Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

by Tim Allen

  Then he said, "Wait. There's no basement here."

  "You noticed. Actually we built the basement off site," I explained. "We will finish the basement, then lift the entire house and set the basement underneath. I find that cheaper."

  This went on for about an hour. As we were talking, my crew finished doing the floor, and then, on nobody's cue, Bob walked right through the wet concrete.

  Never trust a TV professional.

  - -

  Sports are considered by many to be a men's zone. Okay. Fine. But I can't talk about them here. Men and sports are so big it would take seventeen volumes. Also, many guys are so into sports they know statistics about statistics. The only thing I can quote chapter and verse is the Mustang repair manual. I don't even know enough about sports to try and bullshit you.

  The only thing I wonder about is the women in the men's locker room thing. What's that all about? Ever see men clamoring to get in the women's locker room? They respect women's privacy in the locker room, unlike some women color commentators who made it a point to go into the men's locker room. Men just wouldn't do that. I just don't think male sportscasters really want to get into the women's locker room to interview naked six‑foot‑five female basketball players.

  On the other hand, I might be totally wrong.

  - -

  Men are defined by what they do, which is why the classic men's zone is the workplace. We're there all day long. Sometimes we die there, because men do more of the dangerous work. Women blame us for being in control, but we're meaner to ourselves than we are to women. Men work the oil derricks. Men walk the high steel beams. Men repair bridges. Is this by choice or because men are smarter? Or because men are dumber? These jobs don't say to me, "It's a man's world. We run everything." But someone's gotta do it, so the men do. Men take the grungy jobs. If we were really as mean as women say, we'd stay home with the kids and let them enjoy salesman dinners and other industrial accidents.

  Attention all women: Men have bosses, too. Men are just as put out by their lack of control as women. I think eight guys-supreme bosses-run everything. Well, I don't know for sure, but this alien who took me into his flying saucer and stuck things up my behind while he examined me why is it always the rear end? what's up there that's so damn revealing? — told me this as his way of apologizing for my temporarily excruciating discomfort. He's now taken over the body of my family doctor, so I see him a lot. He also told me that no one would believe me-about who really runs the world, I mean.

  Whatever women are going through, it's not men's fault. If it is, we sure don't know it. I just thought I'd make that perfectly clear.

  - -

  Conventional wisdom says that if you want something done well you should do it yourself. So I've decided to design my own amusement park. It will be the ultimate men's zone.

  I'll call it Tim Al‑Land.

  Men are fascinated by, preoccupied with, and genetically predisposed toward two things: Construction and Destruction. Think of the stuff that boys do. Build and destroy. Nothing's changed.

  Women are invited to Tim Al‑Land, but as with most men's zones, women just don't want to go there. It smells like feet and body odor. It's not real comfortable. It's comfortable enough, if you're the kind of guy who likes spending all day on a park bench. It's also chilly all the time, and loud.

  Throughout the park there are signs posting rules, which, when broken, earn you a free food ticket. The food pavilions serve the basic men's food groups: meat, carbohydrates, salt, and fat. The hot dogs are rubbery and the potato chips stale. Everything's

  MEN'S ZONES

  cooked on a fire and shoved into a casing. All beverages are ice cold. All the tables are tailgates. In the bathrooms there are no toilet seats. But there is a recorded voice that cycles through, "Can't you remember to put the seat down when you're through. How hard can it be? I don't find it funny. I almost fell in. . " It always gets a big laugh from the married guys. There aren't even any women's bathrooms.

  You gotta walk through a big drill to get into Tim Al‑Land.

  "There's your armature right there. Your pinion's there, son. Stand by the trigger and I'll take your picture."

  Inside, you have to wear a vest with lots of pockets. If you forget yours we provide them, just like fancy restaurants when they require coats and ties and you come dressed like a bozo.

  As the creator of Tim Al‑Land, I suggest the ladies just leave their men at the gate and take advantage of the complete beauty makeover offered at the Tim Al‑Land Ladies Annex across the street. Our motto: "We'll make sure it takes hours. And all your girlfriends will be there."

  Tim Al‑Land: Maybe I can get Disney to do this.

