Men Need Space
Men need space.
We’re talking South Dakota. Wyoming.
Men need Wyoming and the Mid-West.
The Mid-West was invented for men.
And it’s a good thing, because women hate the Mid-West.
What’s to like? The only good part is Chicago and moving away.
If Godzilla finally ate the place,
we’d only miss Seurat, Wrigley’s Field and pizza.
The Cubs, my heartbreak team.
Only men and the Cubs can raise me to the perfect pitch
of eternal hope and utter despair.
It’s like longing for Tzatziki in Santa Fe.
It’s the Crusades, with just sand and no Grail,
A Matisse without blue.
Jane Austen minus drawing rooms and narrative structure.
Men make me stupid.
When my lover leaves I discover a burning need
to clean out my bathroom shelves.
I stop hiding the facial hair bleach.
I throw out all the lipsticks bought from $1 bins.
Peach, it turns out, is not my shade.
I’m an autumn, whatever that means.
I suspect it has something to do with men.
1000 monkeys would have written King Lear and the OED
long before figuring out the seasonal color theory.
Bookstores now have whole shelves about men.
The New Drumming Man. Men and Zen.
Men and Your Need for Orgasms. Men and Pain.
My question is, yours or theirs?
Women’s magazines have always been about men.
How To Attract Men With Your Strong Yet Slender Thighs
How To Attract Men With Your Best Ever Chocolate Cake
Sheer Lacies With High Necks For That Lewd Yet Innocent Look
Oh Baby
And Orgasms.
How To Have Them With Men
How to Have Them In Swiftly Moving Vehicles
Standing In The Shower
While Baking Best Ever Chocolate Cakes
Then there are books on how to live through the pain-on-wheels
due to feeding Best Cake with our devastating Thighs,
to these longed-for men.
Now we need meetings.
We need Co-Dependent No More Or Hardly Ever
At Least Seldom
We need How To Love Yourself And Your Great Thighs More
While Mortifyingly Alone On Saturday Night
I had the best relationship of my life at Jewel-Osco.
I bought a bottle of Campari.
The club soda was right there at the cashiers.
I said to the Check-Out man, Now all I need is a lime.
Without missing a beat, he said,
Yes! And a cute guy to drink it with.
I said, Yes! And a Pre-Nuptial agreement.
He said, Yes! And a good divorce lawyer.
I said, Yes! I’ve been wanting to tell you I need . . .
??????
And he said, Yes! We need to talk. I need space.
It was perfect.
We did the whole thing in three minutes.
I had recovered by the time I got to my car.
It spared us months of grief, enormous phone bills.
I didn’t have to introduce him to my parents,
for whom he would never have been good enough.
His old girl?friend didn’t need to visit.
I didn’t have to get my kids to like him,
he didn’t have to work on my car.
Now, however, I’m in love.
Honey, he said, Darling, he said, I need space.
I felt sick.
He probably did not mean the Great Salt Flats.
Then he said the kicker, the clincher.
Sweetheart, it’s not you.
Who isn’t me? I ask.
You are not the reason I need space.
Who is, I say, my stomach dropping into my Tony Lama’s.
Now, I’m dying.
I want to be the woman he needs space from.
Published in Men Need Space, Sherman-Asher Press, 2000, Santa Fe
