what you're thinking: A picture of a naked woman changed his life? Exciting, sure. Important, maybe. But life‑transforming? Come on.

  You come on.

  Let me describe it for you.

  The young woman was arranging mistletoe. She had a Doris Day face and a Technicolor makeup job. She wore red high heels and really thick underpants that came up over her bellybutton. I call them "amples." (If there are briefs, there must be also be amples.) Her feet were spread in a very mannequinlike stance. Otherwise she was pretty naked. That is, she wasn't wearing many clothes. Like I said: She had no shirt! And there she was, smiling. . at me.

  Personally.

  She seemed like a nice young woman. A typical girl next door. Three decades later, while browsing in a used‑book store, I found her centerfold in an old issue of Playboy. Her name was Ellen Stratton and she was the December 1959 Playmate. Instantly I felt like I was back in Gilbert's brother's room.

  "Hey, Ellen. Babe. How ya doin'? Let me get a good look at you. You know, it's amazing. You haven't aged a bit. Remember me? Little Timmy. I used to. . no, that was Bob. Right, Timmy. A little older, but still crazy about you. I'm glad we finally get to talk."

  In the foldout, Ellen was standing in a cheesy living room, the kind you see in Mad Magazine parodies of Madison Avenue ads of the fifties. There was even one of those big orange ski‑lodge fireplaces. A real fashion statement. The whole thing brings back echoes of ascots and highballs and David Niven with slicked‑back hair. I half expected to see men in double‑breasted gabardine suits and women in slinky cocktail dresses in the background, drinking martinis, chatting with Hugh Hefner.

  On the other hand, if I could have looked around the corner, into another room, I'd probably have seen her family-mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother Billy, sister Jane, and probably their dog-at the dining‑room table, eager to devour their Christmas fixings.

  "Ellen! Ellen, dear? Your dad's about to carve the turkey."

  "Coming mother. I just have to fix the mistletoe."

  (And she's doing it in her underwear, Mrs. Stratton.)

  Or maybe Ellen was a young housewife, her husband waiting in the bedroom to tuck her in on Christmas Eve.

  "Sweetie, Santa's almost here."

  "Okay. I just have to let Tim see me naked for a few minutes more. You don't mind,
do you?"

  "No problem. Take your time."

  What a guy!

  Every time I went to Gilbert's house, I'd stare at that picture. I'd walk out of the room and just go right back in. I'd go downstairs into the kitchen, then make up some stupid excuse like I'd left something in my jacket upstairs. I was probably wearing my jacket when I said that. I told you, any excuse.

  But I didn't want anybody looking at me looking at her. That was the first sign of hiding my face from God, as they say. I was embarrassed by the heat in my cheeks. Maybe I had a fever? All I knew was that I had to study the picture. I had to honor those stirrings. Hey, they were the first stirrings I'd had. I didn't quite know what was going on. I didn't know what to do about any of it, but I didn't want to take out any time to have anyone explain it right then, either. I just wanted more, because Ellen Stratton was the most wonderful thing I'd ever witnessed in my life.

  This was the invention of the H‑bomb. This was the discovery of electricity. This was the wheel and fire all rolled into two bosoms.

  This was better than blowing up fish at Cherry Creek.

  This woman had no top on!

  - -

  In a way, the picture was both frightening and reassuring. I realized for the first time that, dumb as it sounds, all women are naked under their clothes.

  Every women is naked under her clothes! Let me say that again: They're all naked! Of course, that discovery made me instantly distrust all women forever: they're hiding this! They have this power and I didn't even know it. It's just under their clothes! The girls my own age were not of the same species. This picture had nothing to do with them. Nor did I relate Ellen to the girls at school. I related her to the gym teacher, the French teacher, the cafeteria cashier-well, without the hairnet-any woman who was taller than me. It's funny how little boys turn into lecherous lunatics. They get the same glazed‑over eyes as strip‑bar patrons because they're undressing every woman they see. This was sex, not that I was clear about what sex was. I think I once got so excited about what I'd learned that I said to the girl next to me in class, "Can you imagine this sex stuff?"

  Then I quickly realized, "Wait a minute! She's one of them!"

  The girls I knew wanted Barbie‑doll romance and valentines and "I think I love you's." The difference between them and Ellen was tremendous. Ellen represented a manly, sexual urge arising in me. I soon discovered it was a sleeping giant. A woman can be naked in National Geographic, but this woman was naked with something in mind. Her nakedness had a power to it, and therein lies the rub-no pun intended.

  Of course, Ellen was so casual about decorating in the buff that she acted like she wasn't naked at all.

  The husband: "Santa won't come down the chimney if you're still awake. Is Tim done staring yet?"

  Or mom: "Ellen, grandma's starting to snore. Maybe we should start eating."

  Ellen Stratton will forever be at that odd age that I was somehow never at. She's a young woman put in an older situation. I was always younger than the centerfolds; then older. I never had the feeling I could go out and find anyone my age who looked the way Ellen looked, and relate to her on a person‑to‑person level. She was always somehow apart from me.

  In fact, her whole situation wasn't real. I know, because for much of my life I looked for a woman in that circumstance and found it did not exist. I never knew anyone who hung mistletoe in her underwear. I was never even in the next room while it was going on. . to my knowledge.

  I was always at the Christmas table, waiting to eat.

  - -

  To be honest with you, looking back at how that day changed my life, fm not sure why I didn't just take the picture off the wall and bring it home. After all, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Hell, I'm forty‑one years old and I still think about it.

  Ellen Stratton is probably sixty by now.