  The park reflects the best and worst in man, and is divided into zones. The first is Constructionland.

  In Constructionland, you can frame a house. Hell, you can put up a barn. You can lay brick. You can build a bridge. I don't know any guy in the world who wouldn't spend twenty‑two bucks for a ticket to run a backhoe all day long. Learn how a front‑end loader works. Drive a bulldozer, a grader. You get training in a big gravel pit. Seven bucketloads and you're outta there, so the next guy can get a turn. I once got a letter from some guy who wondered how I'd feel driving the largest front‑end loader on the planet Earth. How would I feel lifting thirty thousand pounds of payload, putting it wherever I wanted? I got a chubby just reading the letter.

  Next to the gravel pit is a special place where you can use big metal jaws hanging from a crane to try to pick up a car and put it down a little chute. Get it down the chute, it's yours. Damage it and it's yours, too. Of course you damage it!

  Even though blowing up things requires the same energy and creativity as building things, Destructionland is clearly the dark side of man.

  In Destructionland, a.k.a. Militaryland, men get to use all that Army stuff: machine guns, howitzers, tanks. Only this time they're real. Remember that bridge you built? Blow it up!

  My wife would never get inside a tank: "It's so hot in here, it's so cramped. You like this? This is fun for you?"

  Every man would be thinking something else entirely: "Will this go through that wall?" Soon you're going over a hill at full speed while the barrel's going sideways, firing hot steel.

  "Is this the only color? Is it drafty in here? It's so musty. What's that diesel smell?"

  In Militaryland you can also sit on the deck of the USS Missouri-now decommissioned-and shoot a sixty‑inch gun. The shells go twenty miles and, if aimed properly, will obliterate your neighbor's house and leave yours standing.

  Of course, my wife would be on the deck going, "It's so loud!"

  Me? I'd be half drunk from swilling brown liquor and yelling, "Shoot it again!" The USS Missouri would also feature my version of skeet shooting. They fling a little imported car off an island and into the air, and you blow it to bits with a sixty‑millimeter. Bang! Bang Bang! Yeah!

  In Militaryland you could also take a ride on a Seawolf submarine. Hell, why not water‑ski behind it? Think of it: You whiz by the dock, wearing your Sears fashion specials, and wave at everyone. No boat just you.

  A couple of years ago I got to see the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier. I met the duty‑control officer, since promoted to some important liaison job. He was from Down South, and smarter than I'll ever be. But he still sounded dumber than a ham hock.

  "That boat five football feels long. Nuklar pawr"

  In Militaryland, you could also ski behind the Nimitz. You and 3,800 of your favorite friends. Little heads bobbing up and down on the water, trying to keep their tips up. "Hey, Dad!" Takes almost fifteen miles to get her going. "Get your heads up!" Pulls everybody up. "All right!"

  There'd always be some bonehead trying to cross the wake. If he falls, everybody has to let go and wait for the captain to yell, "Pull her round again!"

  There would have to be some sort of beer pavilion for refreshments. Something with a Bavarian theme, like the Obermeyer Tent. Waitresses in halter t
ops and lederhosen. Beer steins with relief maps of Italy on them. We could sit around and try to figure out why the Bavarians made cups with metal caps that serve no useful purpose.

  After you quench your thirst, it's into the men's room. It's all trough. Forty feet long. The trough of hell. Solid aluminum. Water sloshing through. Eighty guys lined up like horses. And the stalls: no doors, just holes in the floor, like in Italy. No woman would understand it.

  Another thing women might be surprised at is that nothing in Tim Al‑Land is remotely connected to sex. No way. Sex is not a man's zone. That switches men into another gear. Then they get competitive and fight. That's not cohesion, that's competition. I also figure that unless there's enough to go around, and everyone is happy with what they get-which I don't think is ever possible--then women wouldn't be a good idea. Besides, I'd want to keep all the beer waitresses to myself.

  Finally, it's off to Fishingland. Full of fish things. You can see fish, touch fish, kiss fish. Even feel what it's like to be hooked.

  "Hold still, kid."

  "Oh, god that hurts! Oh, sonofabitch that hurts!"

