Sunday, December 22, 2013

Aggression and Bags of Things

If you dare to the streets, the Saturday before Christmas in New York City is a day of survival.

After dehydration and populace attack, we were on the elevator in our building, returning to our refuge. And like everywhere else, it was packed.

Sometimes, you are emboldened in an elevator, when you are fresh out of audience in your regular life and you have the sense of a sympathetic crowd.

The elevator was filled with only men, straight it seemed, in their thirties and forties. I had to test their agreement to a joke to my husband, medium-loud for all to hear, in a measured tone that was admitting, “I’m trying this out.” And here I went:

“If there is any doubt that women are as aggressive as men, try to walk on the sidewalks of New York with them and their shopping bags. They put Kublai Kahn to shame.”

Full titters. No one thought I was the crazy guy with the mouth. Complete agreement all around the elevator. We exited on the fifth floor. A risk. And a success.

Ladies: Send me all the you-misogynist-fuck comments that you want. But when you XX’s are on an adrenalin infused shopping jaunt, you are simply a bunch of violent monsters. And all the guys think so.

And they are tired of it.

But they are also sort of sweet about it and laugh in agreement and not with hatred  because, “Hey, these are the things we want to fuck.”


The truth is in elevators. Some stuff never changes. Sorry.

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