FIFTY-SEVEN

Soft Curls’ Continuing Video Obsession           

Words, words, words. Running on and on, and so, weighing down sentences by  making them too long, by not knowing when to separate and to stand in their own separate units, while remaining unified as one battalion, in order to offer up a stronger fight in an oxygen-rich way, rather than in a breathless one, which is a flaw that hinders flow. Negates it, even. Takes away grace, polish. And meaning.

Words, words, words. With pauses, absent, between too many ideas crammed into one serpentine sentence, adding to the negative feel.

Words, words, words. With transitions between those ideas, absent, which adds to the jerking of the mind, as it seeks to understand its way through those unintended idea leaps, which exist when bridges aren’t built between them.

And so, all in all, words, words, words that therefore bump into each other, affecting meaning, confusing it at this twist or turn, which is not, however, a surprising occurrence, due to these composers’ lack of mastery of the technical of this art, but not, however, due to a lack, in any way, of depth, Catherine finds herself considering, eyes closed still, with her breathing, free, but her mind, tangled up still, due to the numerous attacks she suffered as she hurriedly walked by so many women seeking to have a voice.

And I, currently without the power to remedy every bump, to reposition every misplaced word, to correct every misused preposition, to add every necessary comma for the sake of breath and clarity, to make every agreement between verb tenses, and to establish every transition, which often only necessitates but one little word, but which makes such a difference, Catherine then registers within herself, rather than giving in to what is happening, and to what, all in all, could be enough to drive her crazy, in her present, distorted state.

However, since she is now at least able to breathe freely, she heartens herself. It really isn’t that bad, she therefore decides, once again consciously keeping harshness at bay, despite her present discomfort, among the women, because of the women. Her continuing reluctance about looking into Soft Curls’ eyes then allows more eyes to find hers.

“Why oh why should women be upset at men in the world?” Catherine therefore hears, from a most unhappy non-refundable, one most definitely on the attack. “Could it be that, every day, women are not only treated like objects for play, but that, in so many other ways that never make the news unless a woman comes forward and unless news editors of papers and news networks aren’t sexist, they are treated so awfully as well?

Case in point: a man drugged his wife every night for years, and violated her while she was passed out.

Okay, so, in the first place, he gave her medication that she could’ve reacted badly to, or that could’ve reacted badly with others she was taking, or that she could’ve become dependent on, which I don’t know if she did, and he just didn’t care what it did to her. When she spoke to her doctor,  she of course didn’t know to add that drug to the list, and when she wasn’t feeling well, she couldn’t tell the doctor about this drug. So, that right there alone is assault, because something was physically done to someone’s body against their will.

In the second place, how much of an object was that wife to that husband, since, when she said no, he said: too bad, I own your body, and it’s mine to play with, to get satisfaction from.

She didn’t want to get pregnant, he said: too bad, you’re my baby-machine and I’ll make you make my merchandise for me. I own you.

She didn’t want his diseases, and he said: too bad, I’m giving them to you, because if I suffer, you suffer. I own you.

But where oh where could a man get the idea that women’s bodies are just for men to use and not women’s own? And why oh why would something like that be what turns men on? We all know the where and why: online, and backed up by society-wide objectification.

So then, once this case was brought before the law, however, of course the ‘good’ majority of men and their ‘good’ laws punished that man, right? Because, since most men are ‘good’ they must’ve been just outraged, and their laws as well, right? NOPE!

The judge didn’t punish the husband at all: not one day in prison, nothing. Not even any kind of psychological treatment. And that judge also told the wife that she should forgive her rapist husband!

Is your jaw dropped yet, like, to the floor? Just what kind of lesson is it to teach men legally that a husband  owns a wife’s body, that it is not her own, and so, that he can take EVERYTHING from her?

Do you understand, now, men with a brain, with a clue, why women are so against being objectified? It’s not all about fun, and sensuality, and all that. It spreads out to everything in our existence.

Plus, plainly, that this man wasn’t punished in any way means that anyone, then, can go around drugging people in order to get to their belongings, to help themselves to others’ money, and oh, it wouldn’t be stealing or robbery then either, right, just people free and clear to take, like that husband did?!

