Woman (10 page)

     "A perfect
description," Max said, nodding. "Women are second-hand dust."

     "Oh, why don't you
stuff
'it," Barbara told him.

     Max's grin was cruel.
"Right from the start, woman took from man. First, his rib. Then
everything else. To quote the Mahabnarata—"

     Barbara interrupted him, her
expression distorted by hate. "You've spent so much time researching your
distaste for women, it's no wonder you have no time for anything else,"
she said.

     Max's voice went on over
hers, speaking as though she hadn't. '"A wise man will avoid the
contaminating society of women'," he quoted, '"as he would the touch
of bodies infested by vermin.'"

     "Lovely," Liz
said, "Just lovely."

     "I trust you're
kidding, Max," David told him.

     "I only kid for
money," he replied.   .

     "Well, you're full of
it," Barbara said.

     "You were saying
David?" Liz said.

     He looked at her pleadingly.
Can't we
end
this? he
thought.

     "We're into it,
David," Liz said. "This is no time to drop it."

     "All
right"
he said, giving up. "At
the dawn of civilization, society was set up along matriarchal lines."

     "I'm back, you
matriarchal fuckers," Val said, coming into the living room. "The
pause that refreshes has refreshed."

     David went on, trying to be
oblivious to the air of tension in the room. "Giving birth, women were the
dominant figures. Men provided food and shelter and defended the community.
Everything else was female domain, including religion. God was female—born of
nature, benevolent and wise.
Wicca
in the Celtic language—the word 'witch' camefrom it. Men couldn't
understand that—or abide by it—so they declared it
bad.
Lilith for the Hebrews. Empusa for the Greeks, Lamia, the vampire.
Woman draining and destructive."

     "Right on," Max
agreed.

     Val grabbed his crotch and
leered at Candy. "Drain this baby."

     David felt a tremor of uneasiness
at the way Ganine was looking at Val. If he was right about her, he thought.

     "If women were
considered to be so dangerous back then, why did men have anything to do with
them?" Barbara asked.

     "Pussy maybe?" Val
said in a childlike voice. Barbara glared at him. Even Liz seemed less
receptive to her brother's attempts at humor.

     "Basically
correct," David told him.

     "See?" Val said to
Barbara.

     "If essentially
offensive," David said. Val made a noise as though an arrow was piercing
his heart.

     "Sex runs second only
to hunger need," David continued, not caring particularly now if they made
the show or not. "To compensate, men kept women in their places with
justifying rituals." He wondered how Liz felt about the awed expression on
Ganine's face as she listened to him. "The male-oriented church defined
witches as enemies. Religion lost its contact with nature and became a world
power, a form of government. God came to represent not love but vengeance, all
past ideas rejected. Including, naturally, female supremacy. Now the position
of woman was below man."

     "On top's not
bad," Val said, pretending not to understand.

     "In the Jewish,
Christian and classical traditions, evil came into the world through women.
David went on, '"From a woman, sin had it's beginning and because of her,
we all die'. Ecclesiasticus."

     Liz broke in. "How
about the serpent drawing Eve intotemptation?" she said. "Everybody
knows the snake is a phallic symbol."

     "She didn't
have
to pick that apple." Max's tone
was sly and goading.

     "Right," Val said,
maintaining the innocent, childlike voice. "She could have had a piece of
celery. Oh, no, that's phallic too."

     David continued as though
neither Max nor Val had spoken. "The so-called Original Sin is a male
concept of course. An excuse to set up a patriarchal system. Women confined to
rearing families, leaving men to roam the world at will, venting their
hostilities. Impaling animals for food—men for fun.

     "As Hays put it, 'while
women raised the children, men had time to put feathers in their hair, rattles
on their wrists and ankles, to paint their faces and shape their egos in anyway
that pleased them'."

     "Now that's right
on," Barbara said, nodding emphatically.

     "Or as Grace Paley put
it," David went on, '"Men used one foot to stand on women, the other
foot to kick each other to death with.'"

     "Undoubtedly," Liz
said. "Thank God it doesn't work that way any more."

     "I'm not so sure about
that," David countered. "Men don't wear suits of armor any more or
beat up women quite as freely. Generally speaking though—"

     
"Candidly
speaking, you mean, "Val corrected.

     "All right," David
nodded. "Candidly speaking, things haven't really changed that much. Male
attitudes remain pretty much the same.

