The Queen’s Code

by Alison A Armstrong

  Kimberlee couldn't help herself: “You're saying that ‘seeking intimacy’ is part of a man's nature? Never seen it; are you sure?”

  She watched Claudia take a deep breath. That was happening often today.

  “Kimster,” Claudia replied, using her childhood nickname. Kimberlee braced herself, but replied in-kind, “Yes, Gram-Cracker?”

  “If what I am saying is true, that men naturally seek intimacy, and you have never seen it … what would that tell you?” Claudia asked.

  Kimberlee closed her eyes again in despair. Ahh. The knife is turned.

  After a moment in which she wanted to disappear, she ventured, “That I'm so quick to attack that men never have a chance?”

  She received a compassionate squeeze of her hand and her stomach flip-flopped.

  KAREN's heart went out to Kimberlee. What courage. I would have fled from such a realization.

  “Claudia, what are the other long-term effects of emas — of castration?” she asked, forcing herself to use the more brutal word.

  Claudia smiled appreciatively and Karen felt warmed by the recognition.

  “Yes, thank you, Karen. Besides keeping their distance instead of seeking intimacy, there are several other significant effects. One is to compete with a woman instead of cherishing her.”

  With a wave of nausea, Karen remembered Mike telling her that he felt he had to compete with her, when her teaching career was going better than his business.

  “Okay, now I'm gonna be sick. Or ‘blow chunks,’ as the boys would say,” she joked feebly and Kim chuckled.

  “Keep breathing, both of you. Remember the saying, ‘the truth will set you free,’” Claudia encouraged.

  “But,” Kim quipped, “you left out the part: ‘First it will piss you off.’”

  “It is good to bring a sense of humor to this,” Claudia said.

  “Why?” Karen asked.

  “Because compassionate humor is an expression of Human Spirit. As you battle your own most primitive, defensive reactions, there is no better weapon.”

  “Would you say more about that?” Karen asked.

  “Another time, dear. We have three more long-term effects to illuminate,” Claudia responded. “Ready?”

  They both nodded again.

  “Over time, castration will cause a man to anticipate women with suspicion instead of trust.”

  Karen nodded, “That makes sense. What else?”

  She saw Claudia look deliberately at Kimberlee as she said, “Instead of respect, which men naturally have for women, it causes men to treat women with disdain.”

  Karen watched Kimberlee blanche. The younger woman asked feebly, “Does that mean Myra is the source of her own complaint?”

  Claudia merely nodded.

  “And the last one, Claudia?” Karen prompted.

  “After being castrated — again, in a relationship or a society, or anywhere in between — a man will eventually come to relate to women — a particular woman, or all women — from fear.”

  “Instead of?” Karen prompted.

  “Love.”

  KIMBERLEE's mind reeled as she put the pieces together. While my mind's been screaming that it can't be true, my heart is singing for the first time since I was a child. When I was innocent and open and loving — and whole.

  Cautiously, she asked Claudia, “Can I make sure I've got this straight?”

  Claudia nodded.

  “You're saying that ‘by nature’ men regard women with love and trust, seeking intimacy and are willing to cherish them?”

  Her eyes held Claudia's as the older woman nodded, without a word.

  “And we get the opposite because we castrate them.”

  “Yes,” Claudia stated, “that is Frog Farming pure and simple.”

  Kimberlee leaned back in her chair and let out a sigh. She noticed she was pursing her lips in a perfect imitation of her grandmother.

  Shaking her head ruefully, she said, “I can't imagine how it must have been for you all these years, Grandmother. Watching me Frog Farm Mathew. And emasculate Granddad, even. Ignoring him. Interrupting him. Even accusing him of trying to control me. I'm very sorry.”

  CLAUDIA was touched by Kimberlee's apology. Unprecedented that I should hear such words. It will mean the world to Burt. She smiled at Kimberlee, holding her gaze. In that moment, Kimberlee seemed more grown up to her than ever.