  Ellen, wherever you are, you're always in my heart.

  - -

  Sooner or later it's all about girls and sex. Boys learn about sex, and what girls looked like under their clothes, in many places. In my time it was from Raquel Welch, in One Million Years B.C., standing defiant, wearing a skimpy item from the latest cavegirl collection. I was from the poster, actually; the movie was horrible. It was from Ann‑Margret shimmying alone onscreen in a tight blue dress, warbling "Bye, Bye, Birdie." It was from sneaking peeks at copies of Argosy and Gent magazines. It was from peeping through the bathroom window at the college coed my parents rented a room to one year. It was from whatever stories we could gather from guys who seemed to know what the unknowable was all about.

  Even if they didn't know anything at all. A good line of bullshit goes a long way. Even today.

  Once I woke up sexually, I looked at everything differently. It's a change of perspective. I even looked at comic books anew. Suddenly, I half understood what Archie wanted from Veronica. I'm still trying to figure out what Jughead wanted from Reggie.

  I had a thing for Veronica. Betty was sexier, but Veronica had the bucks. Betty would have been a better wife, and more Archie's match, but he always liked Veronica's style. Both Betty and Veronica had great tits. I wish I could have told Archie about my great discovery: If you change their heads, it's the same body. Black hair with big tits, blond hair with big tits. Very attractive. Got a little chubby now thinking about Veronica.

  Of course, James Bond was my idea of a man's man. I loved Q's gadgets, and the Aston Martin. Eventually I noticed the girls, and soon the worlds of technology and women merged. Bond's movies raised my desires to a fever pitch. Cleavage, strength, maleness, virility, and small shiny things that clicked and exploded. Those films were sex, so much sex that they were primeval. Ellen Stratton, the Playmate, was a woman alone. James Bond, however, showed me how to get the woman and what to do with her when I got her. God, was he smooth and stylish. It seemed pretty damn easy for him, unzipping the beautiful Russian spy's dress, her bounteous flesh spilling over. Or just happening to be on the beach, hiding behind a rock, when Ursula Andress came out of the water in that excuse for a bikini. Talk about lucky timing. For years I thought Bond's way with women was the way. This explains, of course, why I didn't date for quite a while. There was no way I could get girls into a car with a handgun. Come on. Do you know any women named Pussy Galore? My idea of a date was going to the hobby shop and getting a can of gold spray paint.

  "Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."

  - -

  Bond flicks only came out once a year. Argosy and Stag magazines were always lying around, mostly at the barbershop. They were full of uncomfortable images like bosomy women draped over carcasses of dead sheep, or guys with guns and women with big breasts in ripped clothing. Your typical story was "I Ate a Bear After I Killed Him with My Bare Hands." Everybody in the illustration was angry: the guy was angry at her, she was angry at the guy, the bear was angry at both of them. Maybe the bear and the babe had a secret thing going on, and got surprised by the guy in the forest clearing-which explains why everyone was pissed.

  These were men's stories, full of furious, unshaven studs with huge pectoral muscles. If a dick could be a man, that's what it would look like. You could smell the sex and sweat coming off the pages. Of course, I didn't know what these guys did with women. I thought they just rubbed chests.

  Isn't that what "Argosy" means: rubbing chests?

  I think these magazines were actually where Hugh Hefner got his idea for Playboy. He saw these illustrated macho rags and he thought, "Ya know, I bet men would like to see real naked women instead of bears. And pay for it."

  - -

  After we'd overdosed on James Bond and other sources of sexual apocrypha, the boys in the clubhouse started coming up with some pretty weird ideas about what you do with girls once you "get them"-whatever "getting them" means.

  You figure out that kissing is supposed to happen first. Kissing on the lips.

  "Well, you kiss them. but not like you kiss your mom-like any of
us still, uh. . kiss our moms."

  Even those of us who did said, "No, I don't kiss her. She takes a shot, but I. . duck."

  This is an honest but sorrowful indication of what men do. Our whole lives are about "getting them." And then ducking.

  We used to go, "Girls, yuck." But once the stirrings hit, the transition for most of us was immediate. Some guys, of course, don't progress into this stage very quickly. There's always some kid with a weird name like Augie, going, "Come on guys, what are we talking about this for? Let's go make a fort!"

  Even as adults some men would still rather hang out with other men and wonder what concentrating on women has to do with the realities of life, like business and war.

  In the end, women are not much different from golf. With both, the mystery is never revealed. Right when you think you've got it, you suddenly feel like a beginner. However, the illusion that we can plumb the mystery of women remains.

  - -

  Kissing, at the time, was pretty much sex as we knew it.

  I practiced kissing my hand. Sometimes I could go for hours. I kissed it in bed. I used to imagine that I was a wounded soldier, and a beautiful nurse had come to see that I was all right. I was hurt, so she had no excuse to refuse the kiss. I guess this was a natural extension of playing war. Then, the point was to escape injury. It still was, but if by some chance you took a hit, at least the day wasn't a total loss. About this time I began being sorry the girls weren't interested in Combat.

  I stopped kissing my hand when my brother caught me doing it. We shared a bedroom. Even at that age you had to have some humility.

  I should make it clear right now that I did not then, nor did I ever, put my tongue in my hand. No, no, no. We had no idea that even happened. Imagine the horror at the idea of merely putting your mouth against some girl's mouth. And then some kid just back from vacation in Europe tells you that the French do it differently. You almost want to go back to playing war. "No way. Uh, uh. I'd rather be shot in the neck than stick my tongue in someone else's mouth."