FIFTY-FIVE

The Other Team

“How can he be gay?!” Catherine decodes another non-refundable lamenting to herself. “He’s just so perfect and we get along so well, and . . . Maybe it’s women who are to blame. Maybe, after generations of men being abused and hurt and bewildered by women’s tricks and manipulations and complexities in relationships -- the bitches -- maybe men developed a self-defence mechanism so deep that it altered them biologically, or genetically,  and so, some of them evolved to stay away from females, and to turn to men instead, to simple, straightforward men. I know that I myself had to get away from a super-bitch in my life: not all moms should be moms. And plus, some of the men even evolved to behave feminine, which is another self-defence mechanism, I guess, to be like a woman in order not to be picked on by them. To be like the bullies in order to not be bullied.

Or maybe . . . maybe it was straight men’s fault for plastering sex everywhere and for allowing young eyes who weren’t ready to see, to see and watch, because then those boys ran from women, because they were freaked out. ‘Cooties’ are very real to them, you know. And can’t you just imagine fathers wanting their young sons to join the pack of users and haters of women as soon as possible? I can.

And  . . . And you can’t have homosexuality everywhere and all okay and acceptable and think that boys and men won’t try it, because males eventually try everything dick-related that’s easily available, right? And when they’re in prison, you know that even straight men turn to . . .  so . . .  Well, it’s not just for college and prison anymore. And then, when more men try it out, they end up finding someone who’s much more about intimate physical stuff like they themselves are, so . . .

Well, so your guy goes anywhere now, and you really can’t know for sure what he’s doing there, and, just like that, diseases times two genders. And gonorrhoea is no longer responding to antibiotics, I heard, because it’s become resistant, just like many other bacteria that we used to be able to kill. And plus, just like that, your heart just never feels safe anymore, like it used to when your guy was with the guys and you didn’t have to worry about anything like that. My cousin walked in on her husband doing it with the husband of her best friend. And all of that is just more anxiety that women have to deal with, now. And it’s all becoming too much. Really.

And yes, I know that biology is definitely a factor, that some genes or DNA or something were altered. Maybe by pollution, greenhouse gases. Hey, global warming’s popular right now. Something that affected the fetus, or conception, and changed it. Starting long before global warming, of course. I know. Or, well, maybe nature just wants less humans ruining the planet because there are too many of us on it now, making a mess of things, so men to men . . . But why him?!

And how could he tell me that ‘love always comes first?’ If it really did, then he could love me, because, as men always tell us, love has nothing to do with sex, right? So . . . And the guy that he does love is more feminine than me, so . . . So, he just can’t love me because my parts don’t amuse him, or they repulse him. And that’s that. And even with all the tricks that I now know, never in a million years could I give him what he wants, and that hurts, because I love him. I think of him every day. And seeing him makes me smile and come alive, and then it hurts. And . . . okay, so I really think that gay men demean women just like straight men do because they don’t care about us at all. I mean, not at all. Ouch. If we all vanished from the face of the Earth . . . And some of them even have that certain snarl on their face, that disdain, when they talk to women. Makes you feel bad for being one, for being a woman. My apologies. Sorry.

God, there are just so few men now who can be women’s princes. There just aren’t enough nice ‘breeders,’ and too many lonely women, so how can we not be sore at the men on the other team? I don’t mean hateful. I mean . . . sore. Gay men, after all, leading fulfilling lives, leads to even more women never having fulfilled lives, and that’s not phobia: it’s suffering. And it’s women’s, in the place of gay men’s, who came out and no longer married women, and so, women lost out on good husbands and fathers. Great for them, so bad for us.

Since lesbians don’t, in any way, affect my chances at happiness in love, whatever. And since men have plenty of women to go around, they don’t care either. But isn’t it strange that it’s mostly straight men who have the greatest problem with gay men, when having fewer straight men in the world actually works in straight men’s favour? Guess that that’s proof right there that men are much more about the male collective and its ‘reputation.’

Well, society won’t fall because of gay men, as long as women have easy access to anonymous sperm donations, if the numbers get out of hand. But as for right now, if pre-agreements about custody and all that were legally binding, then maybe a woman could enter into a partnership with a gay couple and all three could parent together. Kids of divorced parents, after all, often have four parents: two biological and two step. Hey, gay men, you have a lot of power -- so much more than women do -- so make it happen!

Well, that could never be me, in a parenting-partnership like that, because, just look at me now. And as for being a mother in the usual way, no one could love me now either, so, no. And . . . of course I know that I could never fall in love with my best friend, even though she and I have so much in common, because she’s a girl, and I’m not attracted that way. So I know that he . . . Well, it still hurts, though.

