My male friends tell me that they’re sensitive. And that I shouldn’t say the things I say. I’m trying really hard to let this sink in. How are men so sensitive when they send us to war? Or should Lady Macbeth teach me more about women? Is Condi our modern day Lady M? Should the women who shocked us all with their disgusting and ruthless powers of abuse at Abu Ghraib make me pause my trigger happy mouth?
I teach teens and it’s true that the girls are ruthless. For one, they are verbally quicker. They go for the gullet intuitively. They love to slam a guy who’s bothering them with his height restraints, his verbal incapacities, his inability to communicate. I see the look of total fear cross the boys’ faces. So I tell the girls to apologize, to be gentle, that boys need gentle.
But these girls, I admit, remind me of myself. Last week an exhausted Cowboy and I went shopping. He was tired. He’d worked a sixty-hour week and was somehow still standing. I had pulled a seventy-hour week (but who counts these things?)and I somehow still had enough vim and vigor to protest too much.
I was feeling nauseous. And Cowboy had bad breath. Like rotting black cherry cheesecake bad breath. He gets this when he’s overworked and tired and hasn’t been eating enough and has been subsisting on Double Americanos, black.
And I think this is a male thing - don’t call the gender police yet — but somehow whenever Cowboy needs to take a stormy exhale he blows it in my direction. Sometimes my hair actually blows back a little. Like in the comics.
So, I asked him to try really hard not to breathe on me. That I was feeling sick and his breath was making me want to vomit.
Cowboy got a sour grapes look on his face and asked if I thought he should just stop breathing.
-Yes, I said.
Silence.
-I’m serious. Or at least roll down your window.
-It’s cold. You roll down your window.
-But then your breath just comes over to my side of the car.
-Stop being so dramatic. And mean.
-Sweetie, I’m not being mean. ... I just can’t function in this kind of Death in Venice environment.
-What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
-Rotting strawberries. Forget it. Just stop breathing in my direction.
-You’re being a literary jerk.
-I’m just trying to help you. Open your window.
-Fine.
Some herky-jerky movements on his side of the car, then: Are you happy now?
-Ummm ... yes. But could you stick your head out the window just a little?
Silence.
At Fore Street, for dinner, my male friend Lips who has a perfectly succinct way of getting under my skin says:
-You can’t say that shit, Shetterly. You need to address the positive.