     "Civilization has been
patriarchal for such a long time that the very definition of femininity is, as
it always was, prejudiced, i.e., Masculine: strong and superior. Feminine: weak
and inferior. In the standard dictionary, one of the definitions of the word
'female' is 'denoting simplicity, inferiority, weakness and the like'."

     "Dictionaries prepared
by men," Liz said.

     "Of course," David
agreed. "That's the point."

     "If women were
superior, they'd be our masters," Max said. "They're where they are
because—" He broke off, grimacing.

     "Because
what?"
Barbara challenged him.

     "Forget it," Max
said.

     "No, let's hear your
pearls of wisdom."

     "I said
forget
it," Max's voice was tight.

     "Look, why don't we
just wind this up and limo to the theatre?" David said. "Let's not
let this sour the entire evening. The bottom line is that we have, on our
hands, an irrational system in which approximately half the human race regards
the other half, at best, with condescension and suspicion, at worst with hatred
and fear. Men, afraid of women, constantly creating an overall situation which
perpetuates this pointless alienation. As I said this afternoon on my program,
what women need right now is their own personal Lincoln. End of subject."

     "End of acceptance
too," Liz said. "We just don't buy it anymore."

     "Nor should you,"
David responded.

     "Yoko Ono said it all
when she described women as the niggers of the world," Barbara added.

     "Love that dark
meat," Val said.

     "You just don't get it,
do you?" Barbara told him acidly. He made a face at her.

     "Never mind a Lincoln
for us," Liz said. "We'll take a Civil War if that's the way it has
to be. I'll mount the goddamn barricades any day in the Week."

     "So will I!"
Barbara said loudly. She looked at Max with scorn. "No retort?"

     He scowled at her but said
nothing, emptying his drink.

     "Shall we change the
subject now?" David suggested. "Go down and get our limo ride? I'm
sure it's waiting forus."

     "Men always want to
change the subject when they'relosing," Barbara said, a smug smile on her
lips.

     "No one's winning, Babs,"
David told her.

     "Hey, tell you
what," Val broke in, grinning. "You wanna change the subject?
Perfect. Before we go, I'll do Country Boy performing Hamlet's soliloquy."

     "Oh, Jesus," Max
muttered.

     Liz was looking at her
watch.

     "It really
is
time to go," she told her
brother.

     "You said there was
time
before," Val argued.

     "Maybe I'll join
Charlie in the bathroom," Max said. "We can be nauseous
together."

     "Or full of shit
together," Val said sharply. "Sit down you dumb fucker."

     Val got up and moved to the
open floor. "Okay, let's go," he shouted suddenly. "Charlie, get
your crapping ass out here! I'm going to emote!"

     There was no sound from
Charlie. Liz got up and went to the bathroom door. "Are you all right,
Charlie?" she asked.

     "Yeah, I'll be right
out," he told her in a grumbling voice.

     "Well, let us know if
you need anything," she said.

     "Like a fucking cork
for your asshole," Val said irritably.

     Liz sat down again. Barbara
was blowing out her breath, looking bored. David had to repress a smile. Max
was sitting, looking sullen and uncomfortable. Ganine stared at Val. Candy was doing
the same.

     "All right, goddamn it,
can I start now?" Val said. "You all know the set-up, Hamlet's mom is
screwing his uncle who poured some toxic shit in his brother's ear—Hamlet's
father."

     "Perfect resume,"
Max said.

     "Fuck off," Val
told him. "Okay. Anyway, Hamlet wants to nail his uncle's ass but he's not
sure about it which is why he does this soliloquy." He looked grave now.
"Okay. It's just the lady director and Country Boy alone in this
shit-house theatre in the middle of nowhere and the director'spissed off
because Country Boy won't get in her pants so she tells him he's been doing the
speech too artsy-fartsy all afternoon. She talks tough to him. 'Listen!
Kid!'
She's in her fucking forties, he's
just thirty-three. So— 'Listen!
Kid!
Hamlet's just a
guy.
He's uptight. He's thinking about falling on his sword or cutting
his throat or who knows what?' So he does this speech."

     "Well,
do
it, Val," Liz told him.

     "Okay, okay," he
said irritably. "Just setting the goddamn scene for Chrissake."

     He posed himself, attempting
a noble expression, one hand held to his left temple.