There is no doubt in my mind that that judge no doubt loves his online adult entertainment, since women are nothings to him.

And the next thing that’ll happen is that women won’t be able to go anywhere alone, anymore, for fear of being violated or worse, with men getting away with all that they do, because of judges. And how can all women not sense themselves losing ground?”

Catherine looks away, but has no time to consider the injustice defined in the woman’s words, since another pair of orbs eagerly finds her eyes, manages to cover the angle, despite being restrained and, therefore, so very limited in this angling.

“How did women end up holding the only legal contract/license that doesn’t have legal repercussions if it’s broken, that is, the marriage one? But it should be a contract just as binding as all others, as the ones that matter to men, with terms and rules and penalties, because it records one of the most important deals struck in life, since it’s of such an intimate, foundation nature, affecting one’s life so pervasively, present and future, as well as children’s,” Catherine is therefore confronted with, yet again.

“Men love to be naked. In a hotel room, with five or six of us, just letting their member lead the way in and out of all of us, over and over again, with no woman allowed to refuse, because of pay. It’s a privilege that’s usually naturally and freely offered to ultra-fine males, but women like me, we make it available to any and all males. So, when men mock women for loving shiny things, well, it’s a good thing for their sake that we do, because they can masterfully lay that trap over and over again, and successfully lure their prey in, to get exactly what they want, to their full satisfaction.

And then, there’s the men whose loads of money makes them even more delusional, like Mr. Rich-Eighty-Year-Old who believes that a thirty year old woman actually wants him, no direct pay needed.

Well, I do eighty year olds, and I like it, because I so enjoy that there’s a chance that they’ll die doing it, right there in my hands, against my body, and then pass from the masters that they wrongly believe themselves to be, to lifeless nothings, to mere objects, who are then returned to their families with the tag ‘from whore to you.’ There’s nothing that they can do to lose that tag. Their final labelling, legacy, left with their family, because of what they were up to, who they really were. I win.

I’ve had that happen twenty-nine times already, in my career -- because I love playing god with old geezer lives -- and I had to fight laughing my head off every time. It’s not on me in any way, after all, those heart attacks, because those men came to me. And not to die. They believed themselves invincible, and young, and studs.  And I’m just the kind of person who loves it when people get what they deserve because of their very own decisions, that they made all on their own.

I have to be that way, because I have to believe that I got what I deserved because of my own decisions, so that my life can make sense to me. I have to believe that I somehow pissed off God so much before I was even born in this body, that He gave me to a mother who should’ve never been a mother, because she was much too selfish and all about herself and all about every superficiality imaginable, and the consequences of that, of no depth, of no unconditional love on a child, are just . . .     

But, you see, if I deserved this hell that continues to be mine to this day, and that will be mine for all of my life, then maybe, once it’s all over, I’ll be all paid up, and then, I can go to Heaven, or maybe be born again to a good mom, to a supportive mom, to a loving mom who doesn’t put above all else money and what people think and her controlling everything, and who doesn’t use excuses and rationalizations to do everything and anything that serves her purpose, no matter what it does to her child’s life and right to make her own decisions, and who doesn’t do hurtful things, say such hurtful words, because she loves me unconditionally. I can only imagine what that must feel like, to be who you are and to be loved for it, no matter what.

Maybe I can get a mother who isn’t furious and out to get me whenever I’m happy, who isn’t out to destroy any small happiness that I manage to find. One who doesn’t crush me under the guise of being a saintly martyr to everyone else. One whom she doesn’t call nothing without her, worthless, and someone that no one could ever love, and on and on. I hear things like ‘mom gets custody because children aren’t supposed to be in a pack, at home, under alpha male dad, just hanging around, just doing things, and being nothing more,’ but a part of me thinks that that would’ve been better than what I got.” 

“It broke my heart, my husband loving others,” another non-refundable then begins, grabbing her chance at Catherine. “Having to wait for any little crumb of attention that he chose to give me made me feel like a toy that he took out of the closet when he wanted to. He wasn’t in my bed every night, not there for me every minute of every day. And for men to be encouraged to be that way . . . I’m just so exhausted, about men, that I can’t even scream anymore. So now, I whisper about how they have no heart, about how there’s no heart in a man’s dick, no emotion, no humanity there, and worst of all, about how men are now led by it without conscience anymore.

