Coquetting Tarradiddles: Living With PMS And Surviving Machismo

I no doubt sometimes come across as a sexist pig in these little essays, but I'm actually a feminist at heart. I'm just also proud of my gender, insomuch as I can be, considering how deeply stupid and neolithic the average male is, at times. (Ok, so mostly I'm proud of a theoretical male gender, that could exist, if only it would.) I freely admit that my earlier entries were openly misogynistic, but I was going through the last days of a miserable and lunatic marriage. Cut me some slack, wouldja? I hated women then, and swore myself to be forever rid of cumbersome emotional ties to the mercurial beasts. I'm pretty sure almost all of us have felt this way, at some particularly low point in our lives. At times, swearing off of the opposite sex out of the sheer revulsion that comes from being attached to the revolting. And, at other times, vowing to use them up and leave them dry, as we ourselves felt used and bled. It's a passing hatred, of course. It's an oath taken under duress, and so lacks the veracity to stick.

It's a good thing, too - or I would have never met Brittany. To her credit, she endured endless sessions of wrath and loathing as I ranted about how evil her people were. How crazy. How infantile. How pointless. She listened, and she accepted - and, at times, offered her own colorful critique on us three-legged knuckle draggers. Our relationship began as a sanctuary away from judgment, where we could both show the hideous faces of our wounded selves and not shy away from the tragic scars that pocked and pitted our deathmask expressions. It was a difficult time, but one we grew stronger for having been through. Stronger in ourselves, and stronger in each other.

At some point, as the angry, red waters of hate and betrayal subsided, we both stopped treading water, and our feet again met solid ground. Our heads above water and breathing in the heady air of freedom, we found we were still together. Holding hands as that awful tide receded, we understood that we had found each other on the shipwrecked shores of a new life, and we smiled. We smiled, and we laughed, and we ran barefoot onto the powdery beach, kicking and splashing in the warm, forgotten waters of tidal pools left behind by the storm. Then, we ran out of metaphors, and moved on to the next paragraph...

As I was reading her entry from yesterday, where she chastised herself for succumbing to the rigors of menstruation, it occurred to me that Brittany sometimes does not give herself enough credit. Yes, she does become a different and sometimes frightening woman during that special time of the month, when a woman is reminded of just how treacherous her own biology can be. However, it's only a short time before she comes back from the insanity, and everything rights itself, once again. Sure, I have to be mindful of the invisible land mines scattered about the house, buried in the dark and hidden in curious places, but it's a small price to pay for an otherwise very stable and drama-free fiancée. In fact, given my unfortunate history of marriage to an absolutely bugfucked lunatic of a woman, Brittany needs to understand just how stable she truly is.

One thing I recognized instantly about Brittany, is that she is a terrible actress. Above that, however, she knows she's a terrible actress - and so, she does not act. Time spent among an unknowingly bad thespian, who sees and portrays herself as a character from a bad teleplay, gives one an understanding of just how refreshing it is to be with someone who is genuine and real. I spent years alongside the most incompetent of actresses, who's every syllable was forced and strained into a bizarre stage voice that echoed from the hollow and cavernous depths within her. Possessing little sense of self, she became whomever it was that she thought those around her wanted, like some sort of macabre Pinocchio, who never became a real boy, and who's strings were ironically tethered to her own puppeteering hands. Life with her was an exercise in creeping surrealism, where every day was lived inside a grotesque fishbowl of simulacrum and plastic.

I mention my ex now, not simply to bring her up again (as I have enjoyed the Elysian peace of her retirement from my thoughts), but because I need Brittany to understand what a wonderful, remarkable woman she is. I've known many women throughout my short time on the planet, and she is the best example of the nobility of the female gender that I've ever had the pleasure to meet. Sure, she has her moments of temporary insanity, but so do we all. I know I'm not above lunacy myself, and so I take great pains to make sure that even the tiniest of pebbles is kept at a safe distance from the glass of my house. I don't want to be tempted to start throwing them.

Besides, at least women have an excuse for going crazy, and at least it only happens once a month. Men, on the other hand, aren't so fortunate. We're forced to spread our lunatic ways across all the days of our lives, in even and terrifying measure. We start young, aiming toy guns at paper tigers and tugging on pretty pigtails. We grow up and our immaturity matures, and the toys give way to cars and trucks and strutting. We parade around, trying to have the biggest, brightest plumage as we begin to define ourselves by those we defile, and we enjoy the stupid grins on our stupid faces. Eventually, even this grows old and we remember our youth and those innocent toy guns. We trade them in for the real thing, and we find causes to give credence to our make-believe worlds. We go to war and aim phallic missiles at yonic targets. We strut around exotic places, in thundering tanks and armored personnel carriers that echo the cars and the trucks we played in back home. Then, once sated by blood and by bone, we return home as heroes and inspire young boys. The cycle renews, the cycle repeats, and the lunacy of our gender spreads like a cancer across the globe.