That's What She Said by T.J. Jefferson - Excerpt

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www.ThreeRiversPress.com
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Copyright © 2009 by T. J. Jefferson
All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered

trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is

available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-307-45065-4
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Maria Elias
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

To purchase a copy of
That’s What She Said

visit one of these online retailers:
To my nephew Ishmael Jefferson, who passed away from
complications of an asthma attack on January 1, 2008.
He was nine years old. I could go on and on about the level
of sadness that I feel because he’s not here, but I want to
keep it positive. He was a great son, a great brother, a great
athlete, a great kid. He would have been a great gentleman.
Until we meet again,
I love you!
— Uncle T. J.

CONTENTS
F O R EWO R D by A s hto n K u tc he r
9
INT RO DU CT IO N: E V ERY TH I N G M EN U N D ER STA N D A B O U T WO M EN

13
C H A P TER 1
SE X
25
C H A P TER 2
LOV E
41
C H A P TER 3
COMMUNICATION
65
C H A P TER 4
R ESPECT
85
C H A P TER 5
LISTENING
115
C H A P TER 6
HON ESTY
129

C H A P TER 7
PMS
141
C H A P TER 8
SPACE
149
C H A P TER 9
WOM E N AR E COMPLICATED
157
C H A P TER 10
M EN AR E DUMB
177
C H A P TER 11
BE A MAN
193
C H A P TER 12
TH E LITTLE THINGS
201
C H A P TER 13
TH E PER F ECT MAN

219
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
224

F O R E WO R D
I met T. J. Jefferson in a Los Angeles bar called La Poubelle, which is French for
“garbage can.” In hindsight it seems only fitting, because we proceeded to spend the
next four hours trash-talking each other’s favorite football teams. (By the way, I still
contend that Walter Payton was a far superior running back to Emmitt Smith.) To give
this conversation some context, you must know that I’m a very private person. I don’t
make fast friends because I have a fear of revealing too much to a complete stranger.
However, this is unavoidable with T. J. He has an ability to relate to everyone, from
any background, of any age. But his greatest gift is his ability to have a conversation
about anything. T. J. is the kind of friend that people become proprietary over because
everyone he comes in contact with wants him to be their best friend. And I have had
the honor to call him mine.
When T. J. told me he was writing a book about women, I had to take pause.
I’ve known him for almost a decade and I lived with him four of those years. In the
time we’ve been acquainted, I don’t ever recall him sustaining an intimate relationship
with a woman for more than two weeks. The closest platonic connection with a woman
that I ever witnessed him have was with my wife when she and her three daughters
moved in to the bachelor pad that T. J. and I were still sharing. Sure, he talked to his
mother on the phone and had a handful of girls who were friends, but I certainly
wouldn’t consider T. J. an expert on the feminine gender. So when he explained to me

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it was a book that would feature “everything men want to know about women,” it made
a lot more sense.
There is no one on earth that is more suited to write this book. Socrates said, “A
wise man knows what he doesn’t know.” T. J. has an absolute appreciation and respect
for women and a genuine desire to understand them, thus making him an apt pupil.
I’ve met a lot of talkers in my life but very few good listeners. T. J. has the ability to
encourage complete strangers to confess things they wouldn’t tell their best friend and
afterward not feel obligated to give you advice but rather just accept you as you are.
And I believe that this gift is what has allowed him to collect these pearls of wisdom.
In closing, I would like to wish my friend the greatest success in this endeavor
and I only hope that your journey in the creation of this book will lead you to the
relationship I know you desire.
—Ashton Kutcher

what


I N T RO D UC T I O N :
E V E RY T H I N G
M E N U N D E R STAN D
AB O U T WO M E N
It all started off as a joke, really. Back in 2003, I was over at my friend Sarah’s house
getting ready to go to a movie when she said that she had something for me. Chuckling
to herself, she tossed me a book titled Everything Men Understand About Women. The
back cover gave an extensive breakdown of the contents, and ended with the sentence
“After years of extensive research, this book details everything that men understand
about women.” Wow, I thought to myself, this is going to open some door that will shed light
on the most confusing of all creatures— the wily female. I eagerly opened up the book to
find . . . nada. It consisted of nothing but blank pages. Apparently, men don’t understand
anything about the fairer sex. Thanks for nothing. But I took the book anyway.
I gotta admit, women do baffle me. I truly can’t figure them out, even though I
was raised around a lot of women— my mom, sisters, aunts, and cousins. From them I
learned the philosophy that you treat a woman the way you’d want your mom or sister
to be treated. But sometimes being cool with women can also put a guy someplace he
probably didn’t set out for—namely, in the “friend zone.” If you are there, women think
of you as Mr. Nice Guy, which is for all intents and purposes the kiss of death. Now,
being the nice guy gets ya daytime hangout sessions, but if she starts to look at you as
her buddy, then any chance you might’ve had to take it further is pretty much done,
son! For some reason, as the nice guy you have to work harder to get a girl to see you
as date material than you would if you were just some douchebag. I needed this book

