Man vs. Woman: Part 1

It takes a woman on average 15-30 seconds to determine your skill at general hygiene, which has a direct effect on how she’ll view you, for the rest of your life. That whole up-down look you get? You’re being judged on no fewer than 72 different points of your being. And if you pass that test, and she comes to you place, you’ll be getting it again, only this time it’s your apartment, not your person that she’s judging. Next time a woman comes into your home, watch her closely. She’ll immediately look from side to side, for signs of dirt, grime, and emergency exits if the first two don’t meet her needs.

So when you’ve got a woman coming over, it’s all about the sheen and clean. Get rid of the whiskers in the bathroom sink, and try to clean up all the errant nail clippings; despite being your private place, the bathroom shouldn’t look like the killing floor of a Mounds Bar slaughterhouse. The quickest fix, in fact, is to stuff a pipe bomb into a gallon of bleach, throw it into your bathroom and shut the door.

Now for the living room. Put things in those empty vases. If your skills lean more towards horticultural homicide and you can’t be trusted with flowers, then fill them with cool coins, dirt that you’ve pilfered from the Fenway track over the years, anything. Except condoms. Get the drool marks off the couch, and the crumbs while you’re at it. Leather cleans up real easily. Burnt orange shag does not. If your carpet looks like my hair, then it’s time for a new carpet. Trust me, my hair requires daily upkeep…you don’t want that for your carpet. Put away the ironing board, and all the “to be ironed” clothing bling that’s hanging off it. Contrary to popular beliefs, having an ironing board out is not going to impress a woman. There’s a reason that that “wrinkled look” is so popular, and despite what kind of therapy your naked ironing may give you, it’s like picking your nose: everyone does it, but no one wants to see evidence of it.

Brush your teeth. Now for the mouthwash. Go on, you bad ass….kill that Gingivitis like it’s your step-brother who used to fall asleep on top of the remote with professional wrestling on the tv, until you duct-taped him to his mattress and threw him out in the yard one night, and you were going to super-glue the remote to his forehead, but you could never get the needle into the nozzle of the superglue thing, and it was all dried up anyways, and you knew that that duct tape would be painful enough to get off, and besides, he did give you that Pearl Jam CD for Christmas one year, and so you really can’t hold a grudge, and you called off the step-fraternal fatwa. Huzzah for repressed memories!

The kitchen is the best part. You may know it as the room of eating, the food Thunderdome, or the place where hunger goes to die. Any other superlatives are now legally owned by Snickers, after their last craptastic advertising campaign.

I’ve just been informed that “Craptastic” was bought by Hershey’s for its upcoming anti-Snickers campaign, so to avoid any legal smiting, let’s go with “blow chunktastic.”

In any case, put the dishes away…it’s not conceptual art to have them strewn haphazardly in your drying rack. Use your one ubiquitous sponge to wipe down everything. That’s right baby, spread those germs. What you need is a true all-purpose cleanser. Not just kitchen or bathroom-specific, but something better. Something that you can use as deodorant, to season your steaks, to cure Athlete’s foot. Tastes great on popcorn, and fixes squeaky door hinges. Know what would solve that? A wood pellet burner. Aww, it’s sad that it’s become a joke already. The Arctic Monkeys of the fuel world.

Back to the kitchen. It’s nice, but not required to have a 2:1 ratio of non-alcoholic food items to alcohol (by volume, not weight. I’m not cruel.) And, if you can somehow swing it, the smell of warm cinnamon buns or popcorn are like culinary Spanish Fly to visitors. Just imagine if your breath could smell exactly like hot cinnamon buns. Hang around a Weight Watchers and you’d be fighting off the ladies with a stick. And no one would give a shit what your apartment was like.

Back in the real world, if you’re prepared for it, bring her in. If you’ve got some Wal-Mart-trained “greeter” ninjas, then now’s the time to let them loose; they’ll help ease her into the awesomeness that waits around every corner of your (hopefully) clean abode. See if they can incorporate some citrus slicing into their routine, to segue smoothly into a welcome cocktail.

Good luck!