Weekend Frivolities
This past Saturday night, Tetris and I went out to a local club to watch a comedy show and were later met by a friend and his date for a night of drinking and goofing off. Sounds good, yes?
We moved from the dance club section to the allegedly “quieter” piano bar section of the club. After locating an area that was less crowded, but missing seats, the guys wandered up to the bar to get drinks and possibly score some chairs.
As we are waiting, I’m attempting to make small talk with our friend’s date, but it’s not going very well. At one point, she turns to me and says, “We need to move.” Curious, I stupidly ask why. “The guys said so, men talk, I listen.”
*cough* All righty then.
I think to myself that this is just a fluke, just a weird thing she said to be funny. Yeah, that’ll teach me to think.
Later, after realizing the crowd simply sucks and there’s nothing really happening of interest, we decide to leave and go back to our place.
I find myself being a courteous hostess and mix drinks for everyone. I’m standing on one side of the kitchen counter, the guys are on the other, and I’m minding my own business happily pouring liquor. At which point, said young lady turns to me and says, “Isn’t this just the way it’s supposed to be? With the women in the kitchen?”
*choke on drink*
I just looked at her and very quietly said, “Uh, what?” Which brings about a stream of uncontrolled nonsense from her mouth.
I don’t want to offend our friend, so I just quietly tell her that that’s probably not a conversation she and I want to have. Being a feminist, I tend to get somewhat irritated at young women who so blindly toe the patriarchal line. Tetris is laughing hysterically and telling her, “No, really, she’s a feminist, you don’t want to say that stuff to her.”
“A feminist! Wow, I’ve never met a real life feminist before! We should talk.”
“Uh, yeah,” I retort, thinking how much worse is this going to get. “We’ll talk sometime I’m sure.” Looking for an escape, I ask Tetris to build a fire so we can go outside.
While waiting for the fire to build up, she asks me a few questions, which I attempt to answer, but the answers she wants to hear are already programmed into her brain. She seriously buys into the whole men’s work/woman’s work concept. And at this point, I’ve had far too many drinks to argue. When she asks me, “If it weren’t true, why would it feel so right?” I simply tell her that it’s conditioning and programming, and we can talk another night if she wants, but not tonight.
So out to the back patio we all go. To which I am further inundated with the most inane garbage that I have ever been stuck listening to. I found myself alternating between anger and pity at this woman whose whole concept of self was based upon the status of the men she was associating with. I kid you not, the question, “Wow, you guys are bigwigs, huh?” was asked in all seriousness and earnestness.
I spent all Sunday attempting to recover from what was otherwise a lovely night. But still, I am left to ponder the sadness of a person who has no sense of self outside of what is granted to her by the men in her life.
And while I found her to be a perfectly lovely human being, kind and sweet and even a bit funny, I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a pencil than be subjected to another night of such overwhelming frustration listening to someone proudly proclaim their lack of self worth.