“Bacon is so much better than men, right, ladies?” I raise my fist and get some hoots and cheers.
“But come on, isn’t this just man-hating?” Eric isn’t goingto let me get off with all softball questions. He doesn’t like anything about this segment. Or me. Well, no problem, Eric. Your cologne smells like eau de pompous ass. And you’re wearing enough of it to sanitize half the Chicago sewer system.
“It’s not about hating men, it’s about loving yourself,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. Several ladies applaud. “Solo February is for everyone, so you swear off relationships. It’s not just about cis straight women swearing off cis men. Or whomever. It’s really about focusing on one’s self, getting in a better frame of mind. I mean, I love men. They just don’t always love me back.” More laughs. And one “Amen!” Eric looks out at the audience and a subtle frown puckers his lips. He’s not happy. He glances back at me, and his gaze tells me he’s judging everything about me: about how I’m not as slim or as tall or as Nordic as he likes. He’s wondering, but not saying, why I would bother with Solo February sinceheisn’t interested, and he can’t imagine who would be. All of this I glean from his beady little blue eyes.
“Yes, but doesn’t it feel a little desperate?”
“How so?” I feel guarded. Like this is a trap.
“Well, I mean, aren’t you just playing hard to get?” Eric just shakes his head as if he already knows all the old “tricks” women play when they’re trying to seriously tell him no.
“Hard to get?” I echo, astonished. “But, going solo isn’t about having people chase after you. It’s about really working on oneself.”
“Honestly, I think you’re just pushing the problem on men. Ever thought if men don’t like you, then that’s ayouproblem?”
The audience lets out a gasp and a few longooooooohs aboutthe burn. Okay, Eric. Wanna play the toxic masculinity game? I love this game! My turn!
“The problem,” I say, “if we’re talking about straight men, is that some of them”—I’m talking about you, Eric—“think they have a right to everything they want. They think they can show up and be assholes”—Oops. I swore on live TV—“and we should still fawn all over them. We’re supposed to just take what they give us and be grateful. But that’s just not good enough anymore. Why are we always tying ourselves into knots forthem? Why dotheyget to call all the shots? Why do they—with all the privilege they get handed at birth—get to tell us we’re fat? Or our boobs aren’t big enough? Or that we should like sports more? Or that we should like the beers they drink? Or that we don’t make the salaries they make because we don’tnegotiatehard enough, even though when we try to do that, they tell us not to be bossy or pushy?”
Several loud ladies in the audience hoot.
“We can’twin.We dress too provocatively, then we’re asking to get assaulted. We dress too conservatively, and then we’re dowdy and don’t try hard enough. But when we try too hard, we’re high maintenance. We’re asked to becool,not be likethe other girls,but then when we are, we’re too manly, too… whatever.”
Eric’s beginning to look a little panicked now and he should.
“The things some of us like—romances and rom-coms and fizzy pink champagne arestupid and silly,but the things some guys like, like loud action movies, sports, and beer areimportant.Nobody is paying millions of dollars for a fifteen-second ad for a rom-com Christmas movie on cable. But they should.”
Someone in the audience shouts, “Preach!”
“We go on juice cleanses to clear our body of junk food, but what about junk men? Our souls need a cleanse. We need to get all those toxic men out of our lives by fasting. At the end of thirty days, we’ll be able to see them for what they are: entitled, privileged jerks who are messing with our lives because we let them.” I take a deep breath. “And we’re not going to let them anymore.”
The audience roars with approval and leaps to their feet in thunderous applause that seems to shake Eric’s chair.
Then I glance at Eric. “And, Eric, I’d say, with all due respect, that maybe if you see this as something that’sourproblem and notyourproblem, then maybe, quite frankly, that is the very definition of ayouproblem.”
“Oh, she got you. She got you good.” Veronica beams triumphantly at Eric. He looks down at his note card, face flushed red. How do you like being called out on live TV, Eric? Did some of that toxicity bounce off of me and stick to you?
I glance up and my gaze falls on the window leading outside. Shoppers on Michigan Avenue have stopped and are watching the segment through the clear glass with a clear picture of the studio. Front and center, I see… a familiar figure there. Jack Mann, standing at the window. He’s in jeans, a hoodie, and his peacoat, his thick dark hair stuffed beneath a beanie cap, his jawline sharp enough to cut that double-pane glass. He’s a walking reminder that there are good guys out there, and it might not be fair for me to paint them all with such an unforgiving brush.
“So, how have you personally been doing with the challenge, Sora?” Veronica asks me right at that moment.
“Me, personally?” Jack waves at me. I swallow. “Fine. Doing fine.”
“So, no dates for you until March first?”
“That’s right,” I say, and nod, even as I remember Jack’s ask to the Golden Chef Awards. The last weekend in February. “I’m one hundred percent date-free. Don’t want a date. Don’t need a date.”
I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m just babbling. The audience leaps to their feet with thunderous applause and a few hoots and hollers. It washes, tinny and empty, over me, as I fight back a hot flash of guilt. I feel like an impostor.
Veronica thanks me for coming on the show and sends us to commercial break, and as soon as the cameras are off, Eric curses and leaves the set. Veronica turns to me, beaming.
“You kickedass,girl. Love what you’re doing,” she tells me, and vigorously shakes my hand. “Galentines forever.”
I laugh, the guilt still thudding in my ears. I’m a fraud, I want to tell her. I might have put Eric in his place, but I’m not the crusader everybody thinks I am. But before I can work up the nerve to blurt out the truth, Veronica’s back studying her script and a tech guy whisks me away to untangle me from the mic attached to my dress. A few seconds later, I’m standing outside the studio on the icy sidewalk, snowflakes twirling around me. Cabs honk on the street, and a big bus lumbers by, kicking up black smoke into the wintry air. I find myself glancing around… and I realize I’m looking for Jack.
What am I going to tell him? How much of the show did he hear or see? My insides churn with indecision.
I hear my name called. Jack Mann is behind me.