And . . . okay, so I hear young men telling young women that anything about body-pleasure is acceptable because the ‘the Greeks and Romans did it.’ But where are those ancient civilizations today? The Bible has many, many flaws, but its recording of historical events like the fall of unstable societies . . . And I’m proof: I’m not stable. I’ll fall. It’s just a matter of time. Because I do live in a part of our world where anything goes, and it’s all about the body, and I do do it all with men and to men and for men, and I know that I won’t make it because there’s so much that I have to do to keep doing it all that it’s killing me. And I’ve seen so many around me not make it. And that’s supposed to not mean a thing? Not to be proof? So then, how can men now be working so hard at making my part of the world become the whole world, in every way, including legally, and not know that the consequences will be the same, but on a huge scale? How dumb is that?

But it’s not my fight, because I’m already gone, so, whatever.

He’s not the reason that I’m here, and he was never mine, but, years later, he’s still my ‘what if.’ I wonder if it’s better or worse to have one of those, no matter what it is. But here it is: if he’d been straight, would I be here now, stuck in all this madness? Well, if he’d been straight, we probably would’ve had little in common . . . ”

Catherine sighs before turning the corner and heading down the third aisle. She is satisfied that, reassured that, as the women’s words continue to keep her mind busy, they also continue to keep sleep at bay.

This weekend is the first time that people other than Tristan’s entourage see me with him, the first time that I’m out anywhere with him, she considers, as the woman’s words recede. I’m usually in the shadows. Where he uses me. And then, shines out there. I’m usually in the closet, attached to the silver bar there, hotel suite after hotel suite. Unfulfilled. Numbed, because I have to give him my everything, or else. I have to be exactly what he wants, in a world that he creates for me exactly as he wants it, or else. So, I don’t get to be in the real world where he goes, where he’s free to exist. If I don’t want to lose everything, I just absolutely have to . . . do.

This room here is just one big closet, and all that these women are feeling, it can’t come out. It won’t. It’s womanhood’s closet, and no man ever looks in. No man ever cares to.  So, we’re to just keep it all shoved in. In a closet, in a vault, in a heart . . .          

“There had to be two human species, once upon a time, because why would a body need to produce something at a colder temperature, like sperm, like in the men who are around today?” Catherine soon oddly decodes, when she looks into another woman’s eyes. “What kind of mistake would that be, made by nature, that creative material needs to be created outside a man’s body, due to body temperature? 

So, there had to be males before who could store creative material in their bodies, in their colder temperature bodies, and when their cold females died -- probably because of a stupid weekend like this one -- those cold males found the warm females, and their species’ body temperature then increased, when the kids were born of those warm females, but then those kids’ balls had to drop out of their body because that new body temperature from their warm mother was frying their creative material. So, the cold species warmed up physically when born, but still stayed cold sexually. Yeah. That would explain men today.

I guess the warm males died too -- the ones who had their balls inside their body -- probably because the cold-blooded males killed them all to win, to stop the existence of warm males who could better connect with the warm females, who naturally could.

How else do you explain men and women now being such a mismatch of gigantic proportions?!”

As Catherine walks away from the non-refundable, she closes the file on the oddest words that she has heard so far, ones most certainly not already recorded in any of her plentiful files. Not quite in that way, anyway. So, the exception, then.

“You know that men want woman on woman entertainment because they themselves hate going down on women,” another woman begins, when Catherine’s eyes meet hers. “A TV show -- and not a cable show, but just on regular TV -- had women kissing and on top of each other, while a man watched, for his entertainment. There was no warning at the beginning of the show, and I knew that many mothers were watching with their daughters. It was a PG show that aired at 8 p.m., and I had to explain that scene to my young daughter, who dreamt of a prince and of no one else in her relationship, of course, because she dreamt of true love. Oh, and it wasn’t about orientation. It was just about having to entertain a man by putting on such shows for the ‘master,’ for the  ‘king.’

And I’d already covered orientation with her anyway, after first waiting to see who she’d get crushes on before I did, and, therefore, after allowing her nature to come out freely, without an identity crisis caused within her by confusing her through knowledge of her options before she was actually able to feel what would tell her who she is, that is, through attraction, which rarely comes in kids before they near puberty. And that’s the best way to do it, and each child is different, so the timing has to be different as well. Schools should know that, and know that parents know their child best. If her crushes had been different, or absent altogether in the usual way, which would’ve made me think, then I would’ve adjusted my teachings. I would’ve picked up a book or two. Found one of empowerment for her. Because moms love their kids no matter what, and no one can reproach any mother for that. It’s just how it is. To be expected. It’s called unconditional love, and there aren’t many sources of it in life.

