Things Guys Secretly Love (Part II)

So far we haven’t found a whole lot of things on that list that guys even like, much less love. Let’s continue, shall we?

Bubble Baths

I have lived in my current home for over eleven years now. Oh, it’s nothing fancy, just the usual things you’d expect to find in a house. We have a kitchen with both an oven and a refrigerator, a back yard, a driveway and yes, a bathroom. And in that bathroom we have both a shower and a bathtub. Care to venture a guess as to how many baths, bubbled or otherwise, I’ve taken in the past eleven years?

Cute Animals

Okay, now hold on just a minute! This was supposed to be a list of things that guys traditionally claim to not like but secretly love. Where did we ever say we didn’t love cute animals? Puppies, kittens, duckies, bunnies – we love ‘em all. I mean c’mon, we’re human, too. Just barely, I know, but still.

Gossip Magazines

There was a time, a rather short period of time, when I regularly purchased and read the National Enquirer. In truth, I got bored with it very quickly. I’ve always suspected that it’s not that men are uninterested in gossip, but that in our case it takes different forms. We find our gossip in other places, such as sports and politics. We can’t wait to shake our heads at the latest gaffe or sex scandal from a politician, or repeat what the baseball manager said about one of his own players. And then we’ll look down our nose at a woman who enjoys TMZ. “How can you watch this crap?” we’ll ask, in our superior and oh-so-bogus way.

Pink

And I assume they don’t mean the singer, but the color. To be honest, one of the shirts I wear most frequently just might qualify as “pink.” I have regular line-up of five or six casual shirts, all in the same style but in different colors. (God bless J.C. Penney.)  I have a blue one and a green one and a maroon one and a burnt orange one and yes, a pink one. I don’t remember buying the pink one; it doesn’t seem like something I’d do. But know this: Pink is not a color I secretly love. In fact, there are no colors that I secretly love. They’re just shirts, for fuck’s sake. And I wear the pink most often for a simple reason – it’s the baggiest.

Babies

Who doesn’t love babies? Or, more accurately, who’s willing to admit out loud that they don’t love babies? Not me, that’s for sure. I got enough people looking at me funny. Oh, sure, babies are entertaining enough, but only in - and this is key - very small doses. They have an extremely limited repertoire and that gets boring fast. Watch a baby sometime. Notice how quickly he goes through all of his tricks, and is back to repeating himself before you know it? Who needs it? Besides, they’re kind of disgusting, eventually.

Hugs

Too vague. Do we enjoy going around a room and hugging everybody when we arrive and then reversing the process when we leave? Of course not. It’s time consuming and unhealthy. But do we enjoy a hug of gratitude from that new, impressively-breasted administrative assistant when we unjam the copier for her? That’s one’s rhetorical.

Manicures and Pedicures

As a child, getting my nails clipped by my mom was a very painful experience. Why this was so I still don’t fully understand. I think it had something to do with Eisenhower. Now, a shrink might say this is the reason why I have never, not even once, gotten a manicure or a pedicure. I don’t buy it, of course, but am also at a loss to disprove it. I will tell you that I have never had the urge to cut another person’s nails and from that I extrapolate that nobody would ever enjoy cutting mine. Mom sure didn’t. The bottom line, though, is I just never found it to be something I’m interested in. Sure, some men’s magazines might insist that manicures and pedicures are an important part of being well-groomed, but you know and I know that ship sailed a long time ago.

Cute Tiny Things

Okay, you got me. I love cute tiny things and I always have. As a kid I remember playing for hours with a handful of these plastic, two-toned “Mexican jumping beans.” I had my favorite (the blue and white one) and I even gave them names.  It wasn’t all that long ago that I had a minor collection of tiny pewter souvenirs that I bought back from various places. And even today, if you drive by my house you’ll see a row of colorful solar-powered figures dancing in the front window, a display sure to eventually make me known on the block as the senile old coot with all the toys in the window, if it hasn’t already. So yes, I admit it. I like cute tiny things. I’m guilty. Build my gallows high!