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At a point in my forties, after the demise of another disastrous relationship, I came to a realization I had never quite grokked before at such a deep, internalized level:
Holy shit, I thought. Men really, really hate us.
This hit me with a bone deep certainty.
I had beenapplying semiotics to fashion retail ads for a while, and I stumbled on a Marc Jacobs ad somewhere - VOGUE probably. It was a picture of a woman in a sun dress. She was laying in the dark in a park with her dress flipped up, her face dirty and her purse open beside her with its contents dragged out and seemingly strewn around her by animals. It looked like the girl had been raped and strangled to death, and abandoned to the elements.
How the fuck does this sell handbags? I asked myself.
Then I got into the psychology of motivation, and I got one of the worst shocks of my life. On some deep shadow level, I learned, men all want to rape and kill us. That wasn’t the worst of the realization. The worst was this: on a subconscious motivational level, women are hard wired to want what men want, up to and including our own rape and murder.
I had just escaped 2 horrible relationships — one with a sadistic French defense contractor, and another guy I’d known since I was 18 who ended up stalking me.
Well, fuck that, I thought. I went on strike.
I’ve spent so much of my long dating life as a doormat for malignant narcissists. Most of them dated me because I was attractive or well-known in writing circles — not because they actually cared about me. For years I felt like I ended up being the projection screen onto which asshole boyfriends broadcast old movies of every woman in their lives they ever hated.
Unless something or someone really shakes them to the core, men don’t seem to have much truck with maturity or emotional development. It’s not something they feel they need, because for the most part, the world, including women, rotates around their bullshit.
So I thought to myself, “Why the fuck am I ‘keeping it tight’ for men?” And so I stopped going to the gym. I couldn’t figure out a single reason why I’d want to work out for myself. It all seemed like another hard-wired rapey motivation I didn’t want to deal with anymore. Why should I be sexually attractive? To attract MEN? I’d utterly had it with men.
I let myself go completely. I started dressing in battered workwear I called my “Lesbian Boiler Repair” look and let my cousin give me a terrible haircut. I put on 40 pounds of emotionally protective weight. All together, it was a look which discouraged sex entirely. A fashion statement that said, “I will bite it off, sailor.”
When I went out to bars I pretended I was a butch lesbian, and found I had some of the best conversations with straight men I had ever had. They treated me like a bro, and I was shocked to find out how nice men can be when they have no inkling of fucking you.
When I interviewed Chaz Bono, he told me the same thing. He was astounded by how nice straight men are to each other. (He also said that since becoming a man, he had little patience for women talking. It became an annoying, chattering sound.)
This battered, wounded mindset continued for about ten years, most of which I spent in bed watching reruns of “Ink Master” and drinking White Claw. I didn’t, at the time, realize I was living a trauma response to repeated and prolonged narcissistic abuse. Bed rot took over, and I must confess I largely enjoyed every minute of it.
A shift slowly started happening, when I did a thorough investigation of what I thought men were and what I expected them to be, and realized that men just weren’t built that way. A male-dominated society and its various rom coms had set me up for emotional ruin. I realized I was suffering from the Cinderella Complex writ large, despite the fact that I have always maintained that a lost glass slipper often contains a human foot. I’ve left my pumpkin coach burning next to the freeway onramp more than once.
Fortunately I have a number of fantastic male friends who I love. They broke shit down for me. I adjusted my expectations and tried to learn how to appreciate men for what they actually are instead of what I stupidly wished they were.
I still didn’t want to work out in a gym anymore though. It seemed stupid and futile — and I was a bushy-tailed personal trainer in my twenties. Gyms and their equipment felt stale, soulless and corporate — the office gerbil solution to physical fitness.
Then, one day a couple of years ago while house-sitting at my scumbag uncle’s beach estate, I took a handful of magic mushrooms. It was one of the best experiences of my entire life.
I realized, permanently, that man is a contiguous element of nature. Nature is not outside of ourselves. We are nature.
This cheered me up immensely. I started walking outside a lot more often, despite my Gothic propensity to avoid sunlight at all costs.
The stuck wheel of my life seemed to slowly creak forward since then, and has been gaining speed ever since.
My opinion of men is largely benign, these days. Those poor fuckers just don’t have the inner strength to keep it in their pants.
My body, however, seems to be making a surprising comeback lately.
I’ve been on the GLPs for several months now, and I have lost over 20 pounds. Not being fat anymore feels like quite the glow-up. I’ve been doing yoga and dance workouts with weights on YouTube in my living room, and walking whenever possible in the tremendous Oakland redwoods, and/or walking the 3.5 mile sidewalk around Lake Merritt. What is most thrilling is feeling my stamina improve. My roommate and I are shopping for a treadmill. It’s feeling really good.
It’s got nothing to do with men, this new affair with fitness. It also has nothing to do with health, since I can’t afford to live to be very old. Now it’s strictly for the negative ions and the endorphins, which, I finally remembered, have a captivating high.
I’m a sucker for captivating highs.
MORE OF MY FRANKLY AMAZING MEMOIR WORKSHOPS ARE COMING UP in a few weeks. Holler at me at Cintraw@Gmail if you’re interested. Space is extremely limited — first come, first serve.
Yeah and then hire me as an editor so it makes bloody sense.
