Why Are the Pretty Ones Always So Dumb?

The joke is never quite as funny when you have to explain it to her.

ALEXIS STOPPED BY THE CRIB really late one summer night, probably around the time of last call at the neighborhood bar, and just happened to catch me out on the back porch in my boxers smoking a cigarette—it was just too hot in the apartment for me to sleep. She walked up flanked on either side by Hubert and Lester, who I already knew had gone on a long bike ride together earlier that evening. They most likely ran into her as she was leaving the bar around the corner. Alexis told me she had stopped by just to say hello.
  Hubert and Lester had come by to return the bike lights they had borrowed from my neighbor, who worked nights and, knowing he wouldn’t be home when they got back from their long ride, told them just to leave the lights with me. As was our typical way, Hubie, Les, and I exchanged a few raucous remarks, the majority of which were backhanded jibes in response to the things Alexis had been saying. Hubie hated her. She had practically grown up with Lester’s kids and nieces and nephews; so, although he had watched her grow up her whole life, Les didn’t really care for her a whole lot either, and he reserved a particularly wicked variety of his caustic humor just for her. The hilarious old hermit would pick on anybody he considered to be dumber than himself, but with Alexis he was extra rough and raunchy—and he actually meant it. Despite our triple entente of verbal assault, Alexis persisted in trying to strike up friendly conversation with the three of us, her perverted tormentors.
  It was probably all the free tequila she had drank at the bar that was doing all the talking for her.
  Now, I’m not quite sure what in the name of Tennessee Williams it was or might even have been, whether it was the sultry August moonlight or me just being tired and languid, or who knows what, but strangely for once, Alexis somehow caught my eye as one very pretty, very desirable woman—as a whole feminine human being—instead of just some sluttish brainless barfly with little more to offer the world than one hell of a nice sweet ass. I had never seen her in such a manner before, was thoroughly infatuated with her for several minutes at least. I mean, under the right circumstances I could’ve fallen head over heels for that dame the way she was looking at just that particular moment. There was no taking my eyes off of her—captivated. Hubert grabbed her attention long enough for me to really look her over—and look her over but good.
  That’s when I noticed an ingenious way to really stick it to Alexis—again!
  Having Hubert and Lester present as an audience only made it that much sweeter.
  You see, Alexis was wearing this slinky little black low-cut cotton-blend tank top, which was tight enough and broke at just the right spot on her midriff to sublimely show off her lean, olive-colored belly, and provide a tasteful little bit of lift to her glorious fun bags, which were already delectably scrumptious on their own. Boy howdy, that was a sexy freaking top! Anyways, across the front of the thing, stretching perfectly from one areola to the other as if it had been made and mounted there by a craftsman from some custom sign shop, the word “GUESS” was screen printed or ironed on, each of the letters surrounded by a border of sequins and glitter appliqué.
  Lester told me some time later that he could tell by the look on my face I was up to something. He said he’d been watching my expression for a couple of minutes at least, just waiting to hear what he knew (judging by the look on my face, of course) was going to be a great one. “A classic I knew I’d remember and tell people about for years to come,” he explained days later. He couldn’t stand the anticipation or suspense another moment, so that’s why he put me on the spot.
  I’m glad he did, because I really couldn’t wait any more, either.
  “You never noticed ‘em before, Danny?” asked Lester in a voice loud enough and sounding serious enough to interrupt Alexis and Hubert’s chat, drawing first her attention to me, and then Hubert’s after Lester gave him some tacit signal to warn him of the spectacle they were both about to witness.
  Alexis looked at me for several silent seconds before she realized my lascivious gaze wasn’t directed at her eyes. She turned around, scanned up and down the alley in front of the porch, and then looked back at me in confusion; I imagine she couldn’t find anything behind her in the alley or anywhere else that I might not have noticed before. “Dude, what are you staring at?” she asked me in a nervous, uncomfortable mumble.
  “Thirty-two-B?” I guessed. The snort and gasp I heard from Lester and Hubert—respectively—told me both of them were ready to lose it, just waiting, holding their applause for the end of the scene. Lester told me later how sincerely impressed he was with the joke; he felt a bit envious for not having come up with it himself.
  “Huh?” Alexis asked. Apparently, she really had no idea what it was that I was getting at. “You’re fucking weird, dude,” she snarled through her teeth, rolling her eyes in exasperation.
