Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-12-29 - 8:52 a.m.

Dynamics

I had dinner over the holidays with a friend and our Sig Others. It was a lovely dinner; she's a very gracious hostess and an excellent cook, but more than that I never get to spend enough time with her. However, time spent with the four of us is somehow not exactly time spent together; it's different, somehow.

It's interesting, to watch those couple dynamics. I mean, this woman and I have been friends for more than twenty-five years, and let's be honest - the men have come and gone, talking of Barry Bond. I was her bridesmaid, she was my matron of honor; I attended her second wedding too, she was Chief Emotional Support (Matron of Dishonor?) at my divorce. She married a man I had lived with for a few years. I lived with the best friend of her first husband. She lived with the best friend of MY ex-husband. We can reminisce - "Remember the guy with the purple pants? Or the rock-climber? Or the guy who couldn't eat tacos without getting grease all over his chin?" Now we're a little older, a little more steadied-down, a little more world-wise (or world-weary), but I notice one thing that hasn't changed. We both still feel responsible for our men.

We sit at the dinner table, and we're relaxed with each other; I know she won't burp at the table, and she won't object if I eat a lettuce leaf with my fingers. She makes what she knows is my favorite salad in the world, and I bring her flowers that, while they're not perfect, are at least in colors I know she likes. She serves the salad in a wooden bowl I gave her, and reminds me that was exactly twenty-five years ago. We're not strangers, we couldn't be if we tried. But these men, even though they've been around for years (mine for three years now, hers for a peripheral twenty, although his status is new) they're still strangers. We TALK a lot about them, but we don't actually get together, all four of us, very often at all. They have that peculiar boyfriend status, where we're judging constantly - do I really want to be doing this, with this person? Is this working? Could it work better? Could it work better with someone else? And each thing our men do and say is thrown onto the scale with everything else for this constant weighing. How do you behave with my friends? It counts.

You know, writing this is giving me a lot of empathy for our men. Damn, they thought it was a social dinner, when it was really just another section of the ongoing job interview. We watch them, and listen to them, and when they chew with their mouths open or make slurping noises or refill their wine glasses too often or make ignorant statements, we're embarrassed. We're embarrassed for them, and for ourselves for choosing them. We feel responsible.

When we take our children to dinner, we feel responsible too, but it's a lot less embarrassing. Everyone knows that kids are learning manners, and besides, you can't really snap at your boyfriend, "Knock it off or YOU'RE not getting dessert". You WISH you could, but you can't. In fact, if you say, "Wow, you're having MORE wine?" you embarrass not only yourself but everyone at the table, and the whole dinner gets rather stiff and sufferish after that.

So the whole dinner has the undertone of an eight-course balancing act; you're looking across the table at your man, and he's mopping beef juice up with his roll or picking his teeth with his fingernail while remarking that those Afghanis sure had it coming, and you're mortified that you actually chose him, and you're internally begging mercy and trying to figure out how to interrupt with some of his GOOD points - ("Hey! How's about you play piano for us?") when in reality, of course, the mature and non-co-dependent reality, his behavior is his OWN problem and if you and your friend were going to judge each other by your men, you probably wouldn't have made it twenty-five years. We still haven't forgotten that taco grease.

It does give me some sympathy for men that consider a well-endowed woman in a low-cut dress to be a reflection of their successes and a worthy ornament. Damn, we do it too. We have our own mental version, but it's probably no more admirable and certainly no kinder. We love them and accept them in private, as well as we're able, but when we take them out, they're trophy men.

Scary, isn't it?

BF, who will not read this essay, does not really mop his beef juice with a roll OR pick his teeth, and he would never make a comment like that about Afghanistan. That was hyperbole, and now I feel obligated to clear his good name - or perhaps mine. :-)

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