The Female Man

V

The Great Happiness Contest

(this happens a lot)

FIRST WOMAN: I'm perfectly happy. I love my husband and we have two darling children. I certainly don't need any change in my lot.

SECOND WOMAN: I'm even happier than you are. My husband does the dishes every Wednesday and we have three darling children, each nicer than the last. I'm tremendously happy.

THIRD WOMAN: Neither of you is as happy as I am. I'm fantastically happy. My husband hasn't looked at another woman in the fifteen years we've been married, he helps around the house whenever I ask it, and he wouldn't mind in the least if I were to go out and get a job. But I'm happiest in fulfilling my responsibilities to him and the children. We have four children.

FOURTH WOMAN: We have six children. (This is too many. A long silence.) I have a part-time job as a clerk in Bloomingdale's to pay for the children's skiing lessons, but I really feel I'm expressing myself best when I make a custard or a meringue or decorate the basement.

ME: You miserable nits, I have a Nobel Peace Prize, fourteen published novels, six lovers, a town house, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, I fly a plane, I fix my own car, and I can do eighteen push-ups before breakfast, that is, if you're interested in numbers.

ALL THE WOMEN: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill OR, FOR STARTERS HE: I can't stand stupid, vulgar women who read Love Comix and have no intellectual interests.

ME: Oh my, neither can I.

HE: I really admire refined, cultivated, charming women who have careers.

ME: Oh my, so do I.

HE: Why do you think those awful, stupid, vulgar, commonplace women get so awful?

ME: Well, probably, not wishing to give any offense and after considered judgment and all that, and very tentatively, with the hope that you won't jump on me-I think it's at least partly your fault.

(Long silence)

HE: You know, on second thought, I think bitchy, castrating, unattractive, neurotic women are even worse. Besides, you're showing your age. And your figure's going.

OR

HE: Darling, why must you work part-time as a rug salesman?

SHE: Because I wish to enter the marketplace and prove that in spite of my sex I can take a fruitful part in the life of the community and earn what our culture proposes as the sign and symbol of adult independence-namely money.

HE: But darling, by the time we deduct the cost of a baby-sitter and nursery school, a higher tax bracket, and your box lunches from your pay, it actually costs us money for you to work. So you see, you aren't making money at all. You can't make money. Only I can make money. Stop working.

SHE: I won't. And I hate you.

HE: But darling, why be irrational? It doesn't matter that you can't make money because I can make money. And after I've made it, I give it to you, because I love you. So you don't have to make money. Aren't you glad?

SHE: No. Why can't you stay home and take care of the baby? Why can't we deduct all those things from your pay? Why should I be glad because I can't earn a living? Why- HE (with dignity): This argument is becoming degraded and ridiculous. I will leave you alone until loneliness, dependence, and a consciousness that I am very much displeased once again turn you into the sweet girl I married. There is no use in arguing with a woman.

OR, LAST OF ALL

HE: Is your dog drinking cold fountain water?

SHE: I guess so.

HE: If your dog drinks cold water, he'll get colic.

SHE: It's a she. And I don't care about the colic. You know, what I really worry about is bringing her out in public when she's in heat like this. I'm not afraid she'll get colic, but that she might get pregnant.

HE: They're the same thing, aren't they? Har har har.

SHE: Maybe for your mother they were.

(At this point Joa

I know that somewhere, just to give me the lie, lives a beautiful (got to be beautiful), intellectual, gracious, cultivated, charming woman who has eight children, bakes her own bread, cakes, and pies, takes care of her own house, does her own cooking, brings up her own children, holds down a demanding nine-to-five job at the top decision-making level in a man's field, and is adored by her equally successful husband because although a hard-driving, aggressive business executive with eye of eagle, heart of lion, tongue of adder, and muscles of gorilla (she looks just like Kirk Douglas), she comes home at night, slips into a filmy negligee and a wig, and turns instanter into a Playboy dimwit, thus laughingly dispelling the canard that you ca

VI

Jea

They went canoeing in the middle of the lake one day and he said: "I have to tell you something, Jea

She thought: This is it, and her stomach knotted up.

"I'm married," he said, taking off his glasses, "but my wife and I are separated. She's living with her mother in California. She's emotionally disturbed."

"Oh," Jea

"I knew you'd understand," he said in a choked voice, nearly crying. He pressed her hand. "I knew you'd understand, Jea

"Are you busy tonight?" Poor man. She wet her lips and didn't answer, feeling the sun strike her on all sides, deliciously aware of her bare arms and neck, the picture she made. "Mm?" she said.