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to help me find answers to the Mr. Nice Guy question, and to many others, too, and I
had a suspicion that other men did as well. I had to fill those blank pages.
A few days later I showed the book to some other girlfriends. All of them, after
reading the cover and seeing the blank pages, thought it was the funniest thing they’d
ever seen. I didn’t. Then I struck upon an idea: If men really know nothing about
women, I should make it my mission find some stuff out, straight from the horses’
mouths. I decided then and there that I’d use those blank pages for the good of men
everywhere! And, as an added bonus, I could fill women in on what their fellow ladies
were really thinking.
But then I forgot for a while. Three years later, in 2006, as I was getting ready to
go to New York for the summer to be the comedy consultant on Wilmer Valderrama’s
MTV show, Yo Momma, I looked at my bookshelf to see if there was anything that I
wanted to take with me and saw Everything Men Understand About Women. It had just
been sitting around for years, waiting to be rediscovered. Remembering what I had
originally wanted to do, I figured I’d take the book with me. At worst, it would be a great
icebreaker to meet women; at best, I thought maybe I could make something out of
this idea. Either way, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to try. Turns out it was one of the best
moves I ever made.
“In this journey you’re the journal, I’m the journalist.”

—Rakim
I could have filled the book earlier—and probably easier—if I had just sent out a mass
e-mail to a ton of girls and had them each respond with an entry, but the appeal to
me was the legwork. Actually going out and meeting different women, talking to them,

15
selling them on this idea, and having them fill up the blank pages on the spot. It made
the book feel like a journal, and since women seem to like journals, and they certainly
like to talk, the idea made sense. The first few people who wrote in it were friends, and
they thought the idea was amazing. I thought that maybe they were just gassing me
up because they knew me, but eventually their approval raised my confidence enough
that I decided to try it on strangers.
At first, I worked in clubs— which had, sadly, become my natural habitat. It’s funny
how when women get a few drinks in ’em and start having a good time, they’re much
more willing to spit some sh*t and lash out at guys. The gas was already there. I just
handed over a match. The only problem is that when they’re drunk they’re sometimes
not very clear with their thoughts. Case in point: There was one girl who wrote
something during an after-hours party I went to. Two days later we ran into each other
and I asked her to sign a release form for the book. “What are you talking about?” she
said. “I didn’t write in any book.” I proceeded to pull the book out and show her what
she had written. She looked at it and said, “This isn’t my writing . . . Oh, no! This is my
writing! How drunk was I that night?!?” So, as more things like that began to happen, I
decided it was time to open up my resource pool. I began to approach women outside
of the club scene and expanded my age range a bit. I felt it necessary to concentrate on
women over the age of thirty, who would have more life experience and more insight.
I started taking the book with me wherever I went, and when the opportunity
to talk to women presented itself, whether it was in a restaurant, taxi, or airplane, I’d
reach into my back pocket and produce the book for them. After explaining the title
and showing all the blank pages (and after the women’s laughter had died down), I’d
pose these questions to them: What do you wish men knew about women? Is there some
particular bit of wisdom or knowledge that you wish all men possessed? If you had a little

16
brother or son who was about to enter into the dating world, what advice would you give him
so that he wouldn’t make the mistakes that most men make? Well, I guess a lot of women
must have had it up to here with men, because most of them jumped at the chance to
write down just what was on their minds.
For the most part, I didn’t let anyone read anything from the book before they
wrote an entry. I didn’t want them to be influenced by anything that was already inside.
Yes, I was looking for fresh ideas, but also genuine thoughts. And if thirty women wrote
“Men should listen,” that would mean, obviously, that men better open up their ears if
they want to keep their ladies happy. I also went for about a year without reading what
was written in the book. I kept a rubber band around it, and as the pages began to fill
up, I’d wrap the band around the front cover and the last page that was written on so
that I couldn’t read any of what was inside. Looking back, I’m not sure why I did that.
It’s not as if I expected to take the rubber band off and have the book pop open, yell
“SURPRISE, MUTH@#*%!!! ” and spill its secrets.
“I’ve been in this game for years—it made me an animal.

