Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday and I’ve been in Vegas for the past six days, if any of this makes any sense, it’s a total upset.

Time for the mailbag. 

As always, send your questions along to clay.travis@gmail.com. I guarantee total anonymity.

“My buddy is trying get at this really hot girl we know from high school. She is white, but is known to really like black guys. My roommate is a half black/half white guy. In the last couple weeks, she has lured him over to her place more than once to eat her homemade Oreo balls. I keep telling him this is a thinly veiled metaphor for her wanting his testicles in/around her mouth. He seems to think it isn’t as much of a clear invitation.

How does a big gay Muslim such as yourself read this situation?”

She clearly wants to hook up with your buddy. 

Let’s leave your roommate out of it and put this in another context. How would you react if your wife or girlfriend invited over a guy to her place to eat homemade Oreo balls? Just the two of them? You’d be pissed, right? You’d be like, “She’s trying to fuck this dude and using Oreo balls as the bait.” And here she’s had him over multiple times to eat her treats? Just the two of them? This is too easy. She’s clearly trying to seduce him with homemade Oreo balls.

Does he need to hear her say, “These Oreo balls taste so good in my mouth.” That’s a level of double entendre that even porn producers would shy away from because it’s too predictable. She’s begging him to make a move. At this rate she’s going to bake black and white cookies, invite him over to taste them, and make the cookies hump each other as an art project.   

Here’s what your friend needs to do — The next time he goes over, bring alcohol. He can text something like, “The only thing better than your homemade Oreo balls — I can’t even type this without giggling — is your homemade Oreo balls with alcohol. What should I bring over to drink?”

Thank me later. 

“I am a fairly new reader, so I apologize if you have already gone over this before. Recently my girlfriend just got a new haircut. Of course when she was asking me for my opinion I just played if off like I wasn’t listening and gave some vague answer like “Don’t change it I love the way it looks.” Well, her friends showed her some picture of this hot girl with bangs and told her that it would look good on her…and well it doesn’t. My girlfriend looks exactly like Icebox from the Little Giants. Now this is obviously a lose lose situation…but what should I have done? Should I have just been honest?”

As someone whose life has frequently been a series of bad haircuts — I’m a diva now, the only person I’ll let cut my hair is my man Derek out here at Fox Sports — you can’t be honest. Because inevitably this ends with her slamming the door to the bedroom and you standing outside saying. “It’s okay, it will grow back.”

The first year we were married my wife got her hair cut short in some sort of trendy way and she looked like Nick Saban. (This means every guy in Alabama wanted to sleep with her). She asked me what I thought and I swear to God the first thing I thought was, “You have the exact same haircut as Nick Saban.” If I’d said this I’m pretty sure she would have divorced me. Nobody wants to be married to someone who is totally honest.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Nick Saban has great hair — not Clay Travis level great hair, few do — but great hair for a man. It could always be worse — like if your girlfriend’s new haircut looked like Dana Holgorsen’s, you should leave the house and never return. But you can’t say everything that you think. Especially about her hair. 

A woman’s hair is like a man’s penis, there’s only a few acceptable ways to discuss it without ending the relationship forever.  

So for the girls reading this — who are all now convinced that it was their boyfriend who wrote in with this anonymous question about the bad haircut: DO. NOT. CUT. YOUR. HAIR. SHORT. 

Ever. 

It’s always an awful decision. I don’t care what your girlfriends think or what that famous person in Hollywood did. We see guys with short hair all the time. No matter how cool you think you will look with short hair, you’re wrong. 

It will look awful. 

But as for what to say about her new haircut you only have one option here — you lie and tell her that you like it.

“So my roommate went to cookout mid day and was snapchatting as he got his food. The black drive-thru girl proceeded to say “White boy you gotta snapchat? Add me.” Moving forward two weeks, I get a text that says cookout drive-thru girl is coming over tonight. I laugh about it and tell him to make her bring food, thinking it is a joke.

Two hours later I am sitting on the couch watching the NCAA tournament when the door opens and in walks my roommate and a hefty drive thru girl. She proceeds to go on my balcony and smoke a fat doobie then in to his bedroom she goes.

I am baffled at this point and don’t know what to do so I text two buddies and tell them what has happened. One says, “Gross, he got a girl from the drive-thru” and the other says “#classic.” What do I do the next time I see my roommate? Ask about the rastafarian encounter or pretend like it didn’t happen? Does this happen often in the drive-thru line?”

