you’d rather die than have him see you in these clothes, your chances of slipping up are greatly reduced.”
She started laughing.
“I’ll have to drive extra careful when wearing this getup,” she said. “I’d hate to be in an accident and have to go to the emergency room in my C-grade underthings. What’s the other thing you said I could do?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask your gynecologist for an SSRI.”
“A what?”
“A bottle of Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, or Effexor. Maybe some Lexapro. All of those will make you forget about sex. They’re chemical castrators, believe me. The best side effect is you’ll not only be completely frigid, you’ll be the happiest frigid woman alive.”
“How’s that?”
“’Cause they’re antidepressants. They’ll keep you sane while he’s at the jeweler’s.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Yes, I am. And between me and my sister, we’ve had more than a half dozen diamonds of the highest quality.”
Men Who Have Maytags and the Women Who Love Them
Not long ago I ran into a man who took great exception with women who are trying to find decent men, even husbands, and the newspaper column I’d written on the subject. He fired off an e-mail that spread flames when I opened it.
Essentially, he said that all a woman really wants is a husband to buy her things, namely a washer and dryer. A washer and dryer? Come on. Where is he meeting his women? Fleece Night at the flea market?
I called him up, which I tend to do when people send blistering e-mails thinking that’s going to be the extent of the contact. No way he was getting off so easy, believing he could sputter his evil and simply hit the Send key with no repercussions. No, sir. I like to hunt them down in the phone directory and call their sorry good-for-nothing arses.
He picked up on the fourth ring, sounding as if I’d awakened him from a Percocet doze. There is an entire subculture of people I’ve discovered through my work as a journalist, who stay home all day with “ailments” and exist in a state of narcotic somnolence. Occasionally, they call and babble all sorts of indecencies and indignities.
“What is it?” the sleepy man grumbled.
“I’m calling about your e-mail, Mr. Hicks. It smacked of misogyny.”
“Say what? Did you say I was a pygmy?”
“No, I said miso—”
“Who is this a-callin’ me at this ungodly hour?”
“This is Susan, with the paper. You sent an e-mail and—”
“Woman, it ain’t even noon! All’s I said was you womenfolk is out to get men for all they got. In particular, a washer and dryer, if you know what I mean.”
“It’s true,” I said, “that some men—and I have to say in all honesty you sound like one of them—would rather be neutered than commit their love and lives to a woman, but the point of my story was how to meet great men in this small city.”
“You ain’t in touch with reality,” he barked. “All the women are out for one thing. To grab hold of a man and get married, then snatch all his money and everything else they can milk off him.”
Excuse me, el Anusaurus, I wanted to say. “Women work, too. Some of us even get paid better than these men.”
“Wake up and smell the wallet, woman,” he screamed. “You need a reality check. You are like all the rest of them just looking for a house and a washer and dryer.”
“What’s with this washer and dryer business? I don’t know a single woman who married a man for his Maytags.”
“Well, they do. Pure and simple.”
I decided to ask my husband, Tidy Stu, about this. He’d know. He once had to fight off a bevy of frumps chasing him for his authentic log cabin with the possum skeletons under the covered front and side porches. But come to think of it, he did own a stackable unit, and I imagine this intrigued a lot of his dates who were tired of changing dollar bills and sitting in the soapy humidity at Suds’n’Duds.
“Hon,” I ventured, “do you think women are only after men for their appliances and such?”
“That’s right,” he said. “That and our hardware.” He started laughing, thinking he was the wittiest person on the planet. “You saw my ’76 Buick wagon and then you had to sink your claws into me.”
“I saw that car and nearly ran for my life. It was a motorized mess, a horror on bald Goodyears. I married you because you’re neat and clean and can work a sponge better than Monet could work a paintbrush.”
A few days later the evil Anusaurus sent another scorching e-mail, all about how women are only after what a man can give them materially, so I dialed his number, this time at nine o’clock in the morning.
“I’ll have you know,” I said in my calmest but firmest voice, “that I’ve loved many a poor man in my day and so have my friends. One of my best friends, in fact, once dated a man who took her to a fast food restaurant and used a coupon for the corn dogs. She didn’t ditch him. They even got engaged and he didn’t own a single credit card—couldn’t qualify. As for a ring, he gave her an eighty-nine-dollar amethyst. She would have kept him, too, had he not gone to prison for robbing the Texaco. So there!”
He mumbled incoherently into the receiver, losing some momentum. “You women use your bodies as weapons.”
Yes, I’ll give him partial credit for that. Weapons of male destruction is what I like to call it. I’ve got a set of hips that could compact garbage and I’m considering buying a pair of enhancements that could double as flotation devices.
“Weapons, huh? Listen here. As for your comments about marriage being legalized prostitution, you are way wrong. We’re not all a bunch of hookers wanting washers and dryers. You need the spin cycle, you…you…ogre.”
He gurgled and tried to find his voice.
“Bye now. You have a lovely day and please refrain from e-mailing me again. I’ve put a hex on your address.”
As for the whole notion of husband catching, why, it’s something we’ve done since the dawn of man and womankind. Of course we want husbands—that is, if we’ve never had one. Those of us who’ve had one, if we are still half sane when the divorce ink is dry, would never have another. At least not for a while.
With men it’s different. They are really hard to marry off until they do it the first time. After the maiden voyage down the aisle, they can’t seem to want anything else. When the first wife leaves, they champ at the bit to get the second marriage rolling so the dinners don’t stop and the sex is fairly regular. They need a woman like a bed needs a blanket. Women, on the other hand, can live half a century single and call those the best years of their lives. I’ve seen it happen over and over.
With men a succession of wives is like a lifeboat, offering in the form of domestic skills such pleasantries as missionary trips to the bedroom, a roach-proof house, toilets without the rings of Saturn crusting the bowl, fried chicken and limas, rice and gravy with flaky buttermilk biscuits every Sunday.
I knew something of that nature was going on when my phone rang about a week after my run-in with the washer/ dryer psycho, and the past roared in like a storm surge. It was spring, which is the open hunting season on love in all its forms. There was definitely something in the air besides pollen when one fine afternoon in late April I had the great pleasure of hearing from an ex-boyfriend, the one with horse teeth and a high-pitched mosquito-whine voice. He was the boyfriend before Thurston Truitt III.
It had been eighteen or more years since I heard that soprano, but the spring heat, a wife who bolted, hormones, and the