"Please, Woman" by M. Ocampo McIvor

Please, Woman

Please. You only like the stories that make you swoon like an idiot. The world is big, you know, there's more going on than your celebrity train wreck obsession. Or the dating and relationship garbage you find in those magazines. Or it’s marriages and affairs and women scorned. It's all the same shit, it’s exasperating.
Abby’s lecturing me again. But why so harsh? It was just a joke. Girl needs to chill. All I said was she should get her nose out of her textbooks and venture out into the real world, experience real life. Geez.
But she caught me leafing through Us Weekly, irritated, then glared at my stack of romance novels, rolled her eyes. So what. We're all entitled to guilty pleasure, I say. She listens to crappy music and I don't give her grief about it. Besides, I learned some history in those romance novels.
Bullshit!
Nostrils flaring now. If I weren’t in a good mood I’d slap her silly.
MeToo and TimesUp and still, The Real Housewives and The Bachelor are as popular as ever. Have you read the tweets and comments from women obsessed with those shows? Fucking disgrace. They have no right to complain if they're seen as catty, gossipy, and dimwitted. And just look at these magazines. Shameful. Disgusting. If you demand to be seen a certain way, then be that certain way. Wanna know what kind of shit sells with women? Numbers don't lie. That's why they keep making shit like The Real Housewives. Fucking hypocrites.
I raised an eyebrow at her out-of-the-blue tirade. Maybe she meant to hurt me with her contrarian feminist rage, but I'm not a woman, and reminded her of this.
You’re included. You’re just as catty. And more gossipy, more bitchy.
No, actually, I've never felt included in that whole women's movement thing. That's all just for privileged white women, if we're gonna be honest. So I wasn't hurt. Annoyed, maybe. I flung a used cotton ball at her face, flipped her off, told her to take a pill for her PMS or get laid. Right now she's being bitchy, flashing her claws at me. Chill, tiger.
Fuck you, RuPaul.
See, she doesn't even know where I belong. I bet she ran Black Lives Matter in her head, but I don’t quite belong in that camp either. It's frustrating for people when they can't put you in a category.
I brushed my eyebrows, winked and blew her a kiss through the mirror. I decided, it's not about me. She scrunched her face at my reflection, got up, walked three steps to the kitchen. She stood there for a bit, tapping her foot and looking lost. After some deliberation, she sliced herself a piece of last night's cheesecake and stormed off to her bedroom with her textbook and highlighter and cheesecake. I called out behind her: I'm going now. Later, Princess.

—

That night, I came back to the apartment to find Abby staring into the fire pit on the back patio. Tufts of smoke wafted into her hair but she stayed still, unbothered. I knew a storm was brewing.
Jacob dumped me.
I sighed and sat down beside her, slung my arm around her. It was already nine in the evening, and I wanted to unwind with a little show on Netflix. But that wouldn't be cool. Not with her like this.
I don’t even know what I saw in that misogynistic pig. Loses his shit over the thought of redneck dudes deprived of their AR-15s but flips out if a woman needs an abortion to save her life. Someone should slice his balls off, maybe he would see things more clearly. I wanted to believe he’d get over his bumpkin nonsense, but I should’ve known. Boy from Kansas . . . I just thought . . . And he was so . . .
Understandable. He had a pretty face. And probably good in the sack, I teased.
Yeah . . . he was fucking good.
I nodded my head and stared into the fire. Some things get in the way of our reasoning. I told her a joke: three guys walk into a bar, one was an all-around genius, the second was a human rights activist, the third had abs of steel, piercing eyes, a careless smile . . .
She laughed, then shook her head, nodded, and shook her head again. The truth is absurd.
Four months. What a waste of my time.
Was it?
I think he knew I was falling . . . Maybe I was no longer fun, you know? Maybe I was becoming too needy, too clingy. Maybe I . . . NO. I don’t. I hate him. I hate him.
I see.
She was shivering, so I put another log in the fire. I realized a moment later that she was only trying to suppress her sobs. I grabbed a blanket and draped it around her shoulders. She leaned into me and let the tears flow freely.
He was really sweet, you know . . . He was funny . . . He loved his family . . .
She laughed at a memory, then cried, then fumed at how pathetic she’s behaving over their breakup.
Why am I like this? Why do I care? He’s an idiot! An idiot!
I grabbed a couple of beers, and we talked late into the night. She griped about last week’s protest, railed about social justice, ranted about equality. We talked until all that was left of the fire was white cinder. But for all her righteous anger against racists terrorizing the community, or pussy-grabbing, white supremacists raping the country, she couldn’t bring herself to say what truly mattered to her: she wants him. That was all.
Why . . . Why . . . Why . . .
She's all cried out now, her voice tired and hoarse from endlessly analyzing the rejection. Round and round she went — self-loathing, denial, defiance — but always circled back to her wistful talk of his eyes, his voice, his lips, his hands. But I didn’t think it would do any good to point this out.

***

M. ocampo mcivor

M. Ocampo McIvor was born in the Philippines and raised in Toronto, Canada. She currently lives in Seattle where she worked for several tech companies before following the call back to literature. She is the author of Ugly Things We Hide.

Headshot: M. Ocampo McIvor

Photo Credit: Staff