Sunday, February 26, 2006

A Pool in the Dirt

What women hate about me:

My pretty blue eyes. My strawberry lips. My converted barn and outlying shacks. My cherry red boots. My disdain for religion and the religious. My Sunday newspapers. My pomposity. My clutch at terra firma. My occasional stabs at flight. My huge collection of children’s annuals. My bandy legs. My cheese and chutney sandwiches.

What women like about me:

My collection of blue shirts. The way I sing sometimes when I wash the pots. My dedication to a kind of old fashioned rinky dinkiness. The indignant letters I write to the newspapers. My nerves of steel and my balls of twine. The way I steer the car to the supermarket. The indignant letters I receive from the newspapers. My huge collection of Latin Americana. The fact that I always do my thing, no matter what.

1. What women like about me is at least as much as what women hate about me. So, on the whole, I sort of do okay. Take, for instance, the fact that every night this week I’ve been out with a different woman. That’s five women. Of course, when I say this week I mean Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Five women in a week. I had sex with two of them. The week before I shagged three of them. So I reckon it’s about fifty per cent. I mostly get them on the footpath on the way home. You’d be surprised how many of them are up for that.

2. What women like about me is that I am old and stupid and smell of fish. They like that their cats like to lick me. And that I’m too old and stupid to get them off. The cats, that is.

3. What women like about me is the fact that I am never wrong. Never. And I tell them too. They like that, being told. It’s all about dominance and masculinity. Having a deep voice. Shouting.

4. What women like about me is my alcoholism and the clichés that come with that. The poetry. The academic half life. The affairs. The jumpers and cigarettes. The red wine stains on the carpet. They like the fact that I get invited to lots of interesting parties. That I’m surrounded by young people. Young students. Male students. They think they’re getting the dean. They think they’re the dean’s wife.

5. What women like about me is the money I earn, the car I drive and the big house I live in.

6. What women like about me is my tiny hands and feet. My thin chest and my poofy hair. They like to push me around and tell their friends how sensitive and considerate I am. They like that I’m opposed to animal testing. They like that I don’t drink. They like that I smoke weed. They like that I’m a whisper in the corner and that if they turn too quickly they can’t even see me. It’s a trick I cultivated at university. To hide the fact that I don’t really like women.

7. What women like about me is that I am cool, hard, domineering and unforgiving. Yet sensitive too. They like that a lot. The fact that I’ve got such a winning combination going on. And a big nob.

8. What women like about me is my dog, Ruggles.

9. What women like about me is that I make them laugh. It’s something I always do. As the saying goes, “Get them to guffaw and you’ll go faw.” Or “Once they’re giggling they’ll soon be wriggling.” I mainly make them laugh by telling them jokes. Like, you know, what did the lion do when he turned off his laptop? He plugged it into – no, hold on. I mean, what did the lion do when the battery ran out in his laptop? He plugged it into his mane. No, manes. He plugged it into the manes.

10. What women like about me is my tight T-shirt and jeans and the fact that I’m a good mover on the dance floor. They like that I take care of my appearance and that I’m well-groomed. They like the fact that I’ve got an arse that only a real man could love.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was entertained by this, smiled and even gave a little chuckle, but then when I muse further I'm a little uncomfortable because I've been drawn in and entertained by a narrator that doesn't like women. A tricky little piece this.

4:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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12:50 AM  

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