Screwed

It so happens that all my female friends - the one I have stuck with anyway - are great human beings: smart, kind, witty, perceptive, centered and generally fun to be around.

Moving from place to place, I have made friends with women of all kinds of background, color, nationality, religion, you name it. But apart from being smart, kind, witty, perceptive, centered and generally fun to be around, they all share another characteristic: they are all heterosexual - and, to put it bluntly, it hasn’t done them any good...or most of them anyway.

F... there are a lot of assholes out there!! And it begs the question why these smart, witty and perceptive human beings have put up with them. Conditioning, disillusionment, hormonal knock out?

The fact is, most of my friends have by now been left by at least one of their partners. They are raising children on their own, fighting for child support, coping with insufficient child care and crazy work schedules.

One was deserted when she got diagnosed with cancer in the course of her pregnancy and the guy realized that that was really too much to deal with.

The other was left for some Argentine bimbo half her age, after giving birth to a child with down syndrome.

And then there is K. who for the longest time supported her husband and two sons by working night-times for companies in India and the US, until he thought that it was time to move on.

Most, however, were left before they were introduced to the merriments of motherhood - and that was probably lucky. One because she wanted to read Western magazines and go jogging instead of sitting hour after hour huddled together with her sisters-in-kaw, another because she was too successful, and my gorgeous best friend, because her boobs were not the right size, shape...or was it the circumference...?

My aunt always says there are two sides to the story and I tell her, yes, but one of them is
usually worse than the other and it’s rarely the one cracking the misogynistic jokes. She also says that she knows women who have done exceedingly well after divorces, and I tend to tell her that she is lucky. I know of one, and I am glad for her, even though I would scarcely count her among my friends.