One of the boys

Maybe it’s because they see less often the connection from this moment to the burning toast of five minutes hence, and thus are less distracted. Maybe it’s because they’ve been trained to cut to the chase, or maybe it’s an abundance of stimulants naturally present in their minds. Maybe they’re trying to impress me. Whatever the reason, conversations with men are usually far different than conversations with women.

There are few things more pleasant than sitting around a table, drinking coffee or tea or beer with a few good men. You know the look of your position (is she dating one of them, or is she one of them?) but this is a smaller part of your enjoyment.

In such situations, I listen first as a soul and secondly as a woman. I rejoice first at the truth, and only then at the fact that it has been revealed to me, by him. I rarely find myself falling in love with my compatriots. Having grown up with this sort of thing, I enjoy it, but find it, in the long run, rather inconsequential.

Or perhaps I am delusional. Perhaps I have only bought into the fantasy, not that uncommon, of being up to the challenge of being one of the guys. Not exactly one of the guys, either. There is this very Elizabeth-Bennett notion of walking into a room, looking at ease; unconscious, but mind-blowing, sitting across from a crowd of males, and, with no guile but a warm dose of slyness, meeting their attempted wit and throwing it bodily out the window. The males would then sit up and cease to see what is obviously your dazzling beauty and see a flame capable of consuming them.

Women want two things: they want men to be able to momentarily forget their beauty (or lack of it), blinded by the charm of their minds, and they want men to be able to momentarily forget their minds (or lack of them) at the charm of their beauty.

Not that this excuses women who think delusionally that they actually are Elizabeth Bennett. Or, for that matter, those who hate talking with other females. If you can’t relate at all to your own gender, it’s probably not the gender’s fault. Women have a lot going for them. They bring you tea, unasked, in the middle of the night when you’re choking on your own sputum trying to sleep. They have insight.

On the whole, given the choice, I would rather be a woman.