by Kyle Smith
“Here’s why this is a decadent society,” Shooter says. “Manhattan today is the first advanced civilization to be completely controlled by women. What are you wearing?”
“Huh? Black pants. Gray shirt. Black shoes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Trying to look somewhat cool.”
“Exactly,” Shooter says. “It’s eighty-five degrees out, yet you think black is cool. Why is black cool? Because women think it hides their fat. To shave tonnage. So black becomes cool among women. And since cool is whatever women say is cool, you have to wear black—you have to dress like a woman!—to look cool.”
It’s been a long time since black became cool. Can you remember when it wasn’t? I can’t. Every season, black turns out to be the new black.
“Don’t they dress to impress us?”
“In the eighties women wore shoulder pads,” Shooter says. “Giant ones. Did you tell them it looked good? I didn’t. No guy ever did. They don’t care about us. They told each other it made their waists look smaller. In fact, their waists looked exactly the same and their shoulders looked like they were trying out as linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers.”
“At least we have all the money,” I say.
“That’s just it! That’s just it!” Shooter says. “Why do we have the money? Why do we work all day?”
“Tell it.”
“So we can spend it on them! Walk by Saks Fifth Avenue in the middle of the day and what do you see?”
“Women. Buying fifteen-hundred-dollar handbags.”
“So whose money are they spending? Can’t be their own: if you can afford to drop fifteen bills on a Fendi bag, you’d have to work all day. No, women spend our cash. They have the fun. While they’re out shopping and having lunch and seeing shows, we’re invisible. In our offices. Selling stocks. Writing books. Designing buildings. Men are dy ing, you know. We kill ourselves. Women live ten years longer than men, did you know that? And still every newspaper and magazine runs a story every week about how women’s health care is being neglected. They’re beating us by ten and they’re trying to run up the score! As we get crushed by the stress of our incredibly demanding jobs. We only work for one reason: to get laid. So we can fling woo at beautiful women. So we can say, Look, I can take you to any restaurant you want! Look, I’ve sold my youth to Wall Street for bucks deluxe! Look, I built this building for you! I went to war for you! Beautiful women don’t need to have high-powered jobs. They don’t need to do anything to get laid. All they need to do is show up and look good. So they have to get their hair done a lot. So what? Which is more fun, chatting with François at the beauty factory or being a corporate troll for the Man? They don’t need their own money. If they get a job, they work in pub lishing. They teach kin dergarten. If you see women actually working hard, being big-firm lawyers or something, they’re either, a, too ugly to get a man, b, dykes, or c, just killing time until they marry a senior partner.”
“When was the last time you worked?” I say, knowing the answer: 1991. Shooter’s life is a riches-to-riches story. His father owns a big business. You have to take everything he says with a grain elevator of salt.
Shooter doesn’t answer. Shooter is riffing.
“So every book that gets written, every movie that gets made, every rock band that rocks, it’s all for some woman.”
“What about girl groups?”
“There are about five of them. The only other girls in music are the singers. Why? Because the singer is the one everyone looks at. Girls want to look good. They don’t want to slave away behind the drum kit. Some guy is back there. Trying to impress the girl with the mike. Everything we do, we do it for the women, and it still isn’t enough.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Murder!” he says.
“Yeah?”
“When men kill, they kill their wife or their girlfriend for leaving them. Or a liquor-store owner so they can get money to spend on some girl. Then they get the death penalty. When women kill, they kill their kids. They get three to five and a shrink.”
“Maybe not in Texas.”
“Now, I’m not saying murder is okay. But which is worse: killing some evil bitch because she fucked your best friend or a helpless little kid because he shit the bed?”
“Speaking of crap,” I say. “Gotta edit some stories now.”
“Oh, okay. What time is it?”
“About eleven.”
“Whoa,” Shooter says. “Been a long night.”
I turn back to the review for a while. I get to the point where I want to quote something no one else has quoted, to prove I read a book I didn’t read. So I flip around and discover this little tidbit: when John Adams was declaring revolution and all that in Philly, his wife, Abigail, was writing him from Boston, “in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands.”
Adams wrote back: “You are so saucy.” He really did. He went on:
Depend on it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems. Although they are in full force, you know they are little more than theory…in practice you know we are the subjects. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight.
So, 150 years before women even had the right to vote, the panty posse was running the show. Despotism of the petticoat? That’s 1776-speak for whipped. And this is a president talking. A founding father. What chance do I have?
The phone.
“Tom?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“We just had our baby on Saturday,” says Mike Vega, my fertile friend. The proud papa. How come married guys are proud but single guys are cocky?
“Hey!” I say. Of course I know this already; his answering machine told me. Sound enthusiastic. Possibly he’s mad at me for not calling to congratulate sooner. “Great! Nice! Um, beautiful!” I’m trying to think up superlatives, but really: “MAN, WOMAN BECOME PARENTS OF CHILD”? It’s not much of a story, is it?
