Manly Heterosexual Men Who Wear Masks Have More Sex

Kristen Hansen Brakeman
Slackjaw
Published in
4 min readJul 17, 2020
Illustration: Nate Berger

Okay, so maybe this study hasn’t been completed, or published yet, or even started for that matter, but simple deductive reasoning leads to the obvious conclusion that men who wear masks have more sex.

Stay with me here, men.

Across America, many parents have been stuck at home for months with their children, tasked with overseeing their homeschooling. And who’s doing the lion’s share of monitoring the homeschooling? Moms. We don’t need a study to confirm this.

“But I helped Sage with his math worksheet.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s give you a freaking medal for that one time you helped your son learn to multiply by threes. Let’s be honest here: the moms are doing most of it, and that’s in addition to laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, and feigning interest in Zoom calls with their office staff.

It’s no wonder wives have become immune to their husband’s obvious charms. That courtesy laugh she gave you in response to your clever anecdote — it was really just cover as she plotted how best to murder you in your sleep. And now that it’s summertime and in-person summer school has been canceled, and no one in their right mind would send their kid to camp, even if they did foolishly open (they were giant Petri dishes of germs even pre-COVID), families will be in their homes for the entire summer… home together.

The one thing getting us through this, the one thing that is preventing your wife from suffocating you with that extra pillow — the fluffy one with the sham that you keep insisting on using as your actual pillow even though she’s asked you many times to use the one with the regular pillowcase instead — is the belief that the kids will go back to school in the fall.

For months, all of us thought that some combination of sunshine and magic would make the case numbers drop over the summer, and then the children could attend school. Instead, the numbers are getting worse in many parts of the country, and if things continue this way, THE CHILDREN WILL BE HOME FOREVER.

This brings us back to the masks. Scientists say that if 80 or 85% of us wore masks when out, we could knock that RO factor (how many people get the disease from an infected person) down to something much less than 1, and then we could all have nice things again.

So, men. Here’s the plan. You wear your mask for the next couple months, which will lead to a drop in the number of cases, which will lead to your kids going back to school, which will lead to… you guessed it… SEX!

Why? Without the kids underfoot and the pressure of managing homeschooling, the house, and her job, your wife will finally lose that murderous look in her eye, remember why she married you in the first place, and then, voilà — it’s sexy time!

Further — there’s always a “further” in these scientific studies, right? — with the kids back at a physical school, and both parents still working from home, that will almost certainly lead to some daytime shenanigans, known scientifically as post-meridian copulation or “Afternoon Delight.” Hubba. Hubba. Hubba.

Perhaps, even knowing this very scientific information, you still don’t want to wear a mask. It’s unmanly, you say. America is a free country, and no one is going to tell you what to do.

But what if your wife gets the virus because you brought it home after hanging out with your like-minded non-mask wearing buddies? Just imagine it. There she is, lying in bed with the all-too-common, sex-avoiding symptom of a headache. But that’s not all. She also has a fever, body aches, sore throat, fatigue, and periodic vomiting. It’s quite possible that while she’s drowning in her own lung fluid, she won’t be in the mood for love.

Shall I spell it out for you? Your wife gets Coronavirus = no sex for you.

And single men, don’t think this mask = more sex thing doesn’t apply to you, too. Because if you wear a mask for a while, bars and churches and offices can reopen everywhere, and then you men can be back on the prowl.

Men, we get it. You’re not going to be shamed into wearing a mask for the greater good, and maybe you won’t wear one for your wife or for your children.

But surely you’ll wear one for the sex, right? That has to motivate you.

After all, it’s science.

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Kristen Hansen Brakeman
Slackjaw

Author of the comic memoirs, IS THAT THE SHIRT YOU’RE WEARING? — a semifinalist for the 2018 Thurber Prize for Humor.