TheBanyanTree: The Women I am Not

[Monique]

Not bragging, of course you're not, but you harbor snide feelings about
domesticity, you have some sort of idea that women who congregate talk
about laundry soap and babies (and yet, you do congregate with other
women, do you not?) and it may surprise you to learn that women who like
to take care of other people, who may even enjoy it and regard it as a
fine way to live a good life and are happy, may also enjoy kissing, sex,
men, even showering, conversation with people and not just the
"interesting" gender, and yet may even love decorating, and are also
weird and wonderful. I know many of them. Conventional? I don't know any
conventional women myself, any more than I know any conventional men.
Conventional meaning, I'm assuming, boring, uninteresting, different in
a way we may not be able to define yet we know we don't like it because
it's not cool, it's not US for cryin' out loud. 

My mother was unconventional, not what one would call domestic. She no
doubt had snide feelings about it herself, and wouldn't hesitate to
apply labels to women who were with that note of contempt in which one
could hear, "And there, but for the grace of God, go I." She spent a lot
of time in bars, dragging me along with her much of the time (when I was
a child -- once I became of age I could refuse to go with her), and when
she wasn't married to one of her many husbands she was trolling for new
excitement, new fun, new experiences, and was not at all opposed to the
idea of dropping her kids off wherever she could if a new opportunity
arose to go out and find herself. She left my dad because he was "too
nice." Too nice, too safe, not exciting and dangerous enough.

She never did find herself, though I do believe she's given up the quest
and now just does what her current husband tells her to do, who is not
as nice as my dad. That would not happen to you of course. You are much
too smart for that.

I do have a fear that should I have any of those nasty things, such as a
shower, engagement, baby, whatever, someone who regards those things as
simply too stupid to deal with will feel pressured to come, and that is
most certainly the last thing I want. Perhaps if I provide an assortment
of men to flirt with, that would help? I don't know how to have a
one-gender party anyway, but it still might be best to decline if you
fear being subjected to girl stuff. 

I think domesticity is a fine thing, if one likes that. Sometimes I just
want to go home and make my house pretty and cook. I think not being
domestic is a fine thing, if one likes that. Sometimes I want all of
that done for me. I harbor no snide feelings about either, but then
again, maybe I'm too conventional, too boring, too much of a girl. I've
even been known to wear panty hose and heels. I know, a shocking
admission. I've been known to get all pretty and go out, and I've been
known to schlep around shopping in a sweatshirt. I've even been known to
schlep around to clients in a sweatshirt one day, and dressed to kill
another. Why not? I'm not defined to a rigid role of rebel
nonconformist, to a picture of "look at me, I'm special in my rejection
of all things domestic!" I do not define myself by what I am not. I just
am what I am.