As you get older, you make trade-offs with your lifestyle.  Downsides: your body starts deteriorating with the half-life of Polonium-214, hangovers get more and more brutal, and you end up spending less and less time with people you really like — especially if you’re married. But there are upsides, too.  For example, with every year that goes by, I become slightly less stupid.  But much more importantly, I’m now comfortable buying lingerie — and not just for myself.  It makes a great gift for women, a gift that they will wear almost immediately after you buy it, and then as many as 0.5 times per year thereafter.

There was a time when going into Victoria’s Secret was so daunting.  I’d go in, eye something frilly, then some woman would ask me if I needed help.  Need help? Is she implying I don’t know anything about lingerie?  Man, I KNOW lingerie.  Why, I took off a woman’s bra off with one hand!  Once!

“NO!” I’d shout, then adjust my voice. “No, just looking.”  Bitch.  Then I’d buy my woman some lame-ass babydoll that wasn’t all sexy, because the saleswoman unnerved me and I didn’t want to offend my girlfriend by getting something too risque in case that made her uncomfortable, and anyway wouldn’t it mean more to her if she got something comfortable?

But not any more.  Now I go in there, and before the sales girl can finish her question, I’m like, “Yeah, do you have this in 34C?  Does it only come in black?  Do you think needlenose pliers would rip this?  Does this conduct electricity?”  And when I check out, the missus gets something bona fide sexy… that she wears once.  Then it’s back to unsexy nightclothes.

Because, let’s face it, as long as you’re the kind of person who insists on dating women with things like an “education” or “intellectual curiosity,” you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a gal with a penchant for knit bikinis:

Or tight sheer button-downs sans bra:

Don’t even expect her to wear one of your dress shirts, unbuttoned in unpossibly sexy fashion:

The only shirt of yours she’s going to wear frequently is your favorite t-shirt that you’ve had for ten years and is perfectly worn down to the thinnest cotton possible. And you know what?  That’s plenty sexy in its own right.

Still, a knit bikini would be awfully nice.

(Photos of Holly Weber via Uncoached. Disclaimer: discussion of relationships is from general experience and depicts no particular woman. Love you honey!)