This is so not a good time to be alive. And there are no re-dos. It’s in fact such a pathetic time to be alive. And what a waste, to have lived now, in such selfish times, when the rights of the individual to body-pleasure outweigh everything. Men once gathered to write a document that warned men about all of this, about all of the consequences of all this, but who reads the Bible nowadays?”

 Catherine sighs and finally commands her eyes to Soft Curls. They accept the order, but land on the young non-refundable’s feet. Tristan’s female shakes her head. She felt that she had to return to the young artist of sorts. She felt a strong pull, no matter the bombardment of words, words, words that she was painfully enduring, and no matter her own powerful, snowballed deep desire to escape.

Pause. Stillness.

And then, from resting upon those feet, Catherine’s eyes slowly move up the young woman’s nude body, studying some the “art” design left upon her by her weekend master. Less than sixty seconds later, since the designing upon the young woman is so dreadful, her eyes soon reach the corridor between the non-refundable’s breasts, and from there, rise up to her chin, to her lips, and, finally, to her eyes.

“Men don’t want ladies anymore,”  Soft Curls is then decoded, delicate and resigned. “They’ve burned all pedestals. The ones that we have this weekend are just . . . Well, a desired woman is now one lower than a man, shoved down there, and it’s certain that the sons don’t fall far from the fathers. And I do mean fall.

Men don’t even call women ‘women,’ anymore. They call them ‘girls.’ Anything to make themselves feel more powerful. How ironic, when it’s boys who never grow up.

It’s just so sad how so many girls now fantasize about being streetwalkers, or escorts. But it’s just that that’s how we all start out, now, us girls, feeling like we’re already those play things, because of all the stress around us about having to do everything, in order to please teen boys in every way, and then, men, in absolutely every way. Our masters.

We’re told right from school age, now, that, to have a relationship and to keep it, we’re to be on our knees, even if we have careers and so much else. And boys even spell it out for us, now, in the school yard, because of what they watch, now. Because men don’t stop adult entertainment from coming into every boy’s home, online. Because men want those boys to quickly become cold. Because love has absolutely been taken out of physical intimacy. And how much more evil and demonic can dads get, teaching that culture? Have they all been possessed? The devil inside? How can there be so little out there to teach boys about connecting on a greater level than for physical satisfaction, about something more, to base a whole life on? How can they be taught instead to believe that the most important part of a relationship and of a whole life is the few minutes spent in the bedroom? How absurd.

So then, all girls now start out in bondage, in our society. All tied up, with society approving. And so, women writers, they now often write about streetwalkers who have a man fall for them anyway, because girls and women need to believe that a man will fall for them too, even if they feel and are like whores, never paid, but just passed on from male to male, always having to behave like hookers, and being treated like they are, and, in the end, feeling just as awful as if they were the real thing. So, they like those written stories of hope. But they’re not real, and men don’t care. You just get hurt, trying to get through to men.”

“Art. Videos,” Catherine softly redirects her, thus speaking to one of the women for the first time since she entered the coatroom. She has heard it all before, and expects more from the young non-refundable. In mentioning this art, however, she unknowingly turns her away from another.

Upon the sound of Catherine’s voice, Soft Curls’ sounds immediately stop, as do the noises from the women closest to the young non-refundable, who heard as well.

“If weekend play were made into a movie, women would have to wear tops and bottoms,” Catherine then hears. “Bikinis, or lingerie, or something, and that would change things. It would change the feel of all of this. And what if it were women who had to climax and smear a man for forty-eight hours with what’s produced when women do? What would I design? Weapons, of course. All the weapons that I’ve ever been hurt with,  dating back from forever. All the real ones, and all the ones in and of my heart, too. A master did say that punishments could be carved into a submissive. A whole different kind of living totem, when it’s carved into.”

“Your videos,” Catherine redirects, unsure why it bothers her so, seeing Soft Curls here. Seeing the young, romantic tied up like she is.

Soft Curls, however, does not allow herself to be guided to her favourite escape.

