Love is a Phallusy

How to bang your bleeding scalp against a brick wall for no special reason…

Ah men, to know them is to love them. Milk bar owners, late night taxi drivers, groups of them on the streets, in cars, in pubs constantly reaffirming our biology, sexuality and overall worth (e.g. show us your tits you cheap slut).

But one day, despite your best resolutions, you pick yourself up from your last futile attempt to understand one and meet a new brick wall. Maybe it was something in his eyes, his walk, his wallet. Ignore these excuses, they will only confuse you in the long run. You sacrifice some time you could be watching paint dry and agree to go somewhere with one. If you do not feel drained and mortified after it, and feel that buzz that a few sudafeds could have given you, you may may do it again. After a while this may even eventuate into the two of you running into the black hole of a twilight zone called a relationship.

This is where Tarzan feels his ownership over Jane. Put the vases and jewelry boxes away now, those days are over. But our boy is not stupid. To lull you into a compliant state, eventually he offers up these words: I love you.

You now have 1 of 2 choices: You can believe him (again, because this one is different, yeah, right) or you can stifle your giggles and say Bullshit! You don’t love me. It’s just that I am good for:

1. your libido
2. your domestic inadequacies
3. your trophy collection
4. the times when you can’t go out with the boys and you’re bored
5. a career accessory
6. remembering your mother’s birthday so you can stay in the will

However, I am willing to play along as long as you are good for:

1. my career
2. my wardrobe
3. my credit limit
4. my libido
5. my car repairs
6. getting my mother to stop nagging me about meeting a nice boy.

After all what can men give you that you yourself and a couple of good friends can’t? This is a partnership that works well.

However, some of us take the first option and happily trip along into the LOVE thing. After this charade has kept up for a reasonable time, you decide to live together—how wonderful! to get to know each other so well. Our hero is not stupid, now he has a live-in and so when he washes up he leaves bits on the plates, because he knows you would rather do it yourself. And despite his astro-physics background, the washing machine won’t work for him. So you end up doing everything. But before he rolls over to go to sleep, he says, I love you: Bliss!

You can either:

1. accept this, grab your cross stitch and Women’s Magazine to start clipping those recipes or
2. wake up to yourself and realise it wasn’t your fault but you have been fighting your own (and women’s worldwide) Waterloo. If you can hold down a job, an education, and a full-time maid’s position, surely our beloved could put that toilet seat down. So what do you do? Leave? Wait for him to change? (Bang! Bang! Bang!) Stay? No this one’s up to you, you were warned.

Just never give up your job, parents, friends or fun for him. Before too long you’ll have to anyway. You may find a suitable way around it. If you decide to soldier on, good luck! You will either spend the rest of your life with him, one of you will fall out of the love tree (leaving the other one annihilated) or one of you will die. That’s the way love goes. But if you are sure this one is different, ask the boys at the wall how many men drive up with baby seats in the back, (and I’m sure they said: “Bye, honey, just popping up to buy a boy, back soon, love you…)

It’s Ok. I’m not cynical. Maybe, I’ve just been banging my head for so long, I’ve got brain damage.