Every once in a while, a man comes along who you can’t help but love just for being a man. Amidst the current hoopla in the news with everyone asking if men are now “redundant” because scientists can coin sperm, I can gladly say I’ve met one who with every ounce of his being proves to me that they’re not. Women, I think, are bound to go through a phase, or many, where they despise men. From the very first one in kindergarten who steals your hair-band and runs off with it ruining your perfect princess-ponytail, to your first love who decides before you do that he’s ready for his second, and the countless others that follow who don’t call when they say they will, cheat on you with your best friend, or leave you at home with the kids and their laundry, we learn to despise them. Yes, from the moment we discover that men are from mars, we are certain to encounter an endless succession of moments in which we find ourselves wishing that they would just build themselves a Noah’s ark of a spaceship, get on it two-by-two, and go the hell back there.
After waving them off, we could then, in all our fascist-feminist glory, proceed to turn earth into Venus and throw away our year’s prescriptions for the Pill, go to all the ballets and musicals they wouldn’t take us to, and oh!—take as long as we want to fastidiously get ready for them. If and when the Venutian population began to dwindle, we would turn to our trusty scientists for our allocated dose of sperm and procreate. Needless to say, there would be a conc-men-tration camp set up to readily accept all of the newborns that happened to be male…though with their already demonstrated rapidly growing adeptness and expertise, the scientists would surely soon come up with a way to circumvent their production altogether. Ah. What bliss. Shopping and chick-flicks and no more socks on the floor—life sans heartache, tears, and fruitless attempts at interplanetary communication—life without ever having to hear or attempt to understand those famous words, “he’s just not that into you.”
Granted, with or without the spaceship, this “Venutian” lifestyle is the one to which many women revert in those moments when they despise men. Few of us are lucky enough to have a token gay friend to listen to all our man-trouble, and even they can only listen so long (“how much longer until Prada?”), so we turn to our girlfriends—those trusty sister-beings who will look and listen and nod, ceaselessly with eyes full of understanding, compassion, sympathy, and then proceed to tell their version of the same story that inevitably convinces us we are neither crazy nor alone. Their eyes are full of everything his deer-in-headlights face lacked when you tried to explain it to him, their eyes give you everything you ever wanted. But in all of that looking, listening, and nodding, in all of the glasses of wine you may consume and cigarettes you may chain-smoke, they will never—never!—once think to pick up that lighter and light it for you.
And it is this moment that you’ll wish that Noah’s ark flight was a return one, you’ll pick up the phone and call Marsian Airways to find out when the plane lands. Then you’ll, no doubt, buy a dress, paint your toenails, blow-dry your hair and go to the landing strip (no further). And even if you (or your salon) don’t have the time to do this, you will show up looking like shit, and your heart will melt all over again when one of them steps off the spaceship and tells you you look great, while the rest of them walk-by, and sex-starved, look at you (as my mother always says), the way a cat looks at bacon.
Meow, sizzle, pop, crack, boom and we're back to the beginning...
[to be continued...]
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