“That music video where men are objectified instead of women, and the singer says that it was her intention to turn the tables, it’s so priceless,” Catherine hears instead.  “I love it. But reading clueless and/or cruel men’s comments about it and about women, on the site where it’s shown, that hurts.

Those men really don’t like the way that that video makes them feel, but they don’t say ‘this must be how women feel, and I get it now.’ Instead, they trash it, and women, and use the term ‘feminist’ as a bad word. Oh, how they hate that word. They brainwash, using it, making some women believe it bad to stand up for their own self! And . . . I was one of them: I used to think that feminism was a bad word, like my dad taught me, and when men rolled their eyes at women, and called them whiners and made it sound like they were just so awful, I just hated feminists.

But then, I reached an age when all that my father wanted me to believe in was just too much, and then, I realized that he had either knowingly rewritten the past, that he was delusional about it, and/or that he was blinded by hatred. And then, when I started resisting, I got kicked out of the house, and then guess what I had to do?

My mother had warned me about him, but I believed my father, so I called her a bitch and told her that she was just trying to tear me away from him, because I couldn’t even see a crack in what he was doing, back then. I spit such ugly words in her face, every word that he told me over and over again about her and about women, since I was little. So, I couldn’t go find my mother, when I had nowhere to go. Children of divorce are either clueless, because brainwashed, or smartest of all, because they know from experience, since they saw, felt. I was first one, and then the other. So, I was actually strong, to overcome everything around me, to break it all down and truly see, right?

Because my father . . . he wanted me to believe things like . . . Well, like how women over thirty lose some of their smarts, and how women over forty are just stupid. He had to make me believe that, so I wouldn’t listen to any them. I couldn’t be raised to look up to my female elders, to their strength and wisdom, because then I’d see right through him.    

All the women that he brought home, all those temporary mommies that my brothers and I had, that just sucked. And then, his first wife after my mother, she of course loved her own kids most. And then, the wife after that one, loved the kids that she had with my father the most. And then, the third one, she just hated us. Neither of my three stepmothers treated me and my brothers well, but I didn’t even know to want my own mother, then. It was only when I got over his brainwashing, and his parents’ and his family’s, that I remembered happy times with my mother, and how much she fought for us, but how my father had more money and influence. I think that I heard that about one in three kids is bought in court that way.

I was such a delicate child. Affectionate. I had pretend weddings while wearing bed sheets as flowing gowns, and . . . I’ll never have that day now, for real.

We should have every music video by every female artist objectify men from now on. And it’s not because I want to see men objectified. No. It’s just weird and all wrong, but I believe that it’s necessary, everywhere, because men must learn to feel how it feels. They’re like . . . little children, or dogs, so they have to be taught how something feels by feeling it, so that they can then understand it and stop doing it. Right?

Some women say that the way to stop women being objectified isn’t by objectifying men, but I’m a hundred percent certain that if there’s a chance that men will ever get it, they have to FEEL it. Because words have never worked. Women have tried and tried. And plus, when men come to me, they don’t care that I’m hurting and that my life is nothing and going nowhere. They just want what they want from me. There’s no empathy. No chivalry. No heroic, to want to save me. They don’t think it awful that I have to please so many men, every night. They don’t think it awful that that’s my whole life. They don’t feel.

And it doesn’t matter if it’s gay guys in those videos, which is another of men’s excuses to write off the objectification as not relevant to themselves, because the fact is that those men’s bodies are better than most straight men’s, and that we’d much rather be looking at them, and that their gayness doesn’t matter because we’ll never meet them to be personally denied the pleasure of their bodies anyway. So, our eyes and imagination are satisfied. And that’s what matters.

Why don’t women demand that straight guys get in shape, and do themselves up every morning, and get surgery to look like those hot men? Sound familiar? Why don’t women use hot, gay guys to make all girls and women realize that all men could have hot bodies too? And that they should, if they had to make women happy?

But that doesn’t happen, and what we get instead is the opposite of that video that empowers women, that video that tries to make them realize just how absurd it is that women are made into those objects, by making them realize that it’s just as absurd as what they feel when they see men shown and used that way. What’s the difference? To men, it’s that men have power, and women are not to have it.

