“Who’s the guy? Who’s the guy?” everyone asked me impatiently after reading Part I. (Note to self—do not send blog link to friends and family). Truth is, it doesn’t really matter who the guy is, and he’s not that kind of guy. Let me return to the beginning—“Every once in a while you come across a man who you can’t help but love just for being a man.” “For being a man”… not for being himself, or for loving you, or for treating you right…just—for being a prime living specimen from that vast Marsian pool we so love to hate. And my aim here was to take this specimen and draw it out so as to paint a picture “In Praise of Men” – a praise, I think has been increasingly lacking since Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan came along. Look what feminism gone and did; did we spend decades and decades trying to prove that we were more than just wombs only to get to the top and conversely reduce men to their sperm? Coming from the fairer sex, that’s not fair play. They are much more than sperm…and to continue from where I began in Part I, they are also much more than cigarette-lighting and compliment-paying devices.
I fear they don’t get enough compliments themselves. At least not from me. I’ve spent far too much time in the gaggle of Venutian geese criticizing them because they’ve hurt me, or because they haven’t—which is all the more befuddling, (never satisfied perhaps?), to stop and smell the man-roses. In all those times I had been thinking about whether I look great or not, and whether or not they will tell me I do, I rarely stopped to take a look and realize how great they can (and do) actually look…in their perfectly unplanned, un-blowdried, un-manicured, white-tee-blue-jeans edition. I love how they can just roll out of bed and be themselves, while we have to make-ourselves-up from scratch. Perhaps Freud and Lacan were right—“woman does not exist”—she is eternally envious of his phallus and will try desperately for the rest of her life to compensate for not having one through diamonds, heels and mascara.
“Baby you don’t need mascara. You’re beautiful as you are.” Oh! How often have I heard these words! Whether they tell me this because they really believe it, or because they think without mascara it may take me less time to get ready, I don’t know. We spend all night fearing that they will wake up next to us and not recognize us as the woman they went to bed with, while they spend all night yearning for the morning to come, and to finally see her for her…to finally meet the woman behind the mask they had dinner with. And there is something so beautiful in this yearning. So not only are they beautiful in their unmasked appearance…you’ve just got to love them for wanting, and knowing, you to be so too. And though I find it exceedingly difficult to convince myself of this, I am certain their fascination can only grow when they see you as you…you sans Chanel, Dior and Crème de la Mer…you are his crème de la mer!
[to be continued...]
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