Women love a funny guy, but there’s one thing they love more than a funny guy, a guy who considers them funny.

I found this out when an extremely attractive woman named Julie agreed to go out with me. On this date, she informed me that I was “not ugly.” The idea that she and I were operating from opposite poles of the beauty spectrum was obvious to anyone who saw me walking into a restaurant with her. “What is HE doing with HER?” was such an obvious question on the faces of the other patrons in the restaurant that if one of them gave voice to their look, I wouldn’t have been too surprised.

I wasn’t sure whether I should feel more insulted or complimented by those looks, but I really enjoyed playing the “HE” role for the first time in my life. I wanted to be seen with Julie in public more than once, and then I wanted to do some awful things to her in private. After she allowed both without a fight, I let her make condescending assessments of my physical appearance without a fight.

And I don’t think I would’ve been able to do any of that if I didn’t laugh at just about every joke she told. Based on my very brief dating experiences with Julie, my first piece of advice to my not-ugly-guy contingent is if you want to date excessively beautiful women, be funny. If you’re not funny AND you’re not ugly, however, you won’t have a shot in hell dating a woman as beautiful as Julie, and I don’t care what those loser-dates-the-lovely-lady, 90s movies taught us about hope. There is no hope, because the excessively beautiful just have far too many options. They won’t even look in our general vicinity, because they don’t want to get us started.

I wouldn’t have had a shot in hell at dating Julie either if I hadn’t accidentally discovered an end around, loophole, or whatever you want to call it in the not-ugly-and-the-beautiful natural laws of dating: Beautiful women love it when men find them funny.

I know what you’re thinking right here, you’re thinking I faked it to try to seduce her. I had no master plan, and I have no talent for deception, and you can ask anyone who has ever played poker, chess, or any game with me that requires some form of deception. I cannot bluff. I learned at a very young age what a horrible liar I was, and how much I hated getting caught in a lie. I felt so bad about lying that I made the decision that I wouldn’t go through what I assume good liars have to go through to get better at it. Long story short, my laughter was not fake or deceptive. I genuinely considered her funny, but I must admit if a guy, or a not ugly woman, told the exact same jokes Julie did, I would’ve been much more critical. I was so attracted to Julie’s physical appearance that I found her jokes funny. Was I giddy? I think I was as giddy as a schoolgirl who has such a huge crush on a cute boy that she giggles at everything he says. It’s an embarrassing admission, but it worked. 

It worked, because Julie, like everyone else in the world, loves it when someone considers them funny. The one caveat I would tell any man who tries this is that you will have to avoid the temptation of telling your own jokes, and that’s tougher than you think. When the jokes start flying, we get caught up in the moment. We want to add a nugget here and there to the tail end of their joke, or we might be the type who just wants to keep the jokes going, so we add our little bits. Don’t! They don’t like that. They only want us to laugh at their jokes. My little, tiny attempts to add to the levity in room revealed to her that not only was I not ugly, but I was not funny too, which led her to decide that I was not dating material.  

It’s no secret that we all love it when someone considers us funny, but if you’re not ugly, and you have regular interactions with someone who is so far out of your league that you don’t have a chance in hell of being seen in public with her, try laughing as hard as you can at her jokes. It might not work, depending on how far down the not ugly scale you are, but if you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, what do you have to lose?  

The Not Ugly Limelight

I had a moment in my not-ugly life when I thought I might be attractive. It was a strange, almost inexplicable time that happened when I was barely a teenager, in the seventh grade. Three eighth grade girls and a couple of seventh grade girls expressed interest at the same time. This all too brief window in time made no sense to me, until I later learned that planets transit through zodiac signs to create aspects that affect an individual’s natal chart to trigger, amplify, or challenge energies. When I heard this, I rejected the notion outright, until I remembered this moment in my life. These weren’t the typical girls either, they were the most popular, best looking girls in the two grades. I don’t understand how the movements of celestial bodies could affect what we think, how we act, or how we verify it, but I’ve found no satisfactory explanation this. My guess is that my otherwise excessively pale face probably had some color to it for that brief moment in time, and that combined with the fact that someone convinced me that the center-part of my hair was no longer working for me. Not only did I start parting on the side, but I decided to start feathering my hair. I still don’t know if it was Uranus in retrograde, or my side part, but I do know I didn’t sell my should to the devil to experience what only the beautiful know for an all too brief moment of my life, but having this many females attracted to me at the same time never happened before all that and it hasn’t happened since. 

