Men!

On Wednesday night I went back to the Upper East Side for a reading in a fancy townhome turned art gallery. A trio of deadpan writers performed. Girlhood, sex, grief. I cried because I know how it feels. Afterward, a younger acquaintance told me about a crush, how she's never had to compete for a man before. For a Manhattanite, this was hard to comprehend, but looking into her big, doe eyes, I believed it.

I have a friend whose exes have been haunting her. A handful of them, the worst ones, mysteriously resurfacing in texts like someone put a hex on her. Sometimes I wonder about my own ghosts. Are they doing OK? Have they found love? But inevitably those thoughts spiral and become about me in the context of them, them in the context of me. Exes are a projection, which is why it’s unwise to answer a surprise Facetime, or send an “I’m thinking of you,” text. Just now I imagined an ex reading this, me sending a note into the ether, he responding. But the truth is, my husband won’t even see it.

It's easy to disregard straight guys but it's also easy to mourn them. It’s sad when the sex is bad, or when the sex is good but they can’t commit, or when they commit so hard that they can’t handle you being a person in the world. But for every shitty guy there's a crazy ex. TikTok says it’s a red flag for men to call women this, but girlfriends often behave badly. We expect the worst so we ask for too much.

Last night I requested that my husband cook dinner “for once.” He obliged but couldn’t find the anchovies. “Open your eyes!” I cried from the couch, the chubby cat a weight in my lap. “Don’t make me come over there,” something my father used to say. A playful threat with potential. Husbands can never find anything. How hard is it to make a salad? I stomped across the room in my sweatpants. The fridge, mysteriously devoid of cured fish. More inane bickering. An apology. A kiss. Imagine never having to compete for a man. Imagine fighting not to lose one.