  There was more to accomplish, but Claudia thought this was a good time for a break. “How about we stretch our legs, replenish our refreshments, and then talk about men's immediate reaction to castration?”

  “Oh, goodie,” Kimberlee chirped.

  “It should not take long. But it will tie up some loose ends for that brain of yours,” Claudia said.

  After they had all recharged, Claudia began, “This brings us back to Kimberlee's question, ‘But how will I protect myself?’ Remember asking that?”

  Kimberlee nodded, “Of course. I'm not as concerned about it as I was. Because I can see that, over time, not castrating men would make a woman safer. Because a man will protect what he cherishes. But I'm still worried about dealing with a dangerous man, in the moment.”

  Claudia felt relieved. We can do this, she thought with satisfaction.

  “There are more topics I need to teach you, to make sense of how to set boundaries with men. That would be the what-to-do part. For now, Kimberlee, would you accept seeing what not to do?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Thank you for your honesty. I am willing to work with that.” She forged ahead, “When a man is castrated, he has an immediate emotional response. Karen mentioned earlier ‘shock,’ ‘dismay’ and ‘disbelief.’ That is a pretty good description. I would only improve upon it in this way: Men experience a sudden loss of power accompanied by an emotional response. It would be fair to say that men experience rage or fury when they are castrated.”

  “Is that why they throw things and hit walls?” Kimberlee asked.

  Claudia smiled, grateful again. “Thank you for bringing us back to that Kimberlee. It is important. It demonstrates that even in a moment of rage or fury, most men have more concern for our safety than anything else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you care to step into a man's shoes again for a moment?” Claudia asked, intentionally putting Kimberlee off balance.

  “Um, okay ….”

  “Imagine you are a man and you hold a club in your hand,” Claudia said.

  Kimberlee nodded. Claudia glanced to make sure Karen was following too.

  “It could be a wrench or a hammer, yes?” Karen asked, catching on.

  “Yes, it could be anything. But in that moment, when he has been provoked to rage or fury, it becomes a weapon. A club.”

  Kimberlee said, “Yeah, and …?”

  “To protect another from his own rage, he throws the club away. Intentionally disarming himself.”

  She watched as Kimberlee's eyes grew wide, the pupils flaring. The young woman gulped. “Wow, that's wild … And, are you saying that he's hitting the wall — instead of me?”

  Claudia only smiled and watched Kimberlee.

  “But what about the men who don't have that control?” Kimberlee persisted. “What do you do about them?”

  “As I said,” Claudia began, “I cannot teach you what to do yet. But I can show you what not to do. You have already seen that, over time, a woman will be safer by not emasculating men.”

  “Yes,” Kimberlee acknowledged and Karen nodded her head.

  “Can you see that in the immediate moment, you are never safer by causing a man to feel rage or fury?”

  KIMBERLEE wearily drove home, a song verse looping endlessly in her head: The walls come tumblin’ down. The walls come tumblin’ down ....

  Their session had ended with a small ray of hope even though Claudia never did answer, “How do I protect myself?”

  Kimberlee now saw clearly what not to do. Castrating men doesn't work, period.<
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  Intuitively negotiating the familiar curves of the highway, she thought about the moments following Claudia's provocative question. Kimberlee couldn't deny the obvious truth: causing a man to feel rage or fury never helped. The emasculation she'd thought was her best defense actually made situations worse.

  “Why do women do it?” she had spontaneously asked Claudia.

  To her surprise and relief, Claudia's response didn't blame women. Hence the feeling of hope. Claudia had answered: “It is a knee-jerk response out of fear of men's power. It is a learned behavior to reduce men's pressure. And it is the only way women have to deal with their hurt, disappointment and frustration. Soon, you two will have effective alternatives.”

  “Is that the Queen's Code?” Kimberlee had asked. She and Karen laughed when Claudia grinned and said nothing.

