She Said He Said

Here are some things that I heard, overheard, directly from lady friends, in conversation or during my stalking sessions, or from now-disillusioned boys who made the mistake of assuming they understood not just their ‘keep’, but the vicious world of vixens in general, linguistically speaking, of course. No man is foolish enough to make a claim like he understands women. We’d sooner risk flying to the moon in a projectile tin bucket.

a.It never works out. This was said to me recently by a friend whom I offered a cup of coffee. I had to clarify that my honest intent was a certainly and surely coffee and I wasn’t using decaf as a disguise for holy matrimony, or something similarly vulgar. One has studied about 17th century verbose English usage in parlance but to utilise language of such heavy implications to decline just a jolt of java seemed a tad strong, even to me, someone who can down Ristrettos like Tequila shots at a Mexican wedding, or funeral, I forget which.

b.She’s trying to destroy me. We re all allowed our disillusionment of grandeur. Who hasn’t gotten off a plane and taken long confident strides boldly into the arrival area as if the whole city had turned out just to welcome you and cheer you on. No? Ah well, I’m just saying, you know. Anyways, but this one remains a very common thing women say and I just don’t get it. Every time I hear a friend talking about someone at work trying to ‘destroy’ her I have visions of tiny Battle-ship (the board game) -like panels with one player announcing positions and the opponent responding with “HIT”, or “MISS”, or “SUNK”. How else do you destroy someone? Do you hire hit-men? Do you bribe their psychiatrists? Do you sleep with their bosses? Their maids and drivers too, and also offer them a higher salary with ESOPs? How, and especially if you don’t own those ultra-cool laser guns, do you really destroy someone? I don’t know but girls destroy girls all the time. Going by famous Rule 34, I am sure we have some Google-worthy episodes to catch on the fly of women destroying women.

c.Do you like me or what I represent? This is quite the brain-tease, and again, when I say tease, I mean, “What in the name of blazing mind-fucks was that?” Boys have a tough time parting with the one watch they own, how then are they supposed to manage to find two sides to you, the real and the representative, and then love one, or both, or alternatively? If we want to love two of you, we will clone you. Or imagine a hotter twin using mental snippets from our favourite porn flick. But we will definitely not pretend to love “both” you and the other you when to us they are still the same annoying package.

Allow me to clarify, to us ladies, you do represent many things, but not at the same time; depending on what stage of courtship we are at, the form and essence of the representation changes.

i.In the beginning you represent heaven. This is when we barely know you; when we believe that our eyes met across the room, much like meek weak prey in the jungle believe that they spotted the predator first even as the paw lands on them, tearing flesh, slicing it open, sending bloodied shreds flying 360. (Note to self: Watch less NatGeo.)

ii.Then, during courtship, when we are still thinking about the various ploys to get in your you-know-what, we think of you as lady-like. We hate the way we love the way you elude us – a sudden friend to meet here, a late-night cancelled last-minute there. We adore how you build up the chase, little realising that it is us who is running out of stamina and will soon be brought in for the final kill.

iii.Then, once the metaphorical honeymoon is over, (which is the only known thing to be quicker than the male orgasm) we see you almost as dictating and unreasonable as feudal lords, but only a bit worse. When I say bit, I mean the distance between two stars so far apart that their lights are yet to grace each other. We realise that the ring on the finger is a noose around our social necks. What was once thought elusive is now directly and confrontationally avoidable. But it’s too late. Like that girl in Aliens, we are being intravenously sapped out of all life and dreams, a Tiki-drink in the hands of some lass with a useless yet attractive straw hat (the drink, not the lady…or maybe the lady).

But that is what you represent. Rather, these are what you represent. don’t get us wrong, we like you at each stage, just that the nature is different. Sometimes it’s how the sunflower likes dawn, or a pig likes a mudbath, and sometimes it’s a bit grim, like how a cancer patient likes Chemo. But it’s all pure liking nevertheless, what changes are the things we like about you. “Change” here is a synonym for reduce. Or imagine; and extrapolate.

d.I think I need time off from boys. If life were a blue collar job then I would imagine the need to take time off every now and then. I would understand if we employed women laboriously and painfully and hence their application for leave every year to visit their subterranean lairs were justified. But it isn’t so. Women have to tolerate men as much as the latter survive the former. We don’t ask for time off from women. Oh no sir, we face our fears head-on. If we can bungee-jump without gauging the height and crosschecking the cord-length before-hand, we are ready for marriage. But women, they need time off. I wonder what they do during that period of recess. Normally it involves sitting around and chatting with other similar spirits of Satan, discussing shopping, or boys! It also often involves eating, copiously. And this is what I call falling off the wagon! For, you see, when women take time off, they put weight on. And no boy ever fantasised about being with someone he couldn’t entirely hug, or lift. If we wish to be emasculated we will bring our mothers to all our parties and delve deeper into our Oedipus Complexes. I always panic that one day if I am with a girl and she passes out, I should be able to haul her to the car. My whole idea of macho rests on this one tenterhook and yet I wish I never have to find out. At any given rate, the way the number of eligible women that I can survive continues to diminish, being lost to other guys, followed by marriage and subsequent divorce and an eventual settling of eternal distrust in men in general, and then this whole time-off thing, I don’t think I need to work my biceps up just yet. Rather, I’ll join a mental asylum and get worked up about just how easy it was to convince ‘em for a fling and yet how tough it remained to find lasting commitment.

I am not a misogynist. I am not even a chauvinist. I am far from either. I can’t afford either. To be one of the two you have to have enough horse power to be able to wade through a sea of women who are parked protesting outside your house, women who burnt their bras in protest to the unnatural but thereby smoked up the air ten times over, never mind the visual pollution caused by sagging chests. You have to be able to drive on through without letting any of them stop you and give you a lecture on correctitude. By now you must be hating me for being the way I am and I agree. If God had a complaint department, I’d be in line well before you registering my self-directed ire.

But it pains me to see women asking for equal rights; I consider them the higher of the species. If anybody should canvass for equality it should be us men. But the truth is we don’t merit it. That’s right. We don’t; we are far less developed. Women are incoherent because they are complex, men, for being incorrigibly simple. Without their presence life wouldn’t just be boring, it would be suicidal. It would cease to be. They are not the spice that flavours our dish, they are the fire that may bring on the heat but they also bring all the elements together and create a new flavourful life…

As for us blokes, here is a list of random things we said. Everything!

You may consider that last one my fine print.