A Hard Question

The morning is quiet, uneventful. We sit at the table having coffee, savoring the day's slow beginnings. With decaf, I’m an eternity away from being awake. Her head is invisible, buried inside the newspaper. A pleasant day. So far, that is. Then, out of the blue she hurls the question, “What IS it with men?”

The question flies across the table, smoking hot, like a Wainwright fast ball. It clocks 98 mph and is too hot to handle, much less hit. The catcher’s glove erupts in flames. I step out of the batter’s box, avoid the pitch. Strike one, the umpire calls.

I know about her fast balls. I even know what she’s thinking by ‘The Look’ on her face. It’s a dead giveaway. I play dumb. I toss her a slow shoulder shrug. It’s a superior means of answering questions which have no answer. Words engender discussion. Early morning, fast-ball discussions are to be avoided.

But she continues. “Well?” she says. I attempt to deflect the question. “What are you reading?” I ask. She slides the Wall Street Journal over. “Read the headlines,” she says. I do.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is having a public catharsis, admitting to the world he fathered a child by his housekeeper of 20 years. Says he’s sorry. Being sorry is leaning on a weak reed. It elicits a revolting response. I lob my own outrage across the table. “Disingenuous,” I say with enthusiasm. Expressions of disgust are base hits.

“Read on,” she says, “that’s not all.” I do. Wow…Mr. Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, money-lender to the world, is being hauled off in chains to jail. He’s been arrested for assaulting a hotel maid. “What’s the world coming to?” I say. That’s what my father said to escape these situations. Answering questions with questions is a proper defense.

What man but a fool would actually attempt to answer such a question? Most would avoid it, pleading self-incrimination. In one way or another all men are guilty to some extent of, shall we say, inappropriate behavior with women.

But she’s back on the mound, winding up for another pitch. She throws the question again in a slow breaking curve ball, down and out. Ball one. “Come on,” she says, “what do you really think?” I toss a slow underhand ball back. “What do you think IT is?” I say. She baulks, shakes her head, checks first base.

Her question is actually a land mine. It explodes the minute a man steps on it. Venturing an answer will get a man thrown under the bus, taken to the woodshed or sent back to the farm team for remedial training. None is pleasant. I’ve experienced two.

Now most men with a gnat’s brain would only think of answers, but never verbalize them. But I’m not of that class. So I spurt out, “Because they can??” She slings a slow slider down the line. I swing, miss. Strike two.

Our discussion gets lively. We run through the most recent list of such abusers. The litany is long. It covers all genres, from golfers, to politicians, to financial masters of the universe and to the highest thrones of religion. Clearly something is bad wrong with the male gender. But we can form no consensus.

Finally the topic changes to a discussion of the latest tourist attraction…tours of underground European sewer drains. One man even proposed to his girlfriend inside of one. “Why would anyone want to tour a sewer pipe?” I ask. And then it hit me…the answer to the question of What IS it with men?

There’s just something in the makeup of humans, especially men, that makes them favor the low road. They have to ‘go low to get high.’ I admit it’s grasping at straws, but hey, answers are hard to come by for questions like these.

No use to continue beating a dead horse. As we leave the table she asks again if I want to add anything to the conundrum. “Yes,” I say. “Let’s hear it,” she says.

I blurt out, “It’ll be easier to convince the Statue of Liberty to whistle Dixie than try to convince a woman she may be culpable.”

Zoom…I never even see it go by. Strike three.

Bud Hearn
May 19, 2011