  Once home, Kimberlee sought her usual escape in a movie. She got an extra big spoonful of peanut butter and deliberately picked an action adventure with an all-male cast. That way, she thought as she curled up with Lancelot, I won't have to watch women emasculating men in what used to pass for comedy.

  KAREN was ready to drop castrating men like a rotten fish-head, but Claudia insisted that they research the phenomenon until Wednesday. At first, Karen couldn't imagine what else there was to know about it, but she trusted Claudia.

  That didn't make her any happier when told about the homework, though. She dreaded the assignment Claudia had given to her specifically: Talk to Mike. Ask him how she emasculated him. Ugh, she groaned, that's not going to be pretty.

  Same as the week before, she wasn't ready to face her husband or her marriage yet. She wasn't quite ready to deal with her past, or her future, either. She stopped in the café once again to play with her notes. She worked on grouping the information into bite-sized bits.

  Short-term Effects of Castration/Emasculation

  • Sudden LOSS of POWER

  • Mental response of DISMAY or DISBELIEF

  • Emotional response of RAGE or FURY

  • Physical response of DISARMAMENT and/or STRIKING OUT

  As she wrote the last line, she contemplated the role of castration in domestic abuse. Hmm? A connection? She abhorred any implication that women might be at fault in something that awful. But if there is a potential cause and effect there, knowing that would ultimately make women safer. She'd have to ask Claudia about it.

  Long-term Effects of Castration/Emasculation

  • COMPETE instead of CHERISH

  • Keep DISTANCE instead of seek INTIMACY

  • Approach with SUSPICION instead of TRUST

  • Treat with DISDAIN instead of RESPECT

  • Relate from FEAR instead of LOVE

  Next she reviewed the assignment Claudia gave them:

  Homework:

  1. Notice how you castrate men. Specifically, your methods “to deprive of strength, power, or efficiency; to weaken.”

  2. Pay attention to how and when other women castrate men.

  3. Observe how other women react when they witness a man being castrated.

  4. Notice how men respond to being castrated.

  5. Don't assume that a man “feeling bad” is the same as emasculated. Watch for a reduced ability to produce results.

  BURT found Claudia on the couch again, eyes closed, the back of her hand resting on her forehead. He picked up a foot and began rubbing.

  “Anything you want to say about today, my sweets?”

  He had watched at intervals from his workshop, pausing his new project long enough to read the body language in the garden. Both young women looked ill most of the time and Claudia had a determined set to her shoulders. He wondered what could have caused such reactions. He sensed that Claudia needed rest more than anything. She looks as if she's been loadin’ cannon fodder, he thought.

  “It may not look it,” Claudia opened her eyes and replied, “but I am happy with what we accomplished today. They are both nearly ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Burt asked, delighted.

  “To lay down their swords.”

  “Wonderful,” he replied. “God bless them.”

  After a moment of working on her arch, he asked, “You said ‘nearly ready.’ What needs to happen first?”

  “They have to see all the ways they castrate men. There can be no mistake about what I am asking them to give up. Right now, they only see the most obvious.”

  She continued with a wry, mischievous smile. “But women do more damage with their hatpins and stilettos than with their machetes.”

  MIKE took Karen's hand. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She shook her head. “No, I need to hear everything; even if I don't want to.”

  They were sitting with half full glasses of wine, the remains of dinner still on the table. Mike had confirmed that competing with him had, indeed, been emasculating. This was one time when being right had clearly not made her glad. He hesitated; he didn't want to hurt her. “Do you want it in chronological order? Or, in order of severity?”

  Karen groaned but didn't waver. “Is there a way that I used to emasculate you that I don't anymore?” She asked hopefully.

  Mike thought about all their years together. As they were dating, after they got serious, when they were first married, their adventures in the Peace Corps. And the difficult years, after they returned to the States and both knuckled down with their careers. Same as most men, he didn't have a long memory for petty injuries. Only the real gut-kickers stood out.