  “Well,” I said, “I’d say thirty-two-B if I had to put any money on it. But what kind of prize do I get if I guess right?”
  “If you guess what right?” Alexis looked to Lester, as if he knew something about what was going on that she didn’t. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head like he was just as or more in the dark than she was. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t get it,” Alexis sniveled. “Fucking Danny, man.”
  “Yeah, thirty-two-B is my final answer, Regis,” I told Lester. Hubert could finally no longer hold it in, and erupted with a gratifying belly laugh.
  “You’re a motherfucker, kid,” Hubert complimented me with a snicker and a sneer.
  “See,” Alexis chastised me, “he don’t know what you’re tripping on, either, dude.” She must have assumed that Hubert had been laughing about my behavior instead of just laughing at her.
  Why are the pretty ones always so dumb?
  Before I could say anything to Hubert, Lester chimed in with: “Nice try, Danny, but they’re thirty-fours. I seen ‘em. More than once. Definitely B’s, though.” Lester’s bearded fifty-something face wrinkled with a devilish smirk. “When you see ‘em in person, though, even though they’re a pair of solid B’s, all in all—and trust me, now, I seen lots of ‘em in my time—in the grand scheme of things those thirty-four-B’s are really a big A-minus in person.”
  “Is there a booby prize for a guy who guesses so close but not exactly?” I asked Lester.
  “No pun intended,” Lester interjected as he guffawed, reveling in a moment of sheer delight.
  “Booby prize,” Hubert echoed. “Good one, kid.”
  Not to be left out, Alexis shook her head disapprovingly and said, “I want some of what you dorks have been smoking. Regis? Booby prize? Ms. Alexis over here’s the only one who ain’t laughing. Now I know you’re fucking with me,” she announced directly to me, scoffing. “All three of you.”
  “You started it, woman,” I retorted. Hubert and I laughed wholeheartedly, unabashedly, each of us almost to the point of tears.
  Alexis turned to Lester for help, he being a kind of stand-in father figure for her; and she begged him to make us lay off of her, although, knowing she was the butt of the joke but not quite sure why, she must have forgotten that asking for mercy would only exacerbate how dumb she looked in front of the three of us.
  Lester chuckled and smirked like a lunatic canary that had just swallowed a Cheshire cat grinning about the diarrhea soufflé he had just deliberately and ecstatically devoured.
  “Les, make ‘em stop,” whined Alexis.
  “You know, kiddo,” Lester began, as Hubert and I went instantaneously silent at the sound of his voice, both of us expecting him to drop one of his inimitable gaffe bombs on Alexis, “you’re very lucky it’s this dark out. In fact, I bet if it was a little brighter out, he would’ve nailed the right number.” Alexis, judging by the vacant stare on her face, still had not the slightest hint of what the joke was; yet, she supposed there was a barb in there somewhere, a barb of which she knew without any doubts she was the innocent victim, but couldn’t wrap her head around what the crux of it was precisely. Her dejection was palpable. “If Danny had called it right, I would’ve made damn sure he got his prize from you. Even if I had to hold you down for him my damn self.”
  “Prize?” squeaked Alexis like a cross between Minnie Ripperton at the end of  “Loving You,” and Minnie Mouse finally having her first real orgasm; the vacuous glare on her face looked like either one or both of the Minnies was fucking goofy.
  “So, there, Les, what’s the consolation gift?” I prodded.
  Lester sighed, and a sober, grace countenance fell upon his face weakly like a feeble pall. “She’s a man eater, Daniel,” he warned me in a forlorn voice. “Decision of the judge is final, kid. It’s all or nothing when it comes to winning prizes on this game show. A hundred percent right for a hundred percent of the purse. Anything less, even as close as you . . . .” Lester fell silent and took upon him the look of a man watching intensely plotted and intricate melodramatic movies on a distant invisible projection screen. “Man eater, son. I tell you, the dame’s tough. Too tough.”
  Alexis suddenly perked up and swelled overtly with the beaming pride of a ritzy Parisian whore working a corner somewhere on the Champs Elysées.
  “So?” I asked.
  Lester’s glare seemed to say that I either had no business asking him that question, or should have already known the answer to it before I had asked. “So,” he admonished, “you don’t get the grand prize. Trust me. It’s for your own good.”
  “I’d be happy with just the runner-up’s reward.”
  “Second place gets you the satisfaction of knowing how close you were, and kudos for being first to come up with the joke.”
