Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

my
man. I’m loyal to
y
him
.” Idris Elba, Denzel, Usher, or 
the like walks into the room, money dripping from their suit 
jacket, floating on air and glistening and all that? You’re going 
to hold on to our hand a little tighter and say from the bottom
of your heart, “I don’t want any of those shiny, rich, fine men
because my man is the only one for me!” (We can only hope
that’s what you’ll say—smile.)
That’s loyalty—our kind of love. To men, they are one and
the same. The kind of love you require is beautiful, but our love
isn’t like your love. It’s different, though it’s still love. And a
man’s love is a very powerful thing. It’s amazing love. If your 
loyalty is real and unimpeachable, that man will kill concrete 
for you. He ain’t going no damn where.
r

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. Men. Need. Sex. We love it. Ain’t nothin’ on
this planet like it, nothing else we want that bad on a continu-
ous basis, nothing else we simply cannot live without. Take our 
house, take our job, the ’69 Impala, our last pair of gators, but
please—puh-leeze—don’t hold out on the cookie. We don’t
care about anything else; we need the cookie. We need to be 
physically engaged with the woman we love, the woman who
is loyal to us and supports us, and the way that we do that is by
making love. The emotional stuff—the talking, the cuddling,
the holding hands, and bonding, that’s y’all’s thing. We’ll do
those things because we know it’s important to you. But please
understand: the way we men connect is by having sex. Period.
It’s how we plug in, recharge, and reconnect. I don’t know of a 
man who doesn’t need this. Ask any guy if sex is important in a
relationship and the one who says no is lying. I just haven’t met 
that guy yet. When you meet him, let’s get him in to the Smith-
sonian—he’s that special and rare. But the rest of us men? We
need sex like we need air.
You got about a good month at best without it. And then
he’s going to get it from somewhere else (unless you’re carrying 
his child). I’m telling you: gangs are built on support and loy-
alty; dudes go out and form gangs built on those two things 
right there. The only thing missing is sex, and that’s where the
girl gang members come in. It’s the same thing with motorcycle
r.

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clubs, the country club, the Elks, the Masons, frats—the whole 
of a man’s world is built on these three principles. There’s not 
one day of the week that we are not waking up in the pursuit 
of it. Let’s say you’re 
not
a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa 
Alpha Psi, or you’re an almighty member of Omega Psi Phi, 
and someone who hasn’t pledged their undying support and 
love to frat on a line for at least six weeks—be that person put-
ting on their colors and let them find out you haven’t pledged, 
that you didn’t cross over. Do you know what the hell would 
happen if those boys found out you’re not frat? Messing with 
their loyalty—their colors? Man, not nary a day. Be a Crip and 
go to a Blood’s house and see what happens. Try going into that 
country club and you’re not a member. Loyalty. Support. That’s 
what men are made of.
And can’t one of them survive without sex. Oh, he’ll work 
with you if you have an off week—if he loves you, that is. If he 
didn’t care, he wouldn’t bother to try to get your cookie—he’d 
just go on and get it from somewhere else. But if he’s into you, 
and you’re cutting back, rationing it out, you’re not doing what 
you did when you all first started dating, he’s going to line up 
someone who will. Please believe me when I tell you this: he 
will tell everybody, “This is my girl right here,” but mean-
while, he will have another woman lined up and waiting to 
give him what he needs and wants—the cookie.
Don’t get it wrong—we’re not animals. We know things 
change, the baby comes and the doctor says we have to wait six 

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weeks, or your monthly is on the way, your hormones are acting 
up and you’re not in the mood. But the excuses can’t go on 
forever. You can play your man short if you want to. No matter 
how much a man loves his wife, his family, his house, his role 
as the man of the house, the one who’s bringing in all the 
money into family account, maybe even putting a little extra 
into yours, if you mess around and start shelling out the cookie 
in crumbs, it’s going to be a problem.
Speaking of my own experience, I recently turned fifty and 
I’m telling you right now, don’t play me short in this area. At 
my age, I’ll work with you for a little longer, because I’m busy, 
I got a company to run, I got a schedule to keep, I’m on the 
road, on the stage, on the radio, writing books, acting, support-
ing my own charity and working with others. I’m on the run. 
And at my age, I can’t afford to mess up—mentally, emotion-
ally, or spiritually. Hell is no longer an option for me. I’m doing 
what I can to get to the Gate, and it could be any day now. If I 
start messing around, I might have a stroke and miss out on my 
homegoing. But the truth is, if I can’t go home and relieve my 
stress, there is a problem. If I’ve talked to the Lord and tried to 
get you motivated to give me some of the cookie and you’re still 
coming up with reasons why you just can’t be intimate with 
me, something is going to change.
And I’m ready to bet things aren’t so different in your house-
hold. You might have been up all night for a week with a sick 
child, gotten up early to get the other onto the school bus before 

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you hit the road for that rush-hour commute to work, gone to 
battle with your co-workers and boss for eight hours with noth-
ing but a fifteen-minute break to swallow an inadequate, unsat-
isfying lunch, and then hit the rush-hour traffic back home to 
start your second job—the feeding and care of your kids. There’s 
dinner to be cooked, and homework to be checked, and laun-
dry to be done, and the list goes on. By the time your man 
checks in with you, the last thing on your mind is giving a posi-
tive response to what a friend of mine called “the shoulder tap.” 
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said. “It’s when you 
finally drop into the bed exhausted, and you’re halfway through 
your favorite show you watch when you just want to zone out, 
and here he comes, tapping you on your shoulder, asking for 
sex. It’s just annoying.”
What that same friend of mine didn’t know, though, was 
that her husband was tired of the “shoulder tap,” too. In his 
mind, he’d also worked all day—just as hard as her. And though 
he may not have done all the exact things she’d done during the 
course of the evening at home, he, too, put in work around the 
house, and, like her, needed to wind down from his day. She 
liked watching television. He liked to have sex. She was always 
too tired to have sex. He was tired of not having sex. So while 
she unwound to her favorite shows, he unwound out of the 
house—with another woman.
Now, I’m not saying what he did was right. But as a man, I 
can understand the logic behind what he eventually ended up 

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doing. And if I were in their bedroom before all of the ugliness 
from his cheating ways went down, I would have given them 
what I’ve found to be some very sage advice: acknowledge the 
ones you love. That means that if a man sees his woman had a 
hard day and she could stand some more help around the house 
to make the evenings go more smoothly, her man needs to step 
up his game. If she cooks, he does the dishes. If she gets the 
kids’ clothes ready for tomorrow, he gets their homework ready 
for tomorrow. If she gets the kids off to bed, he gets his wife off 
in bed by setting the mood—straightening up, running her a 
bath, letting her settle in with a glass of wine, whatever it takes 
to make it clear to her that having sex with the woman he loves 
is not only a release, but an act of love. And she, perhaps, will 
be more willing to reciprocate—not with annoyance, but with 
the sheer giddiness in knowing how it feels to feel wanted.
But understand that no man is going to wine and dine his 
wife every night in order to have sex with her. That’s unreason-
able. Sometimes, he’s just going to want to have you, no frills—
without being forced to feel like he’s added another “chore” to 
your list of things to do. Every man needs that from his woman. 
Every last one of us.