There’s rules to this sh*t, I wrote me a manual.”
—Notorious B.I.G.
Even after reading every entry in this book, and listening to women as they wrote,
I’m not going to claim to be an expert on women; I still need help with that myself.
Men, don’t think of this as a guide to help you pull a girl; think of it as a guide to what
you should do once you have her attention. Ladies, I’ve collected for you some very
entertaining examples of what other women are going through. This may make you
feel vindicated and have you shouting “Amen, Sister!”—or it might make you glad you

17
aren’t that crazy, or that your man isn’t such a goof. Take from this book what you will
and look at me as the grand facilitator, trying to bring the two sides closer.
The ladies quoted in this book have laid out everything from what types of mistakes
men can avoid to what types of things they can successfully do to keep their women
around. Because, seriously, isn’t that the challenge? Any dude can get lucky once in a
while. The challenge is what you do if you want to keep her coming around. I’m not
saying I agree with all that is written here, but there are definitely jewels to be found
in this book—and the rest, well, it’s just damn entertaining. I think there is enough
information and advice in this book for everyone to find something out about their
significant other, as well as gain a little insight into the fairer sex.
As a man, I could only guess about what women wanted us to know. Sometimes
you gotta go to the source. If your toilet is backed up, you don’t call your dentist, you
call a plumber. If you wanna know something about a woman, do what I did— ask her.
Trust me, she’ll be more than happy to let you know what’s on her mind.
“First of all I wanna thank my connect, the most important

person, with all due respect.”
—Jay Z
The entries in this book appear as they were written by the contributors. I have tried to
organize them by their central messages. I’ve also peppered my thoughts throughout,
commenting on the woman who wrote an entry, an entry itself, or maybe something that
was happening as a particular woman wrote her entry. Mind you, I don’t claim to speak
for every man. I just provide what I think are honest opinions and honest questions
about the entries. I like to think that this is a lighthearted look at the ongoing battle of

18
the sexes, and I hope you’ll see that my comments are meant more to entertain than to
represent the voice of a “male expert.” There is no maliciousness intended on my part,
and I hope that comes across.
Let me give you an example of one of the entries in the book, one of my favorites.
It runs the gamut of topics, touching on many different points. I feel that this entry has
something that almost everyone can relate to and learn from, and represents the very
best of what I hope this book can offer.

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What I remember about this is that Jenn literally sat on a couch and wrote for
like forty minutes. She clearly put a lot of thought into what she was putting on paper.
I remember thinking at the time that if I can inspire someone to get this thoughtful,
maybe I’m on to something with this book. I do want to take this opportunity to thank
her and all the women who helped make this book possible. Ultimately, my real hope is
that these entries will create conversation. With our BlackBerrys, Sidekicks, TiVos, and
Xboxes in effect 24/7, good old-fashioned chitchat has practically disappeared. I hope
that some of the comments here will get people talking, debating, and thinking about
what they’ve read in these pages— and that goes for both men and women.

To purchase a copy of
That’s What She Said

visit one of these online retailers:

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Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 1 8/26/09 12:05:20 PM

Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 2 8/26/09 12:05:21 PM

Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 3 8/26/09 12:05:23 PM

All rights reserved.

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Maria Elias

Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 4 8/26/09 12:05:24 PM

Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 5 8/26/09 12:05:24 PM

INT RO DU CT IO N: E V ERY TH I N G M EN U N D ER STA N D A B O U T WO M EN

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TH E PER F ECT MAN

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Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 13 8/26/09 12:05:25 PM

“In this journey you’re the journal, I’m the journalist.”

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Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 15 8/26/09 12:05:26 PM

“I’ve been in this game for years—it made me an animal.

Jeff_9780307450654_6p_fm_r1.r.indd 16 8/26/09 12:05:26 PM

“First of all I wanna thank my connect, the most important

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