  "Try that!"

  "Oh, jeez, you're right, that hook really hurts. Isn't that great!" You've got to watch a bass‑fishing tournament to really understand the male psyche. I watched one on TNN. It was the seminationals. The contest consisted of teams of two fat guys with double given names-Joe Bob, Ray Bob, Tim Dick-sitting on top of bar stools in a boat made of thirty‑five feet of metal‑flake fiberglass, powered by an 830‑horsepower Mercury motor. Are bass particularly fast little fish? Are Jim Bob and Sam Bob trying to run them down? Do they have to grab them by the head? Why do the boats have to be so fast?

  I flew down to Mexico with marlin fishermen once. Now these are big fish. Do you have to eat a piece of marlin to be in this club? Do fishermen even eat fish? I don't think so.

  After all the fun at Tim Al‑Land, it's finally time to go.

  There's a bar next door to the Ladies' Annex where you can grab a beer just in case your wife's hair still isn't done.

  But please, no firing the sixty‑millimeter guns at the Annex.

  - -

  What excites me about men is what they can do when they direct their energy. There's nothing more impressive than the things we've built. Environmentally and socially there may be something wrong with the Hoover Dam, but if you look at it and feel the grandeur of it, and realize that men designed and built that, it's almost too breathtaking to bear. And the Grand Canyon! Took almost two years-and men did it. And how about the Chunnel, the tunnel between England and France? So what if they missed each other by a few feet trying to meet in the middle? Come on. A few feet in the scheme of things? A little water helps break up the boredom of the drive.

  I'll let you in on a secret. All mistakes men make are planned. This gives us a reason to go back to where we live and breathe.

  In the men's zone.

  more power

  If it's got an engine, men love it. If it goes fast, men will figure out a way to make it go faster. Men love anything that makes noise, spins, moves, or smokes. If it's big, make it bigger. If it's loud, make it louder. Men's stuff is always audible. Fishing rods whir. Boltaction guns "chuck." Cameras click. New stereo equipment sighs. From a toaster to a Stealth bomber, we're always trying to add more power.

  Speedintensityvolumepower. Speedintensityvolumepower. The mantra of the modern man.

  Men's zones are filled with men's stuff. The whole world is filled with men's stuff. I don't know why men have so much stuff. Maybe it's because we never listened to our mothers when we were kids. We should have cleaned up our rooms when she told us to.

  No wonder the world is one big mess.

  Many sociologists, mostly women-okay, only Dr. Joyce Brothers-have postulated that there are specific reasons why men have so much stuff. I haven't spoken to her personally, so I don't know what these reasons are. However, I believe men's fascination with tools, cars, stereos, computers, and collecting beer bottles from around the planet stems from the creation urge. Men can't have babies, so it's our way of feeling important and useful. This, more than an inherent fascination with socket wrenches, is what makes us want to crawl under the car and restrut the suspension, or change the oil every three thousand miles, and not mind when big globs of filthy petroleum product land smack on our foreheads. This urge to control something is what draws us to a shoeshine kit full of black, brown, and cordovan polish; and brushes and rags caked with spittle.

  Having mentioned shoes, here's a question that's always nagged me: What is it with women and shoes, anyway? Women don't seem to realize that they can actually polish shoes in the home. They get a scuff and the shoes are as good as garbage. It's time to go shopping for another pair. If we could redirect the money spent on overpriced women's footwear, we could halve the national debt. Women have fifteen pairs of shoes in the closet, and that's just in black. There are slant‑back heels, half heels, spikes, pumps, espadrilles, and shoes that don't even look like shoes.

  Don't tell me that being able to have babies eradicates all of women's compulsions.

  For instance, the purse thing. Women have sixty purses, and I've still got the same wallet I made in camp.

  There's not a man I know who would purposely look in a woman's purse. Purse snatchers learn this early. Grab the purse, dump the lipstick, earrings, cosmetics, tampons, datebook, car keys, combs and brushes, diet energy bars, sleeping bag, pup tent, Miata. Get the money. I've never looked in a woman's purse. Never opened one. A real man doesn't go into a purse. It's a no‑man's‑land. You can lose yourself in that thing. My wife once discovered $300 in her purse that she'd misplaced. How do you do that? I can understand misplacing the money, but in your own purse? But she looked in her purse and there it was, right next to the antique dresser.

