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“You’re so stupid.”
She was three and a half. And she could read. How can you be stupid when you’re three and a half?
“Winnie? Which is bigger? The sun or the moon?”
It was a trick question, and she had known it was a trick question. (She knew that she wasn’t good at trick questions. She always overtricked herself). “The moon?”
“You’re so stupid.” (She was four.)
Her father didn’t understand her. (Neither does James.) She couldn’t understand him (her father. And James). Couldn’t understand why everything she did was wrong. (What did he want? What did men want? Nothing. Maybe to be left alone.) Couldn’t understand why whatever her father said was law, even if he was wrong. (Why did she have to listen to him? Why couldn’t he listen to her?) And he often was wrong. He let their French poodle run without a leash, and he got attacked by a German shepherd. (“I knew he would,” Winnie sobbed. “Shut up,” he said.)
“I’m tough on you, Winnie,” he said. “I have to be. You’re lazy. If I’m not hard on you, I don’t know how you’ll turn out.”
She certainly is smart enough (she’s achieved a lot). Why does she have to fight for every ounce of respect? James doesn’t.
Why does everyone make her feel like a bitch? For standing up for herself. “You’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself, Winnie,” her father said. “Because nobody else will.”
He was right. Nobody else has ever stood up for her. Especially men.
What a useless gender. Ever since she was four and had to go to school with them and then her mother actually had one, she’s believed they should just be eliminated. Aborted. Okay, a few could be allowed to live. But only for their sperm. And they’d have to be excellent specimens.
What was all that crap about men that she grew up with? That one day, one of these (pitiful) specimens was going to fall in love with her (and actually love her—hah—whoever dreamed that one up should be worth a kazillion dollars), and make her whole. Give her something she couldn’t live without. (She can live without most of the penises she’s met so far, so it’s all a lie.)
Take James.
She had to get him. (It was supposed to be the other way around. But if she had waited, let him “make all the moves” the way men are always telling you to let them, she’d still be waiting.)
She had to pursue James the way she’s had to pursue everything else in her life. With straightforward determination. (She didn’t know how to play the boy-girl game. No one ever taught her. And besides, it seemed disgusting and dishonest.) “Listen, James,” she said at the beginning, after she and James had had six dates (and slept together on the fourth). “Listen, James. I’m not going to play games.” This was one week after their sixth date, and James suddenly wasn’t calling. She had to call him. (How dare he? And why? Why was he treating her this way?)
“I’ve been on deadline,” he said.
“You could have called me,” she said. (No one is too busy to pick up the phone, to make a one-minute phone call. No matter how busy they say they are. Sorry.)
“I forgot,” James said.
“You . . . forgot?” Winnie said. (Was it possible for a human being to be so stupid?)
“I’ve been on deadline,” James said. (As if this were an excuse. She should have known then. She should have run in the other direction.)
She didn’t know how to play games.
“You forgot,” she said. Again. (And he was an award-winning journalist.) “How dare you forget,” she said. “I slept with you, James. I had sex with you. We have a relationship. How dare you?” She hung up the phone. (She was shaking.) She called back.
“And you’re fucking lucky to be going out with me.”
Ten minutes later, he called. “Do you want to go to a book party with me on Monday?”
She accepted.
She should have run in the other direction.
She didn’t.
(A man once described his love for a former girlfriend to her: “She was like my lover, my mother, my sister, and my child,” he said. To James, she is only his mother.)
James needed her. (He still does nothing.)
When she met him, he was living in a tiny studio apartment with a loft bed. He had a bureau and a desk under the loft. He had one old couch and bookshelves made of cinder blocks and two-by-fours. He was thirty-two and his sink was full of dirty dishes.