Anyway, faced with this scene, I had no choice but to tell her how empty and superficial men are, because they’re all about the body and their dick’s complete satisfaction first, and I had to tell her in order to make sure that she knew that she never, ever had to be a man’s play thing that way, and that her body was her body, and that no boyfriend could or should ever manipulate her into being his toy in return for staying with her, for ‘loving’ her, or whatever. I told her that if a man expected and demanded such a thing, then he didn’t love her, because, just putting her health and life in danger because of diseases she could catch proved that he didn’t. Would she believe that a man hitting her, cutting her, or doing anything else like that to her health and body, loved her? No. So it made perfectly good sense to her that when someone loves someone, they don’t want them to be sick, to catch something that will infect them for life and/or stop them from having children later, and/or cause cancer, and/or kill them. She didn’t want illness for me, and she knew that I didn’t want that for her either. Because that’s love. The other isn’t.

Then I realized that it’s actually blowing up in men’s faces in more ways than one, this grooming of girls into accepting to be play things in that particular way, because it made me have to explain how men are to my child way before she should’ve found out. Plus, any time that a woman puts on a show like that for a guy, she just might come to realize that she just wants the girl, without the guy, because, why continue to be hurt and used by men, once the physical sensual hurdle is out of the way and a better person is then no longer off limits for a relationship? Females, after all, are often of love first, and their identity is said to be fluid by some experts, so, even if not born that way, eventually, after all the pain . . . 

If a woman, on the other hand, insisted that her straight partner take one up the behind or into his mouth, or many, while she watched, if she insisted that he change that way for her, whatever the confusion, the identity issues, whatever the resentment, the injuries to his body, the diseases, the possible death sentence, what would he say? Forced by her to do so, it would be as if he’d been r-a-p-e-d, in order to maintain whatever wonderful about her body that he didn’t want to lose, under her threat that he wouldn’t otherwise. And how would he feel, afterwards, about the price that he had to pay, to keep her? About her unjust power over him, once he was changed by what he’d done? How would he feel, knowing that she didn’t care about what he wanted, about how he felt about it, but only cared about what she wanted to see, to be amused  by, while he got the scars, forever? He’d feel furious, among other things. It would feel most unfair to him. Because it would be. Because it is.

Well, that men demand, expect and don’t care about how a woman feels and how it will affect her, change her, and that they just don’t care about losing her physically, nor emotionally, that’s not love. Love is so, so hard to find. And not just by women like me.”

“What women  hate about men, it doesn’t usually come out when men and women are interacting with each other in ordinary, every day activities,” Catherine recalls her would-be-writer friend saying. “It’s not like women see all the men around them as awful, every minute of every day. It’s not like they see a man on the street and they want to scream at him to be more. It’s when a man has to be viewed intimately that everything bubbles up to the surface. And then . . . eruption. The woman’s. Because what he wants, expects, demands and believes in, and doesn’t believe in, make her blood boil. The blood in her heart.”

These words are hastily shoved out of Catherine’s brain by her recall of screaming at Tristan, in her mind, that she would kill him. As she hears the words, she is made to revisit  her powerful emotions behind them.

Eruption?

He didn’t have my pills. It had nothing to do with what he wants, expects, demands, believes in, and doesn’t believe in. He just didn’t have what I needed to make me feel better, and normal, and stable again. Well, actually, it turned out that he did have that on him after all . . . I mean, have them on him. Pause. Did . . . Did he . . .  know? Did he . . .  know all along?

Catherine grabs a hold of herself, and takes a few more steps before she stops to face another woman.

“I hate people who go on and on about the environment, and who don’t give a darn about the people in it,” she then decodes, from the non-refundable. “The man I loved turned out to be just so . . . Well, men especially do that, and they show their utter coldness by caring once again about something, rather than someones,” the shattered being continues. “Pollution enrages them, but women objectified, used, demeaned, lied to, cheated on, violated, stopped from mothering, depressed, hurting, that does nothing to them. And that happens everywhere, every day. And . . .  it must be nice to have all of one’s needs met, and to therefore have all that free time and energy to just . . .

When women love, they love a mind, a person, and when they’re suddenly faced with a bad mind, a bad person, how can they still look up to that man and admire him, after having seen his utter emptiness? And hearing a man argue that it’s not selfish to lie and to cheat doesn’t make women think any better of men . . . Oh, but the environment, it must never, ever be cheated upon, and there must never be lies about it’s well-being and all that it needs, and people must not be selfish with it and they must not think only of themselves, and what a crime it is when they do, and on and on! About something and never someone!

Oh yeah, sure, so, all of us people who are barely living as it is, we’ll just starve and die, for the environment’s sake. For your environment’s sake. Uh, no, screw you, elitists. If we can’t afford food, heat, transportation and shelter because of your environmental schemes, whether literal or not  . . . ”

Did he know? Catherine finds herself repeating.