At the end of the day, I am a man. The thing about being a man is that, for the most part, we are simple creatures. We know how to eat, sleep, and obsess about maybe one or two things – electronics, lawn maintenance, or skin care depending on whatever floats your boat. As long as our bellies are full and our attentions aren’t pulled away from watching our favorite TV shows for some trivial matter, we are content.
At the end of the day, I am a gay man. Being a gay man in social terms makes things a little more complicated than just being an average dude. In addition to managing the business world mainly ruled by straight men and somehow avoiding hidden landmines in the gay community, I am left with my girls – my beautiful, talented, neurotic, psychotic girls.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer a woman’s company nine times out of 10 to that of a man, and especially that of a gay man. But with the responsibility of taking care of my girlfriends, I am also pulled into a wild assortment and absolutely exhausting array of girl problems.
Since Karen Walker and Jack McFarland gave women the impression that a gay best friend is the new black, gay men all over the world have learned that the best way to be with a woman in a plutonic relationship is to accept her crazy while she accepts yours. Women give us life, they give us beauty, and they give us a lot of unnecessary headaches that we didn’t know we were signing up for.
Recently in the midst of three of my girls, I learned that one said something bad about another one while the third took the side of the first one. They all have to socialize and work together, and it is super awkward. They can’t tell me the thing they’re fighting over, but it was “really bad.” Adding to the problem is that one of the girls is a known liar, another one is overly honest, and the third is just becoming popular and wants to maintain and wield her newfound social power without losing her sweet, dumb-girl outer shell. As exhausting as it was for you to read the last statements, I had to live it so I don’t feel bad for you.
Another recent moment I realized that women are insane (in the most loving way) is when I learned the rules to dating through the eyes of a single Jewish girl in Manhattan.
First of all, I learned that there is nothing worse than being a single Jewish girl in Manhattan. Secondly, I learned that serial dating isn’t left to just the men of the world. This girl is so competitive that she accepts set-ups with other single Jewish girls’ exes, is on every online dating site, and, despite being deeply committed to each one of her boyfriends, the day after they break up she’s got 15 guys on back-up that get sent a group e-mail to go out somewhere.
While accepting her friends’ cast-offs, she will in turn set up other souls like herself with her exes. It all seemed terribly clinical for a woman I’ve found to be terribly romantic and looking for true love, but when she’d had enough wine and told me the truth I was shocked.
“I have a ticking biological clock, I have pressure from my family who says I’m an old maid at twenty seven, and there’s nothing socially worse than being a single Jewish girl in Manhattan.”
While women constantly look for the complexities that make a man not fall in love with them or dramatize a situation to the point where it becomes a historical truth, such as the husband who didn’t put his socks in the hamper in an undercutting fashion so the wife would get the hint that she’s fat, or attack a helpless girlfriend to show her own superiority, women need to at times, turn the mirror on their own crazy and own it.
While playing games with each other and playing chess with the people you love may seem fun, it is an easy way to alienate oneself from the crowd.