  “Okay, let's try it that way,” he conceded. “Remember before we got engaged, how you used to yak on and on about how smart and handsome and mature your English Lit professor was?”

  Karen blanched and took a gulp of wine. “Wow, you're going way back.”

  He shrugged. “You wanted something you don't do anymore.”

  “Pretty tacky, huh? I wanted to make you jealous. I was trying to get you to commit.”

  Mike shook his head. “That's crazy. Jealousy doesn't make a man commit. It only makes him mad. And besides, I didn't feel jealous. I felt not good enough for you. I wanted to head for the hills.”

  Karen looked puzzled. “How come you didn't? Shortly after that, we got engaged.”

  Mike smiled victoriously. “You don't remember, do you? That schmuck gave you a C on your mid-term and you came crying to me. I was the one who made you feel better. That's when I knew I had what you truly needed.”

  Karen's dark golden eyes, framed by naturally thick black lashes, went round in astonishment. “You guys don't do anything for the reasons we think. All this time, I thought my strategy had worked.”

  Mike chuckled. “Quite the opposite, Darlin’. You made me feel two feet tall. And there was this red-headed filly in your dorm always telling me how smart I was. I'd started thinkin’ about jumpin’ the fence.”

  Karen's mouth opened in alarm, “I thought redheads weren't your type!”

  “They aren't,” he said. “But admiration is every man's type.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  Karen shook her head in dismay. “Well, I'm glad I haven't tried that trick lately. Anything else?”

  “Well, not feelin’ like I'm good enough for you still happens from time to time,” he said.

  Karen stammered, “I don't understand. How could you not be good enough for me?”

  Mike studied her closely. Could she not know how beautiful she is? And smart? What a prize she is?

  “Babe, you've got to look at it from my perspective. I'm a poor Italian wannabe cowboy. And this goddess runs my home and graces my bed. She even wants my children. How am I supposed to deserve that?”

  The look on her face was comical. “Huh?” was all she managed.

  He cracked up. Taking her hand again, he said, “And on top of your breathtaking, exotic beauty, you're kind and generous and smart and capable. And you thought nothin’ of sleepin’ on the floor in a mud hut, peein’ over a hole.”

  She looked dumbfounded.

&nbs
p; “Let me put it this way. Since the specific is not computing, how about the generic?”

  She nodded helplessly, “Okay ….”

  “When a man cares about a woman, he's in trouble. Every moment he's with her, he's looking for signs. Signs that she cares about him too. And more than that — that she thinks he's worthy of her caring about him. If he does something that impresses her, he feels ten feet tall. If she's not impressed by anything he does, he wants to crawl away on his belly. That's emasculated.”

  He waited while Karen took a sip of her Merlot and tried to compose herself. She hadn't reached for the box of tissues she conspicuously put on the table at the end of dinner. But he thought that wasn't far off.

  “Sometimes you're trying to impress me?” she asked cautiously.

  Mike chuckled again. She really doesn't get it, does she?

  He took both her hands and waited until she was looking right at him. Slowly, he said, “Darlin’. Gorgeous. Love of my life. I'm always trying to impress you.”

  KAREN's mind was screaming that what he said could not possibly be accurate. There was no way he could feel that way about her. But her heart knew it for truth. And two decades together were illuminated, glowing in the simple beauty of his love for her.

  How can something cause such ecstasy and such pain at the same time?

  She had no idea he was this vulnerable. That her reactions meant that much to him. Did I even pause for a fraction of the things he did to impress me? At first, when I was weak-kneed about his Mediterranean good looks and fascinated by his methodical mind and, even, his endearing cowboy fantasies — then I might have gushed about everything. But definitely not later ….

  What happened? What changed? She could see that after they became intimate, both as lovers and better friends, she took him for granted. She thought his kindness and generosity were how he was. I didn't know that's how he was for me — on purpose.