When my father told me that only women’s bodies are beautiful, and not men’s, and that that’s why only women’s should be naked everywhere, I shrugged a shoulder. When my father said that seeing boobs everywhere isn’t a big deal, I believed him, never thinking to ask him why men need to see boobs everywhere in the first place, if it isn’t a big deal, never thinking to ask him why they need to seem then on TV and in movies, and especially in the middle of a beautiful story of more.

Nope. Instead, I thought it stupid that women complained about pretty young women in bikinis, or about cleavage, and I really didn’t understand what objectification meant, which is another word that my dad taught me was a bad, bad word, and a stupid one.

Objectification: when men consider you a toy to play with, considering only your boobs, your ass, your curves, and the whole of your body, to be put to use in servicing their dick, whether in reality or in fantasy. Objectification: when men don’t care what you like, dislike, and how you can be hurt, or that you are hurt. Objectification: when all girls and women are forced to concentrate about certain parts of their body, instead of on who they are inside, of their heart and mind, because nothing else matters to men. Objectification: as in, whenever there are no women around, all that men ever comment about concerning women is always directly about body parts and using female bodies for pleasure, and then, throwing them away, discarding them. Objectification: no worth and no power in it for the object, since I  certainly don’t have any power when I’m at work on a guy, when I show him all of me, and give so much of me, if not all.

One night, when my father was being the empty ass that men are, sitting on the couch and enjoying boobs just coming out of the blue in the middle of another wise nice show, I started feeling different, because my boobs were coming in, and so, I wondered what he’d do about mine. I imagined how he’d want to see them. Or how his friends would. Because that’s almost all that they’d ever talk about, when talking about women. That’s pretty much all that ever got their attention. I never heard anything else matter as much to them as boobs did.

My father even had photos of topless women here and there in the house, including women he’d met on vacation, on beaches, or at strip clubs, that he’d taken pictures of or with, with him clothed, of course, making the blatant difference in status so obvious and powerful. Why would a man even want such photos, of him dressed with a naked woman? To feel what, exactly, when he looks at them? You know that whatever it is, it’s just empty and yuk. And wrong.    

Well, my father had photos like that here and there in the house, right there for me to see, and right there for me to see him, his friends and my brothers, seeing, looking at, enjoying, over and over again, day after day. And the way that I felt every time, either when they looked, or when I myself turned the corner and was faced yet again with seeing one of them, with seeing that female nudity, either alone in a picture, or with my father with his arm around it, smiling, all proud or something . . .

So, when my breasts started developing, I wondered if my father and his friends would make me walk around naked at home, because seeing boobs wasn’t a big deal, dad said, but men absolutely had to see them. So, I saw myself among them and my brothers, naked. My father was between wives then, not that any one of those three witches would’ve been any help, since he warned them all that he was the boss of his kids, him and only him. So, they never had a say, except to be mean when he wasn’t around. And to have him exclude us whenever they could manage to make it happen

The bigger my breasts got, the worse I felt. It just made me feel sick, thinking that my dad and his friends were now looking at the bumps beneath my shirt, and talking about them when I wasn’t around. I wanted to walk into the room backwards. And, of course, I knew that they had to be looking, because there was no way that they’d somehow stopped being themselves and being all about boobs. And there was no one to help me get through that. No one to protect me. No one to have stopped it from happening in the first place, such hurtful behaviour, from the time that I was little.

Because of all that, I quickly learned that I wanted a man to look up to, since I certainly didn’t and couldn’t look up to my father, knowing who he was, what he valued and desired. So, a man not like my father is what I wanted. But I didn’t have much time to look for him, because I got kicked out of the house, and then, I got stuck with all the rest instead.

It’s a sure thing that if I’d been with my mother, as a girl, I wouldn’t be here today. She wouldn’t have raised me that way. She wouldn’t have taught me to be all about boobs and nudity and pleasing men. She wouldn’t have taught me that my whole self-esteem was to be had there, in doing that.

Well, of course there are whipped women in the world who do teach their daughters all that -- I heard about wickedly bad mothers who are the reason why some of my friends ended up walking the streets -- but my mother wasn’t, and why did a judge give a little girl to a man? Boob-dick Neanderthal man.

