Читать книгу What Makes Women Happy - Fay Weldon - Страница 25

Girls together is good, girls together is fun and usually noisy. But notice how bitterness against men seems to be hardwired, as if nature had bred us to be suspicious of the male, on the lookout for bad behaviour. There’s something in us of the female cat, not letting the tom near the kittens in case he eats them. Put us together and there’s no stopping us. Listen in to the talk and laughter at a girls’ night out: anecdotes about the follies of men, jokes about the minimal size of their parts, tales of male vanity and self-delusion – their stumbling mumbleness, their crazy driving.

We egg each other on to disloyalty. We are the women; we close ranks in opposition to men. The food gets cold on the plate in our excitement. The wine is quickly drunk, and more wine, and vodka shorts. We are the Maenads just before Orpheus comes on the scene to get torn to bits.

And then the mirth gets bitter. It isn’t really funny, it’s real. Someone begins to cry.

Men who leave, men who won’t leave, men who fail to provide, men who don’t love you after all, men who are a sexual disappointment. Past husbands, vanished partners, the ones who never washed, the ones who had the au-pair girl. Men: ridiculous, pathetic, sad.

The noise diminishes and fades away. Silence falls. Time to count heads and divide the bill. Those who have partners slip away, feeling guilty and grateful. Those who haven’t go home on their own, or walk each other to the bus, and tell themselves all they need is their friends.

I have in my time enjoyed such gatherings immensely. They are a great pleasure. Life is good. The trick is to pay and leave just before the silence falls. And try not to be the one collecting the money and tipping the waiter.

Go to Norway and Sweden and notice how the restaurants are full of men. Few women eat out. Yet in theory these are super-equal societies. The women, one supposes, can only prefer to stay at home. These all-male meals – tables for four, six, eight, ten, more – tend to be silent, grim affairs. Men like to sit side by side, silently, metaphorically locking horns, and don’t seem to have nearly such a good time as women do. But they do seem to get happier as the evening progresses, not the other way round. Life gets better, not worse. It isn’t fair.

Nothing’s fair.

It’s unfair that some people like sex a lot, some very little, some not at all. The capacity for pleasure is not doled out equally or fairly.

(It is probably a good idea that people with equivalent levels of sexual energy partner one another, if they want the union to last. People need to wear each other out in bed. Three times a day, three times a week (the norm) or once a year – so long as both are suited, what’s the worry?)

Mind you, the easy-orgasmers, the lucky 20 per cent, are not always popular with others. The papers this morning were in a state of outrage about Sandy, a feckless girl of 19 who went on holiday to Spain leaving her three children in the care of a 15-year-old. When summonsed home by the police and the media, she refused to go. She was having too good a time, she said. She had her photo taken burying her head into the bare chest of a semi-naked waiter. I bet she had orgasms at the drop of a hat. She knew how to enjoy herself. She was not anxious. She did not feel guilt. She well and truly broke the ten-minute rule. She stretched it to a whole week of drink, drugs, sex and ecstasy before guilt set in and she flew home. That’s one way of doing it.