Life Happens

    One Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day, said the voice on the radio. She descended the stairs toward the tableau she knew was being staged in the living room in preparation for her appearance in the scene. She was ready. She hadn’t rehearsed, hadn’t known exactly what to expect, but was confident she could extemporize. So many iterations of various scripts had played out in her mind.  She knew she would rise to the occasion.

She entered the living room and saw him sitting wearily on the sofa frowning woefully, the deep grooves of his furrowed brow intentionally exaggerated. “Just look at us,” she said. “Neither one of us is happy. We really have to face the fact that we can’t go on like this. This marriage hasn’t worked for ages. Let’s agree that it’s over. We’ll both be happier apart. We’ll get along much better. We might even become friends again. One of us has to leave, and soon. If you don’t go, I will.”

That wasn’t at all what he had been expecting.

    Tubes, Truths and Trials

It would say a lot about a man who had already fathered an unknown child from unprotected intercourse, that he would be nearing his fifties without ever having learned to use a condom

It would say a lot about a man that he would cancel his subscription to the Wellness Newsletter because it reported, without any ambiguity, that there is no health-related reason to prevent a man from having a vasectomy, a safer procedure than tubal ligation

It would say a lot about a man that his wife nearing her fifties, after years taking the pill, after years wearing a coil, after years bearing children, would have to suggest that to prevent another pregnancy, it should now for him to be responsible for contraception, if he cannot forego his sexual expectations

It would say a lot about a man should he refuse and then accuse that she’s cold and uncaring and in need of sexual healing for her problems and her choices

It would say women’s bodies, women’s issues, are women’s problems

Especially if he were to joke, "You'll be pregnant in no time"

Especially if he were to protest, “I never told anyone I was a feminist”

I have never known that man