Anyway, I was already hooking when I put it all together, about how wrong my father was when he described women to me. When a male described women to me. And I learned that most women don’t want to be above men, nor to crush them and to take away everything physical intimacy. I learned that women just want to be treated well and to be worth more than just things. I learned that they want to be the best friend and matter more than the guys and the pack. I learned that many women would happily allow a man a few steps above, if he were good to her, and that they actually want to look up to a man, and proof of that is that so many female authors write about men with power,  but with power that those men know how to use nicely, wisely.

I learned that it isn’t about putting collars on men, like my dad said so-called bad women -- feminists -- were all about. I learned that it isn’t about whipping men, and I learned that wanting them to be nicer and considerate and empathetic and human and to stop treating women like toys isn’t wrong and awful. How could it be? So, I learned that men should stop worrying about giving us that inch, then. Well, I guess that some feminists want to destroy men, but most of us just want men to stop hurting us and stop being so unreasonable, which many men coldly mock us for every chance they get.

What I didn’t learn, however, is what women could do or say to successfully make men realize that we still want to be sexy, and that we’ll still give their bodies a good time, if they just stop treating us like that’s all that we’re for. What I didn’t learn is how we can make it that if breasts are shown, then that other body protrusion is as well, on the male body, for equality. Or, how we could make it so we could just be more, and not show either.

I imagined a showing of a male protrusion on TV, when my father and his friends were sitting in my living room. I imagined it happening in the middle of an 8 p.m. show that was otherwise PG, and, therefore, out of the blue. And I wondered what my father would’ve said, what his reaction would’ve been. Would he have cursed women? Cursed those women producers and executives who had to put manhood in a show that was otherwise all geared up for men and all pleasant for men to watch, except for what was added in the middle of it for women’s entertainment, as if manhood were just toys for women to look at and judge? Would he have felt that I was judging him, wondering about the length and look of his own organ? Would his friends have felt that? Would they have felt uncomfortable? Would he have hurried me out of the room? What would he have told my brothers, about this male objectification, this eye candy, just for female viewers, while all women in the show remained dressed?

If men in Speedos had been objects in almost every music video that my brothers watched, what would my dad have told them? How would my brothers have felt about themselves, to see their gender the toys of women who had all the power, the words, the say? What lesson would they have learned from that? Would my father even have allowed them to watch? He wouldn’t have wanted them to think that way about themselves. He would’ve wanted them to stand up to women, to fight to be more than toys.

Hypocrites. Just one music video objectifies men, and they’re so mad. And they attack and lash out and make up excuses about why objectifying men is wrong, but doing it to women is fine. And they just get so all insulted about the mere suggestion of being denied seeing boobs and objectifying women, that they bring up their man-created rights and laws to defend it.

In the comments about that women-empowering video, some men even said that when a woman objectifies men in a video, it’s not natural, and it’s like she’s a s-l-u-t who’s just bedded all of them.  But in men’s videos, it’s understood that all the objectified women there are indeed promiscuous. A group thing when a man’s at the center of it all, being satisfied, that’s fine, of course, but the hypocritical thing is that those women whom one man screws one after the other, they’ve screwed just as many men, just on different occasions. And so, a man can turn all around him and kiss and poke and be tended to by women who are all concentrated on him, but a woman can never be treated like a queen, by many men at once. She can have many, many men, but she has to have them one at a time, in order that she at all times remain the slave, never the queen. Well, to women, a man surrounded by objectified women is weak and no fine male specimen, since he’s so cold. We like the guys who settle on one woman, and who therefore see women as their equals, since one equals one.

Of all the comments that I read about that women-empowering video, the one that I hated the most came from a man revealing his strong sexist and misogynist beliefs, with his profile picture including his young son pictured with him. I didn’t need my own experience to know what he’d teach his son, after the nasty comment that he wrote. And I knew that he wouldn’t be able to teach empathy, since he showed none at all by writing what he did, and I so hoped that he didn’t have a daughter. And I wondered where mom was, because I knew that she wasn’t in the picture, or much, either literally or due to whipping, because the father was too hateful. And I wondered where the anti-hate laws against women, were. Enslave or demean any other group in society, and no one puts up with it.