Is it wrong that I’m wondering which fast food restaurant and judging the relative hotness of the drive thru girl based on her employer? Because Chik fil A has by far the hottest drive thru workers, right? I mean, this isn’t even a contest. If you had to sleep with a drive thru girl and you could only pick one fast food restaurant to employ her, every single person with a brain immediately says, “I’m picking Chik fil A.” (Let’s leave aside the religious angle and assume that all drive thru workers are equally sexually adventurous. Sonic doesn’t count either, by the way, because you should tip those girls and if you don’t you’re an asshole.)

Whereas if you had to pick one that would be the worst, it’s Krystal, right?

Like, if you fuck a drive thru girl at Krystal you might as well just give up on life. You’ve hit rock bottom. 

One of my buddies dated a Cracker Barrel waitress for several months when were were 26 or 27 — we referred to her as “Cracker Barrel” or “CB” for short, I’m still not sure she had an actual name — and we’d be like, “You couldn’t even get a girl from Olive Garden?”

Then Tiger Woods banged the Perkins waitress — AS A MARRIED MAN — and he was like, “See, could have been worse.”

If this were my buddy, I would drive him insane by saying, “You want fries with that?” every time we went out drinking and I went to get beers. I wouldn’t overdo this joke and kill it though, I’d probably just do this for the rest of our lives. And whenever he gets married, I would definitely show up with food from that fast food restaurant on the day of his wedding. Pass it around to the other groomsmen as you kill the eighteen hours of waiting time. If confronted about the decision, deadpan and say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I just wanted a Big Mac.”   

“I know that naked old dudes strutting around gym locker rooms like fighting roosters is a topic you have fully addressed in the past. That said, I unfortunately saw a naked old guy this weekend that reveled in his nakedness for an unusually long time at a Planet Fitness location (I know Planet Fitness is completely lame, but there aren’t many options close to my house). Here’s the story:

I decided to run by the gym Sunday afternoon for a quick 30 minute workout. As I strolled into the locker room to change clothes, the inevitable happened. An old guy wearing only flip flops was proudly walking from his locker to the shower area. I gladly kept my eyes averted, changed clothes quickly and walked out to the gym area.

I got in a 30 – 40 minute workout and walked back into the locker room to quickly change clothes and head home. As I walked into the locker room, the same old guy was standing there STILL NAKED. At Planet Fitness, there are large rolls of abrasive, brown paper towels all over the gym. The old guy had torn off pieces of paper towel and was simultaneously drying off his cock and balls with one hand and ass crack with his other hand. He was doing this very aggressively. I immediately turned to my locker, changed clothes and left. As I drove home, I couldn’t help but ponder a few questions:

Why was he naked for over 30 minutes? Did he seriously shower for that long? Did he forget his towel? Why did he dry off his sensitive areas with the sandpaper like Planet Fitness paper towels? When I reach a certain age, will I too have the deep desire to spend my afternoons naked in a gym locker room? These questions can only be answered by someone who has spent hours of naked locker room time with James Franklin so I decided to email you.”

I’m totally baffled by naked old guys in the locker room. 

Just beyond confused. I don’t even even get naked at all in my gym locker room and my balls are well above my knee caps. Yet the farther down your old man balls hang the more likely you are to walk around naked in the locker room. It’s science.

Is this generational, a sign of your diminishing mental capacity, or are all younger guys secretly harboring a desire to walk around naked in the locker room for hours? And what kind of deviant is aggressively drying his cock and balls with brown paper towels? Just thinking about it makes me cringe.  

Since the CIA had to give up waterboarding, they should replace it with brown sandpapering the genitals. I would confess to anything after about ten minutes of brown paper towels on my dick.

By the way, the number of naked men who put on shirts before they put on pants in the gym is also an epidemic. Who the fuck are you guys that do this? The only time a man should be naked with only a shirt on is if his wife grabs him in the hallway when he comes home from work and immediately starts fellating him in the entry way. (So, never).

Here’s a handy test for you — can I see my cock and balls and am I wearing a shirt? If the answer is yes, you’re an asshole.

Put on your pants first.  