  My wife and I went to Florence, Italy, recently. She said she wanted to see Michelangelo's David and other classic works of art. She didn't tell me she'd discovered that Florence is where the purse was invented. We went shopping ten minutes after we'd checked into our hotel. They've got two streets of shops that just sell brown purses. My wife's eyes left their sockets! And then she was gone. I followed her into a store and there she was, "trying on a purse!"

  "Just buy them all," I said. "We've got stuff to do. Great art to see."

  "The David's waited this long," she said. "I don't think he's getting off his pedestal and going anywhere for the next couple of days. Besides, these purses are on sale and they're Italian. Now how 'bout this clutch? Too clunky?"

  What could I say? My wife is just as confused when I try to explain why I need another tool I'm never going to use.

  Meanwhile, she's modeling purses and I'm fighting off narcolepsy. I can't shop with women. I just get tired. I walk into the women's wear department of any store and my energy just goes to hell. I'm suddenly seven and in the backseat of the family station wagon, being lulled to sleep by the hum of the road. There's something about fluorescent lights in malls that makes me very weak. It's like they're made of kryptonite. (However, fluorescent lights in electronics stores make me feel suddenly energetic.) Women know this. That's why, instead of letting you go off and do your own shopping, they make you sit in those little student punishment seats by the dressing rooms. Then they waltz out in some god‑awful frou‑frou and say, "What do you think?"

  You muster the stock answer. "Nice. Very nice." And then you follow with the appropriate shared "nod and smile" to the exhausted husband in the other chair.

  Then she disappears and returns with a cocktail purse that matches the outfit. It's about the size of a maraschino cherry and it costs $3,000. At that price it should match any outfit. It just carries itself. Oh-and you can't fit anything in it.

  "It's supposed to be decorative, honey."

  Oh, the things you want to say, but don't.

  - -

  I love cars. Cars are my life. My wife is a bright corporate lady who could care less about cars. When we cou
ld finally afford to buy her any car she wanted, I asked her to reveal to me her heart's desire. Anything, anything, anything. ."

  "Red," she said.

  Boys fantasize about cars because cars mean only one thing: extending boundaries way past home. They represent adventure. You can drive across country. You can get out of town. Cars are freedom. Guys want power. Freedom is power. (Like most kids, I also fantasized about being a superhero. I liked Spiderman. And what did I want to use my new superpowers for? To get a car. That's me. Lofty goals.)

  Women have a much more subtle approach to cars and the freedom they represent. Mainly, how to get in and out gracefully. How to dress so the guys with the cars will give them rides. The social niceties. They assume they'll be in cars, but they already know it's to their advantage not to own a car because of the equity problem, depreciation, and, with the exception of race driver Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, they probably can't fix it, nor do they want to. Women are right to think that it's easier just to get someone to be the mechanic and chauffeur them around. This, next to having children and garbage removal, is the reason most women want husbands.

  I like cars so much I'd hang around parking lots if I didn't think someone would call the police. I once went to a store to get wheel covers for my car, because someone had stolen them, and I could have spent the day there. When I drove in, a guy just getting out of his car at the same time said, "Nice wheels." In guy talk, that meant he thought I was a nice guy.

  "What you got under the hood?" (He wants to know more about me.)

  "Supercharged hemi." (I'm a forward thinker, a risk taker.)

  "Where do you redline?" (Depends on what he is referring to.)

  "Seven thousand rpm. Tops out around 140 mph." (I'm way too fast for you, buddy. But thanks for asking.)

  One thing I'll always like about living in Los Angeles is that everybody has a car. Everyone has to have a car. Otherwise you've got to train for the marathon just to get some milk at the grocery store. Some of the homegrown custom‑car designs are a little tough to understand, though. Who came up with the idea of taking those teeny, tiny, mini pickup trucks with the little motors, and fitting them with huge tires and sound systems so loud I think we're having an earthquake aftershock every time a cruiser drives up my street?