As for the hurtful comments made by women who spoke out against the empowering, I wanted to tell them to write down their comment, to seal it in an envelope, and then, to look at it again in ten, fifteen years. So many women, after all, have to be older to get it, because so few of us younger women, get it. I wanted to promise them that they’d all understand, some years from now, the big deal, except, maybe, if they were one of the really, really lucky women who landed and married a good guy for life, because I think that those women just never get to see the darkness.

But since that wasn’t going to happen to most of those women who wrote those comments, the odds were that many, if not most of them, would  desire to date, to attract a man, when in their forties, whether still single since there are so fewer eligible men, or because they’d be divorced at around that age. And I wanted to remind them that, since the way to attract a man remains the same no matter what his age is because men are men until they die, they had no right to pick on women in their forties for still being vital and sensual.

I wanted to warn those women that those same men that they were supporting and defending now would one day tell them to act their age, and write them off, even if they still looked hot, like that singer. I wanted to point out that it wouldn’t be about their body, then, but just about a number, a birth date, and so, about a male superficiality even greater than the one about women’s bodies: the one that says that even if a body still looks great, age makes it not allowed to be desired. And at what age do men act their age, exactly, which, by men speak, means to act without sexuality? Wow. No passion and attention past forty, for women, then. Ouch. That’s a really short life of full-living. But when men are forty, they still want young women. And at fifty, sixty, they still believe that they have a chance with hot, younger women. My father did.

I wanted to tell those women that there was no way that they’d be wearing sweat  pants and letting themselves go and losing desire for romance and for passion and for love and for feeling butterflies and for all that they want now, just because they turned forty, forty-five, fifty, and even older. And those very women that I wanted to address, I knew that most of them were the always ‘on’ type, with hair and nails done, and lots of makeup, and perfumed, and all of it. The type to doll themselves up every day, and, well, dolls are objects. The type to primp every time that a man is near, hoping for that dose of what they believe is self-esteem, self-worth, when it’s just a dose of emptiness. So, I knew that it was those very women who would end up fighting the hardest not to lose their looks, as they aged, and who would fight the hardest to keep looking young. And I wanted to ask them what the point would be, of looking young and hot, still, when men would just write them off according to a number, to their birth year, just like they themselves had done to that female singer, through their cold, misguided comments about age, and acting it. But just women needing to act it.

I just so knew who those women were, who took men’s side over women’s, because my aunt used to send a hand to her hair to fix it when she saw a car pulling up beside hers, at a red light. Just in case a man was in it. And she’d send both hands to her hair before speaking to any man, anywhere, as if he couldn’t see that she was doing it. It was pathetic, that gesture of begging men to give her self-worth, that gesture of giving them that power to begin with. It was just so, so pathetic, to see her seeking it still, at sixty-four, and married.

Is it any surprise to anyone that she never uttered a word of wisdom in her whole life, because she never had an ounce of it, being all about that, about men? Just shallow and empty. And she was nothing more, believe me. Mean, crushing, tearing down people who didn’t fulfil superficial expectations and beliefs of hers, and not prizing anything more, anything human. Anything that one could take to heaven.

 My father’s sister. I shudder still, just thinking of her. I know that her father taught her that emptiness: he was said to be so very prideful, and in a way that made it sound as if that was a good thing. And she herself used the word prideful as if it were a quality, and, even if I often pointed out to her that it was actually a deadly sin, since she went to church every weekend, it never took. There was no pulling her back.

She  was so clueless that she wondered why none of her children nor grandchildren felt a connection to her. I once asked her what she thought that they would miss, when she died. Her criticizing them all the time? Her telling them that they’re nothing without her? That they’re worthless? That no one loves them? Cares about them? That they don’t have or make enough money to deserve being loved by anyone, and living any kind of life, and feeling any small moments of happiness? Her manipulations and forcing them to allow her to make their decisions for them? And the list just went on and on. I said ‘do you think that your children and grandchildren will go to your grave and say that they so miss you, because they miss being made to feel like crap?’ And after she thought of that, she threatened not to leave them money in her will. So then, right back to that old superficial, because it was all that she was and had, money. She was my father’s sister and had her own family, but she was my most present and steady female influence, since she couldn’t be divorced by my father, and so, I learned what kind of woman I didn’t want to be, and what women to stay away from: anyone like her.