  Hubert patted my back and congratulated me for my comedic innovation, as if he were giving me a Tony or some other Academy Award. “I think I know what old Lester’s getting at, Dan. He’s right—it is for your own good.”
  I humbly accepted defeat. “Okay, then,” I persisted, “what would the grand prize have been, Bob Barker?”
  “A free pass to the all you can eat pink taco buffet.” Hubert struggled to improvise a clever wisecrack with which he could join the sarcastic fray. After a solitary noncommittal titter, he knew he had worked way too hard at that remark for far too little a payoff, and the devious, crooked grin he usually wore left his face as if it were already too late to catch the last train to Clarkesville. He growled in dismay like Chewbacca with a wretched case of swollen adenoids, or Donna Summer trying to sing a Disco tune after scalding her larynx with some “Hot Stuff.”
  Lester expressed his disappointment in Hubert’s lame quip with a grotesque, disquieting grimace that looked like it must have hurt just to display it. “Grand prize,” he said, “would be a one night stay in the fabulous Sexcalibur Hotel Resort and Assino. A guided tour of Sugar Walls Cavern Steak Park. And an all-night’s supply of Nice-Now-Bone-Me, the Damp Clam’s Disco treat.”
  “Somebody tell me what the fuck’s going on, assholes,” Alexis demanded. “I give up.”
  “A couple more inches,” Hubert tisk-tisk-tisked. “A couple more measly inches and you would’ve really cashed in.”
  “I think you mean ‘gashed’ in, don’t you, Hube?” I theorized with a salacious and bawdy laugh.
  “Yeah, right. That’s if you’d got the right slut to put out—er, I mean the right slot to pay out.”
  Alexis grumbled with a mix of embarrassment and frustration. I felt kind of sorry for the girl. Hubert, Lester, and I shared a wonderfully satisfying round of laughter at her expense until, one by one, the three of us tired of laughing. I put my arm around her shoulders, winked, and blew her a kiss to try and assuage her rumpled ego. She hesitated, seemed to be trying to pull away from me, then relaxed and rested her head upon my shoulder.
  Lester twitched when he noticed the look she was giving him; she seemed placid but impatient, and it was this that must have prompted him to explain the whole mess. “Obviously, kiddo, they’re talking about you and . . .” He cleared his throat and paused for tact. “. . . Talking about you and your you-know-what.”
  “I figured out that much,” Alexis scoffed, elbowing me just below the ribs. “But I don’t get what all the numbers and letters have to do with it.”
  I’m not sure if it all was completely in sync, but it sure seemed to me that Lester, Hubert, and I all rolled our eyes together in an incredulous unison. Was Alexis, sweet, sweet Alexis truly that fucking dumb? Come on now. I mean, seriously, a brawd with a porn worthy body like hers surely must have gotten used to men referencing her undeniably appetizing lady parts like the three of us had just been doing at least by the time she had reached her age of twenty-eight years. Shouldn’t she? How could she fail to see the connection between those letters and numbers?    Had she never bought herself a brassiere?
  Maybe she just didn’t know her own size.
  Perhaps it was something else.
  Either way, the naivety she was then exhibiting was frightfully alluring.
  Alexis thought it out for a good long time, three and a half minutes, intensely, with a raptly semi-self-assured can-do eagerness, in silence and without the slightest trace of self-conscience as we stared at her awaiting the proverbial light bulb to illuminate over her pretty little head; I suspected that when it did, and to her credit, I might add, although at best it might only shine with the intensity of twenty or so watts, it would at least—dimness be what it may—be a bulb beginning to glow. I couldn’t find evidence of any bulb at all: she really was that dumb. However, talking with Les about it later, I found out that his eldest son, Gordon, had at one time dated Alexis off and on for a little more than a year, I guess; and, from the way the kid talked about it, it sounded to me like she was a regular brainiac in the sack. “Maybe the chick’s got a black light that comes on over her head. She might just be really bright in the dark, if you know what I mean,” Lester had postulated.
  “So, Danny, you’re telling me you like my twins, right?” Alexis asked me in a tone of voice somewhere between interrogation and accusation, without budging her head from my shoulder.
  “Duh,” chided Hubert with a crooked grin one might expect to see splattered across the face of a hydro encephalitic jack-o-lantern completely, unabashedly unashamed of being carved out of last season’s rotten cantaloupe.