“What is, uh, it?”
“A girl. We’re calling her Alexandra.”
A girl a girl a girl. And an Alexandra: third baby I know named Alexander or Alexandra. I try to drill this information into my brain. I have noticed that people expect you to keep track of the genders of their offspring, information I have on several occasions been forced to punt around by asking dreamy-eyed couples, “So, how is your little, um, one?”
“How big?” I say. He tells me. And that’s it. Those are the only questions I can think to ask about the situation. But I hear more. Details I don’t want to know. Real horror-movie stuff, bodies splitting open, gushing fluids, eight and three-quarter hours of screaming agony. Childbirth sounds a lot like Alien. I’m invited to meet the kid today at lunchtime, though Mike will be at work.
That my friends are having kids makes me even more of a kid. With all the man-jam I’ve sent spiraling down my shower drain, I could start a sperm bank. A sperm Switzerland. Isn’t this a bit childish of me? Shouldn’t I be using those sperm for something? Shouldn’t I have someone other than myself to worry about by this point in my life?
Not that I blame anyone but me. The reasons my last five relationships ended:
I acted like an asshole.
I acted like an asshole.
My UK work visa ran out and I had to move back to New York.
I acted like an asshole.
She acted like an asshole, but only after I tormented her for six months.
I miss them all, of course. Take last summer’s girl, Maggie Kelly. Met her at someone’s birthday party. She was adorable. Smart. Fun. Self-confident. Loved to laugh, eat, drink, screw. We went out to her mother’s house on Memorial Day weekend. Dad wasn’t there, having moved in with his new mistress in the cit
y a couple of months prior. Looked like Mom was going to have to sell the house. It was a beautiful one. Immaculate maintenance, double-hung windows, extreme gardening, the works. Her kids were grown, she didn’t have a job or any job skills. She was getting old and life was turning out to be a major bummer. She made us soup and we chatted for a while. I was on my best behavior, trying to be cheery. I nodded a lot. Complimented her cooking. Complimented her daughter. Asked about her garden. Didn’t mention dad’s mistress. In short, I scored the max. I was ideal.
Couple weeks later Maggie is giving me the rundown on her family’s troubles.
“My sister didn’t get that understudy part,” she says.
Her big sister, Stephanie. Actress. Her claim to fame: she once auditioned for The View. She didn’t get it. Scuttlebutt was that they were “going ethnic.” She’s cute, but not actress cute, and she’s thirty-five. It would be rude of me to point out that no woman ever started suddenly getting prettier at that point.
“That’s too bad,” I say. “What’s she doing now?”
“She’s looking for a waitressing job,” she says. “She’s talking to a sushi place.”
“How’s your mom?” I say.
“Dad’s being such a jerk,” she says. “She’s going to have to hire a lawyer.”
I wait for a polite moment to get to the point.
“What did she say about me?”
“She said you seemed sad.”
Sad. From a woman whose life was falling apart. Those three letters ricocheted around my brain for weeks. “Depressed” implies it’s not your fault: those pesky chemical imbalances. “Sad” means, Buddy, you’re just not trying. And after a while I made Maggie sad too.
Before Maggie there was my Besty. Besty who loved cats. Besty who got me interested in Audrey Hepburn movies. Besty who was so quick and lively and lovely and serene that I had to break up with her.
We’d make up fairy tales after sex.
“Tell me a story!” This from somewhere in the $139 futon that was my bed for three years.
“Once there was a fair princess named Besty,” I began.
“Only fair?”
“Once there was a slightly above-average princess named Besty,” I said. “Ow. And she was heralded throughout the land for her ability to fell evil beasts by poking them in the most sensitive part of their tummies.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“Her only boyfriend was a gecko lizard named Tom,” I said. “Tom met her in the amphibian singles bar.”
“Because she was used to dating guys who were basically reptiles.”
“Exactly. And Tom the gecko told Besty, ‘If you do tequila shots with me and give me a kiss, you will see a magical change come over me and also you will get a commemorative Jose Cuervo T-shirt.’ ”
“And did she?”
“She had a few shots to steel herself for the challenge.”
“Did she kiss him?”
“She looked at him. She saw that he was a kind, quirky, friendly, harmless creature, and then she decided. She closed her eyes. She leaned over. And she asked the bartender for some more tequila.”
“And then did she kiss him?”
“After enough liquor to knock down Robert Downey Jr., she finally puckered up.”
“Did he turn into a handsome prince?”
“No, he turned into a gila monster. But she did get the T-shirt.”
She moved even closer. We braided our arms and legs together.
“Hey,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“Oh.”
A minute passed expectantly.
“Hey,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
Uh-oh. Paging Mr. Sandman. Carry me away.
“Hey,” she said.
“Yeah?”
Pause.
“I love you,” she said.