So, was that female singer in that video even objectifying herself? Could she, since no man was in it to objectify her, since it was her video, her song, her voice, her words, and, most importantly, since her personality was already known, being famous, and so, since she was more than her body, in the bigger sense? Versus women in rapper videos . . . I don’t use the word ‘hip-hop’ because I think that it’s just a euphemism to make women forget how traditionally sexist rapping and rappers are. Well, I don’t forget. I want romance, and . . .

And is a woman dressing hot for her guy objectifying herself? Because women like to dress hot for their guy, and since he knows a lot more about her, then . . . But to the guys who see her when the two of them are out, she’s a play thing, because they don’t know her, so, she’s just her body parts, on display. Because that’s how men learn to see women. She wouldn’t be, if they didn’t learn that. 

Of course, if I want to provide an example about a video in which women have no power, I have so many to choose from. So, how about that popular video that had a version of it with topless women in it, and that men defended dearly, their every word either a clueless or a hateful attack on women? And how about the fact that that big huge global site that never allows nudity, allowed it, and that that record company did as well?

When women wanted this male singer who treated women like toys in his video and who pretty much sang about women being violated banned from an award show, a man interviewed about the situation said ‘well, there can be a petition but the artist shouldn’t be banned.’ Just completely oblivious and uncaring, and no doubt thinking: why would the singer be banned from singing what most men believe in anyway? I wanted to sign that online petition to ban him, but I didn’t know how to.

What if that singer had been singing about straight men -- ‘you know you want it’ -- getting it up the behind by gay guys, what then? ‘But you’re a straight man,’ that song would’ve taunted, suggesting that he wanted it that way anyway. How would singing about the violation of straight men have gone over, with a woman singing away the words, and with the video showing male organs in every shot? Yes, showing them, like the boobs. And for what purpose? Uh, just to entertain women. And, imagine the Speedos video with every man nude instead, and with so many dicks everywhere, in almost every shot, flopping about, being nothing more than eye amusement for women, objects to judge, one after the other, like men judge us. And yes, men should feel the same negative way when it’s women who are objectified, and when it’s the violation of women that’s being put out there as nothing, as fun!

And . . . And what if women sang to straight men to smarten up and to just allow themselves to be toys for gay men, whenever a gay man decides that he wants to come? Whenever he and a pal decide to overpower a straight guy and ram it up his behind, or shove it down his throat? Would that be fine, straight men, to just be  violated like that? Well, how is it fine to suggest that it’s okay for women to be violated, like that song says?

It’s not a joke. It’s not just fun. It’s serious because it’s a dark culture that men are growing from high schools and campuses on up. And so, what are women to do? If we boycott something, the male collective has its members counter in droves, in order that women’s voices never be heard, and so, when women refused to applaud that singer at that awards show, when they looked away and booed, the men in the audience clapped and cheered even louder, and the male producers added sweetening on top of that, to cancel out women’s rebelling, point, voice. And of course there were great big close ups of the brainwashed women clapping away, cheering on r-a-p-e and the objectification of women, cheering on love and more being dead.

But it CRUSHES girls, teen girls, and women, to learn that love is dead. It’s like if boys, teen boys, and men learned that all physical intimacy were dead. No more physical pleasure play at all, of any kind. No more seeing boobs, no more adult entertainment, no more physically connecting, nothing. Except that love matters a million more times, for HUMAN beings.

Do you know that when women refused to buy a music single to make a point, men told each other to buy two or three copies each, in order to counter and to silence women? So, what are women to think of men, then? And men wonder why they get no respect? Really?

In India, however, men are protesting in the streets so their wife, mother, daughters are no longer violated, but here, violation-culture is growing, thriving. So, the men here are devolving, while men in some parts of the world are evolving.

I . . . I guess that people who’ve had so much taken away from them are already hurting, and easily see things as just more things to hurt them. I know that I’m a very sensitive person, but . . . ”

Catherine looks away from Soft Curls when a wooden support for the long bar to which the young non-refundable is attached to creaks, near her.

Nothing to worry about.

Things often creak without breaking.