On this sunny, brisk day, two young shapely women in well-fitting sweatpants walk past me to my left. Concentrated on getting my bookshelves together, I didn’t think to turn around and do what most men do given such a situation. The guy with his girl in front of me, however, found some longer-lasting misfortunes doing what I didn’t do.

“I ain’t mad at you checking them out,” she said.

I smiled, because I knew what was coming next.

“So then why did you say something?”
“Because it makes me wonder why you’re checking out other girls why you’re with me.”
“It’s natural. Guys can’t help it, and you know that.”

Dude could have stopped right there. He didn’t.

“I mean, girls gossip and guys don’t understand that. Is that not natural to chicks?”

I crossed the street before I either saw a bawl-fest or another whack to the arm, but laughed just the same. He wasn’t going to hear the end of it. Obviously, he has no desire to adopt a mature mechanism for checking women out so he has two options at this point: he can either apologize to his lady and never check out women again around her or he can be blatant and check out every woman that appeals to him around her. Either way, it makes him look like a jerk, no matter how ephemeral his pleasure.

To an extent, he’s right; most guys glance at other women frequently, not to be disrespectful towards their mate. If anything, it’s either a force of habit or nature. Often, nothing more. Like a child who’s looking around the room and finds everything so fascinating, a guy is often looking but not looking for any other reason. If they’re single, they’re often more likely to try something, but even then, it’s more often than not an overt means of expressing something within. At least from what I’ve seen.

Once we get older, we get over it. Yes, we’ll still steal a glance here and there, but the more mature members of our sex will mostly take a deep breath and focus more on what’s important. If I was that guy, I’d probably just tell my lady (because I already have) that guys aren’t as physiologically intelligent and too often our nature takes over our reason, even when our needs are being met satisfactorily. (Read: we’re dumb and we’re learning how to cope with it.) Guys in general eventually catch up and if we really care, we’ll try our best to get on par with what we’re saying to our partners.

But that’s coming from this Dominican male, and not the one that got the crazy side-eye from his woman this afternoon. After the way he turned around this afternoon, he’s probably got more than a neck to take care of.

Jose, whose neck is just fine, thank you very much …