That’s right, my idea of what it must feel like to be a sex symbol peaked at age thirteen. When I received hints of their attraction, I decided that I was not going to get excited just because some girl just happened to look in my general direction, then at me, then lock eyes with mine, and smile. I simply pretended that it wasn’t happening, because I wasn’t going to allow my overactive imagination to begin interpreting what I thought I was seeing. I also didn’t want my aspirations to meet the tenets of the “The Bigger they are the Harder they fall” analogy. It took more than a couple of instances for me to realize these looks weren’t coincidences, this wasn’t a dream, and I wasn’t imagining it. I was shocked, stunned, overwhelmed, and a little terrified. I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t know how to act, or if I should do something to end it before they found out I wasn’t who they thought I was. I wanted it to last, of course, but I had no idea how I could make this intoxicating idea that girls, real, live girls were actually interested in me, last. It was the closest I ever came to knowing what a Beatle, Elvis, and Marlon Brando must go through when multiple women are attracted to them, and I did not handle it well.  

I didn’t have to stress about it too long, however, as it ended almost as quickly as it began. Before I could consult with someone, or something, like a TV show, or an astrology reading, most of it was over. I don’t know if the tan faded, the hair wasn’t quite right, or the planets transited across other zodiac signs, but my options were limited to one girl: Rhonda.  

Now, when I say I was only left with Rhonda that might sound like I settled, but Rhonda might have been the best looking girl of the bunch. She was so beautiful that I remember having trouble getting to sleep when I thought of her. I couldn’t believe a beautiful girl found me physically attractive. It eventually became known, through intermediaries, that she wanted my phone number! Holy Larry! I thought this would prove to be an epoch in my timeline, a B.C./A.D. life-altering moment. It might have had a lot to do with my age I was at the time, how impressionable we all are at that age, or a reflection on how boring my life has been since, but the time I spent waiting for that phone call were some of the scariest, most exciting moments of my life.

The phone call obviously went well, as Rhonda and I shared approximately three more phone calls. I never thought this would last forever, but when she passed final judgement on me with a, “You’re boring!” ruling, the click on the other end of the phone reminded me of sound of a gavel pounding. It hurt like the dickens. It taught me that what a woman says about you stings far worse than anything a fella can do to you. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I knew nothing about her, and she knew nothing about me. We absolutely had nothing in common, and therefore nothing to talk about. I should’ve been more interesting, but I was a thirteen-year-old, and my idea interesting subjects involved the NFL, the music of KISS, and Evel Knievel. I wasn’t well versed in topics that females find interesting, and the wife might say that I’m still not great at it. 

In the world of beautiful women, I learned that I was not ugly, not funny, and not very interesting. I was not what they expected, and the one step forward two steps back taught me my station in life, until I met Joel. Joel was a not ugly, not funny, and not very interesting compatriot who moved effortlessly from one table to the other in a singles bar. The women at the first table politely informed him that he was not welcome at their table, and the next one purposefully continued the conversation they were having before he interrupted it. I don’t know what was said at a third table, but when he left the women were laughing, and he was a darker shade of red. Joel came back to us, the fellas, his home base after each rejection, and he chatted with us until he spotted another table of women he found interesting. “How do you do that?” I asked him. “How do you just move to another table after being rejected like that?” Joel responded, but I can’t remember what he said. If he said something profound to sum up a philosophy that motivated him, I would’ve remembered it, but far more important to me was what he did as opposed to what motivated him to do it. My takeaway was, there will be moments in our life when someone will reject us for failing to be who they expect us to be, but we should use it to become who we want to be. How do you use being not ugly, not funny, and not very interesting? That’s up to you to figure out and find out.