Something twanged deep down within me and for a few seconds I forgot to breathe. I carefully considered the situation, ran through the options, weighed some choice responses, and then did what I always do when confronting difficult choices. Nothing. Good thing I wasn’t Sophie in Sophie’s Choice. Which kid should I save from Auschwitz? Mmm, let me see about that. Uh, yeah, I’ll just weigh the pros and cons for a while, this one’s health against that one’s intelligence, this one’s lovely personality against that one’s essential courage. Oh, time’s up? So you’re taking them both? Whew, that’s a relief.
Tick, tick, tick. I wanted to say something. But I didn’t.
So I hugged her and kissed her for a while. Thinking, Maybe she’ll forget about this awkward little moment?
With the next girlfriend, I won’t be sad or weird or distant. I’ll give her everything she wants and more. An emotional AmEx card. No preset intimacy limit.
But first I have to go celebrate a baby not my own.
Mike went back to work today, but Karin’s still at New York Hospital. The thing is two days old; it looks like a rough draft of a human being. I am expected to say how cute it is, but I resolve to stay noncommittal on these things. Must keep my options open.
“Is it the cutest baby ever?”
These are the first words out of Karin’s mouth. Her whole face is shiny, as if someone went over it with a belt sander and a coat of Turtle Wax. In the last two months of her pregnancy, she grew scarily large. She was getting worried too. You could tell. I said nothing, but privately I wondered if she was going to deliver a VW.
A grin is oozing all over Karin’s face. Even her hair is smiling.
“Isn’t she?” she prompts.
“I don’t know. I’ll just stroll over to the nursery and do some comparison shopping.”
But I don’t say that.
“Of course,” I say.
“Great baby,” I say.
“Good job. Uh, giving birth. And all,” I say.
I’d always heard that parents undergo this weird brain rewiring that makes it impossible for them to think their baby is not the darlingest diaper filler that ever lived. I keep waiting for evidence to the contrary, but there is none. I have a lot of smart friends, investment bankers and doctors and so forth. Theoretically, they’re smart enough to have figured out that just about half of all babies are below average. Yet to date I have never heard one new duh-duh or maw-maw say: “Don’t you think our baby isn’t as cute as most? Frankly, I’m disappointed with the outcome. Then again, look who I married.”
I ask no questions about bodily functions, except, tentatively, “So, um, how was the, uh, labor, uh, thingy?” It seems impolite not to give her an opportunity to chat about what is, after all, the most memorable experience of her life, though it is completely without interest to me. It’s the only question I ask on the subject. There is a reason: I don’t want to know. Yet somehow in the next twenty minutes, just by being polite and nodding my uh-huhs, I will discover:
Karin had to have doctors cut a huge hole horizontally across her abdomen.
They then had to make another huge slice, this time vertically, in her womb.
She is currently being held together with staples.
She has not farted since the delivery, which apparently is a bad thing.
The baby’s sole source of nourishment for the time being is whatever it sucks out of Karin’s breasts.
“Do you want to hold the baby?” she says.
No. Why do women always ask this? Do they not realize that the feeling they get from holding their baby (i.e., unsurpassed joy, love, and pride at not having given the kid spina bifida or anything) is different from the feeling I get when holding someone else’s baby (i.e., nothing). I like Electric Light Orchestra (still) but I never make anyone else listen to them.
“Yes,” I say.
I’m holding the baby. I’m supporting its head and thinking that it’s about the size of a loaf of bread. No wonder they say, “She’s got a bun in the oven.” Karin goes to the bathroom (is she just passing
gas?), and when she’s gone I surreptitiously feel around the kid’s head looking for the soft spot. It feels pretty hard to me, though. I thought their heads were supposed to be like week-old bananas. Yet another letdown.
“What are you doing?” Karin is back. She has caught me groping madly around her newborn’s skull.
“Uh, just, I don’t know.” Change the subject. Punt! “She’s just so, uh, cuddly!”
“Talk to the baby!” she commands. “It’s good for them!”
I picture the kid in eighteen years, getting the thin envelope from Stanford. Maybe even from SUNY Binghamton. Because I didn’t develop her brain enough during the four minutes I spent silently with her when she was three days old.
“Uh,” I say. “Hello, baby. You’re really…small, there. How was the birth? Nice baby. Good to see you. Hope you’re feeling well.”
I make my apologies (“Stressed at work,” I murmur, and what do you know! First time I’ve ever used this excuse on an infant) and make good my escape. I have to walk by Sloan-Kettering, the cancer hospital across the street. There’s a homeless woman. Well, not homeless, exactly; she appears to be a permanent resident of a cement overhang, an alcove tenant. She’s just lying there completely prone, facing the building. Her pants are pulled down so as to expose her mottled, bleu-cheesy haunches: kiss my ass, world. It must suck to be living outside a cancer hospital. Then again, better to be outside it than inside. On the street a woman walks by. She is missing her left arm. These are people who truly have cause to be miserable, and are they?