At first you don’t notice, despite the New Yorker and Jezebel articles, despite #MeToo and your own friends’ upbringing; despite your own bringing. You understand it intellectually; the idea of it; but you don’t feel it to the core of your bones, the way that it eats your skin from the inside. Macho, machismo – those were words you grew up with that seem to be baby steps to the idea, but even those terms sound bulky in your mouth, weighty. As if the idea needed any more weight.
Then you realize that your husband doesn’t apologize the same way that you do – he lets his transgressions roll off his tongue like they are pieces of fluff he fished out of his pocket. He clearly listens – he is good at correcting himself – but for you apologies are a performance. They are theater meant to demonstrate a message; the entirely of Mass is an apology to God. Add in the culture that you grew up in, the concept of the ass whooping as the great deterrent. It doesn’t get any more theatrical than that. Your wailing is the only script available.
But – there’s something else. Outside of the religion – you were both raised as Catholics. Outside of the culture – no man you had ever been with back home ever apologised the way you expected, either. You realize what it is – the apologies are an afterthought. What else are you going to do? What else could they be but forgiven?
Then you wonder about an old friend. You see something from his girlfriend on Facebook (you don’t know if you and he are still friends, you haven’t looked it up) and wonder about him. It amazes you that ten years ago, your ex-boyfriend dumps you right before a planned trip to spend Christmas with your parents and, with an extra ticket to the Philippines to spare, you offer it to him. Nothing romantic; just that you were both dumped and hurting and at least it would keep you both busy over the holidays. He declined, or something, no hassle, but you remember how close you must have been then to even talk about the idea, and now you hadn’t spoken in years. You remember that you ghosted his friendship because you found you could no longer stand him and his inane concerns. His drunk driving; his salary negotiation tactics; his failure to take his girlfriend seriously. Maybe he was always that way and you never noticed. Maybe he was a different person when he was a college student and had only been with one girl his whole life. But still, he had changed, and so easily too. And it seems you had, too.
And now you have another friend, someone you’d also known for a few years. When you were living in the city and a Saturday night could end up in a basement club filled with scented smoke and beer farts, you and your boyfriend at that time would spend a weekend looking for girls for him to take home. A famous story that has been relayed in your presence a lot: in one such club a girl turns around and starts chatting your boyfriend up. Your boyfriend mentions he’s with someone already but gestures to his right and says, Oh by the way, have you met Z? Z ends up taking the girl home, not before he someone convinces her it’s a great idea to take her heels off and drive the urban rickshaw they get shuffled home in (the rickshaw driver gets a free ride and the fare). Or maybe he doesn’t convince her; he just lets her drunk ass do it. Or maybe he voices some objection half heartedly (who doesn’t want to see a drunk girl ride a rickshaw home?!?!) but lets her do it anyway. In the end, the fact remains: he relays this part of the story with gusto.
This friend is also grinding your gears on other matters that at first seem like small nothings: the way he always seems to come down just when the coffee is ready; the way he always offers a hand just when everything is done. The way he winks at you sometimes; in pure jest, nothing perverse. Just – who winks? People who think they look great winking, is what. It’s a pure exercise of vanity. The way he keeps quitting when things get hard, and how he always justifies that it’s because he can get something better. How he’s in his mid-30s and still rents a room from strangers because he just keeps making poor life choices. He has a good white collar job but is pathologically unable to manage his money. He is the only boy in a family of all girls and a mother who left them when they were children. He refers to his father in the third person full name; first and last name.
Then it dawns on you that he’s grinding your gears because he thinks you’ll forgive him the way everyone else does. Because what else can you do? What else can he be but forgiven? His sisters, the women he beds. He’s not a mean or abisuve fella. He’s good looking and very easygoing. Goes along with everything you want, not a bother in the world. Up for a night out; reads actual books. He’s a decent person, but my god does his privilege appear so obvious to you now. He doesn’t go to his room with all of his belongings stuffed into two duffel bags and thinks he’s made some unwise decisions. He knows if he has to he can charm his way into places, experiences. Almost married a rich girl with a penthouse apartment. Told me they were conspiring to kick her brother out so they could have the whole place to themselves. In the end it turned out she was way more privileged than him: RICH rich people privilege, which is another level entirely (white rich males, well, that’s the jackpot isn’t it). But still he keeps trying to get back in there.
You try to convince him not to quit school; he’s gone back as a mature student and after the first semester got bored and gave up. (He had been doing well; you suspect it’s because he was one of the older students in the class and he didn’t want to be known as that). Instead he goes to work for a bank, takes out a small personal loan, and with that money that he insists he’ll pay back, decides to emigrate. His response at the end of almost all your questions is, Sure it’ll be grand.
It bugs you to think of people in your life this way. Maybe you’re the one with the problem; the one who formed relationships with these people in the first place, the one who probably encouraged them with your friendly flirting and your infinite patience listening to their romantic adventures. You were always trying to hook them up with friends; thank god they were always more sensible than you and ran in the opposite directions. Maybe it’s your delayed realization that this is the very essence of male privilege – the absolute, and I mean absolute – confidence that you will ultimately be fine. Without having to work for it very much; without having to reflect. You don’t recognise this confidence- it’s a strange concept to you. It’s not that you worry about everything – it’s that life is not a confidence game to you, so why bother? Why do you need it? Life is hard by design, and you feel like pretending it is otherwise is delusion. Again, not that you need to be Chicken Little; it’s that this confidence feels like an unfair advantage; a breaching of the rules.
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I don’t know. Maybe I’m just jealous. Maybe I’m just full of insecurities (but honestly who isn’t?). Maybe I’m irritated at what men think they can get away with, and we all just laugh and give them leeway and all this other shit; forgive them. Maybe I’m pissed off that women get called crazy. What’s the most typical negative thing men get called? Creeps? Pervs? Even that can be mistranslated when looked at from the other side. Popular with women; charming; romantic. There’s no similar mistranslation for crazy.
Maybe the worst thing that I’m feeling is, what can I really say? What would my airing this out result in? Introspection? I doubt it. Acknowledgement? So what. My friends, these boys, they’ve done me no wrong, really. They are just themselves, with everything they can be afforded to them. I’m just tired of it, trying to not think about how, what I was taught to be was to be of service, not to try and get things handed to me. I can feel it now, in my bones. My skin crawls thinking about the way some people just want their lives to be easy. Because I know that inevitably, as with any duality, when someone has it easy, someone else has it hard, harder than it has to be. Nature is a zero sum game like that. It’s no wonder that most mythologies have a feminine earth and a masculine sun. She does all the work and he just shines there like a golden god.
doloresappreciationsociety 