(It’s also much more difficult and time consuming to put on your shirt than your pants. If you have kids you know exactly what I’m talking about. My kids all learned how to put on pants pretty easily. But try to get your three year old to put his shirt on by himself. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard one of my kids scream, “Daddy!” and I go their room and they’ve got their arms up above their head and you can’t even see their faces and they’re terrified and trapped because they can’t get the shirt on or off.)

“Clay, I am in a bind and need your input. I have been married for roughly four years with no kids (though we are actively trying). Things are great – we both make good money and enjoy a lifestyle where we can do pretty much anything we want (vacations, going out, shopping, sporting events, SLEEPING IN, etc.) at any time. It will be very hard to let that freedom and disposable income go should we be fortunate enough to have kids.

My questions are these – is it wrong for at least a part of me to not want children? Do we as husbands become fathers mostly to appease our wives? You never hear the “biological clock is ticking” line from a guy and rarely do you see little boys playing house. Men and women (for the most part) are just wired differently on this subject. I think most fathers (before they actually became fathers) probably felt this way to some degree. I look at the costs, the lack of freedom, the sleepless nights and sometimes think to myself “this looks like something not very appealing to me”.

On the flip side, every friend of mine with kids says becoming a father is the best thing to ever happen to him. They say it’s very hard work, but very rewarding as well. Am I way off base in thinking all of this? What was your honest mentality before child #1? What is it now as far as fatherhood?”

I think you’re totally normal. It’s fair to say that most husbands aren’t driving the kid train. I mean, women who can never find a guy they want to marry will sometimes adopt kids, right? How many single men who can’t find a woman to marry ever adopt kids outside of 1980’s sitcoms? Are there any? Is this even legal? 

Having said that, I love being a dad and it’s really the only thing that matters to me. My three boys are it, the only thing in life I couldn’t give up. I would do anything for them. Sometimes I look at them and think to myself — I didn’t ever believe it was possible that I could ever love anything this much that didn’t involve hot, naked lesbians.    

But kids are time vacuums who restrict your freedom and are frequently total assholes to you. If a girl or guy you dated treated you like your kids do sometimes, you’d never call him or her for a second date. Plus, parenting is the only decision you will ever make that you can’t escape without going to jail. Like, if you pick the wrong spouse and get divorced, people forgive that pretty quickly. If you buy the wrong car or don’t like your house or your school or your jeans or your haircut you just change it and no one judges you. But if you have kids and you don’t want them anymore — that’s a crime and everyone hates you. 

And boy do they ever restrict your movement when they’re young. For instance, we’d love to go to Europe for a month and travel all over the place, but our kids are seven, four and six months old. It takes more planning to go to McDonald’s right now than I spent picking a law school. We pick vacation destinations based on whether we have to change planes. If you can’t fly non-stop from Nashville, we’re not going there.

Also, unlike the childless who can make spur of the moment decisions — you have to plan everything way out in advance. Every day is like D-Day. (And by “you have to plan everything way out in advance” I mean “your wife will plan everything way out in advance” and hate you for being so bad at it. Every time my seven year old gets in my car at first grade pick up — which doesn’t happen that often — the first thing he says to me is, “Where’s my snack?” And I never have his snack and he always says, “Dad, you’ve got to get better at this. Mom always has a snack ready.” We live ten minutes away from his school, so it’s not like the kid has to cross the Oregon Trail to get a juice box, but I always forget his snack. If I was in charge of packing for the kid’s beach trip this May when we got to Destin they’d have like two noodles, one life jacket, and a single bag of goldfish crackers.)

You have no idea how busy you’ll be either. 

I’ve written this before, but every one of you out there without kids who thinks, “I am so busy,” you’re not. You aren’t busy at all. If you say, “I am so busy,” to someone with kids, the person with kids should be able to strangle you to death. Because even if you work eighty hours a week when you’re not home you control your time. Once you have kids you have zero control over anything.

But here’s my final thought — you’re married. Why get married if you didn’t want kids? You could live with that person forever too, right? It’s not men who pretend to get married when they’re kids either. All men get married because of women too. And the only reason to marry someone is to eventually have kids with that person. That’s it. Otherwise, just stay single. If you want total freedom, marriage isn’t that either. So you knew this day was coming eventually.

Ultimately giving parenting advice to people without kids is impossible. Because nothing prepares you for it except doing it.  

Good luck.