Jim Behrle Wants to Know

1. What is an acceptable amount of checking out your boobs? When we’re talking to you. Or butt? Like a totally harmless, just talking to you and checking you out kind of way. How many Mississippis (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, etc.) separate a pleasant amount of being checked out and an uncomfortable, not-okay amount of being checked out? Or should we just never check you out?

Haha. Isn’t it generally frowned upon to be caught looking at boobs at all? I could get in hot water here, but a surreptitious VERY, very quick (like micro-Mississippi, like Mis-) usually won’t provoke anger. That’s not to say people should not be checked out. Just not when we can tell that we’re being checked out. Actually I worry I’m making it worse by answering this question as if there’s anything even approaching a universal answer. Some people like the attention, some people hate it. Being checked out, quickly, when the person’s trying to be cool about it, though, isn’t generally despised? And I imagine it goes both ways. Women checking out men, etc. But it can feel aggressive and uncomfortable to have someone just, Mississippi, staring, Mississippi, at your body.

2. There is an employee lady at a Starbucks I think is cute. But she has a “Love is Pain” tattoo. Do you think she means love is pain in like a pincers way? Or that love is just enormously unpleasant in her experience?

Hm. Probably the second. I’m not sure I’m so crazy about this lady, though. I will need more info about font, placement, color, etc. (“Comic sans, forehead, green” — okay, I love her!) No, but who knows. Maybe she got it when she was really young. Tattoos provide an interesting (and fair/unfair?) way to judge people.

3. My friend didn’t tell me she was pregnant. She instead wanted to just show up at a thing pregnant and surprise me? What is up with that? I hate surprises.

She got you! Jimmm. I dunno, maybe showing up at the thing being pregnant was the way of telling you? Did you ever have a thing for this person? Is that why it was surprising? Or was she really pregnant (like past six months), and it was like, “why didn’t I know this sooner,” and you felt out of the loop? Or was it like “suddenly my friend has become a different thing altogether” as if Pregnant somehow became her defining characteristic and you no longer feel able to communicate with her the way you used to?

Wait I realize I’m not answering any of your questions so far.

4. Why do women always say “Sense of Humor” is the thing they most look for in men? But then you end up wanting someone who doesn’t just take out the garbage, but “wants to take out the garbage.” No one wants to take out the garbage. I mean, they’ll do it. But no one wants to do it. Discuss.

Haha. This seems sort of reductive. I think “sense of humor” means “can make me laugh.” And it’s not that women want you to want to take out the trash, it’s that we want you to love and adore us so much that the thought of not holding up even one tiny part of the bargain — for instance, taking out the garbage — is inconceivable to you, because you would never do anything to jeopardize this glorious and transcendentally fulfilling part of your life — your relationship with us. Many layers of unrealistic-nesses going on there, though, and I don’t really think this is that common a problem?

Jim, what else? Was this disappointing?

Jim Behrle lives in Brooklyn and has lots of questions.