  “Well, sweetie,” I said, “you did catch me staring at them for quite a while there. So, yeah. Duh. Yeah, I like ‘em.”
  “That much?” Her genuine disbelief was absolutely charming.
  “Hey, kid,” Lester interposed, “A-minus ain’t that great.”
  Alexis seemed untroubled by this. “But thirty-twos and fours? C’mon, dude. Seriously?” she inquired, struggling to understand where the joke had originally come from. “I thought guys just used a scale of one to ten.”
  Hubert asked what the hell that had to do with anything. After taking a moment to mull it all over, Alexis couldn’t find anything so funny about it, either. I decided I’d been fooled out of those two elusive inches by the mere tautness of her sports bra; from my own experience I recalled how ex-girlfriends’ busts always seemed remarkably less voluminous beneath the tight ligature of sports bras. Lester appeared to have given up on spelling it all out for her, because doing so was becoming far more tedious than the joke was actually worth.
  “What’s your shirt say, kiddo?” Lester asked in a last-ditch effort to show her the light; from the inflection he used it wasn’t clear if he was patronizing, coddling, or sarcastically belittling her.
  “It says . . . ‘GUESS’,” Alexis replied hesitantly. “So?”
  “So, my ‘guess’ was size thirty-two-B,” I explained.
  She slid away from me and shot me an odd stare blank enough to have a Dostoevsky novel scribbled upon it in its entirety with sufficient spare room left to hold the Cliff’s Notes volume of the same title, too. “That’s not funny,” Alexis argued. “How is the size of my boobs funny?”
  It wasn’t.
  Alexis just couldn’t make the intellectual jump from the standard, universally accepted alphanumeric female measurements to the concept of her shirt soliciting someone to venture a ‘GUESS’ as to what those measurements might be exactly. There was no way to explain this to her in such a manner that she could leap that mental gorge on her own. Finally, Alexis dropped the last straw: she asked how talk of prizes had come into play.
  “Never mind,” I told her.
  Lester eventually put the proverbial icing on top of the metaphoric cake: “You’re just lucky I didn’t let him slide on the numbers, and give ‘em the jackpot anyway. Coming up with a hell of a good one like that, and before Hubert and me, besides—that in and of itself deserves an award. But I couldn’t let myself force you to take a ride on the baloney pony—even if you should’ve, by all rights—without understanding why you’d have been supposed to.”
  Alexis heard him but apparently made sense of only a fraction of his words. “Now, I’m lost, Les,” she admitted.
  “Lemme put it to you like this:” Lester said. “If you’d gotten the joke, I would’ve made sure you gave the man a good old-fashioned romp in the haystack. But, seeing as you didn’t, it just wouldn’t be right to force you to do it.”
  Something earth shattering clicked in Alexis’ mind and her eyes lit up brilliantly like those of a child who catches Santa Claus on Christmas morning in the act of eating and drinking the cookies and milk she had left out for him the evening before, or that same lovely child on that same Christmas morning getting the shockingly devastating news dumped upon her that she was actually an orthodox Jew. She smiled as if she had just gotten everything she had ever wanted all at once. Turning to me again, Alexis gave me an innocuous peck on the cheek and shook her head reprovingly as she turned to face Lester. “No, Danny’s not that kind of dude. He’s had plenty of chances before and never hit on me. Not like other dudes. He don’t even like me like that, do you, Danny?”
  I asked her if it would even matter if I did.
  Although her first instinctual reaction would most probably be one of “like total super surprise,” Alexis whispered to me with warm breath and a gentle platonic hug, and, depending upon her mood at the time and the way in which I made the proposition, in the end she figured she’d “probably turn down your offer—no matter how sweet” and seductive or innocent-sounding. Her pre-emptive rejection of my advances seemed to kindle within her some kind of spark of sympathy—or  something almost like it. She said she needed to explain her position.
  “It ain’t because you’re ugly or nothing, dude,” she tried to qualify her prognosis of likely rejection. “I bet you’re the type of nice guy who really knows how to push a girl’s buttons. But, you’re probably the boy-friendish, marrying kind of dude, too. I got no time at all for all that. Plus, I already know how much you always wanna just talk whenever you hang out with any chicks. That ain’t no good, neither. Tell you what, though: get me high and maybe I’ll let you see the booby prize if you want. Can’t touch, though, mister.”
  Alexis laughed, blew me a soft kiss, and bid the three of us a gentle, sweet goodnight.