I remember the first time I saw Fatal Attraction, featuring the pre-bald Glenn Close and a much younger Michael Douglas. I recall thinking what a whacked out psychotic bitch she was — how many women want to get laid by a guy so bad that they’ll slash their wrists with a razor for attention? I’ve never been fortunate enough to meet a man with personal endowments impressive enough to warrant that level of worship and drama.Yet it never fails: it’s the woman who’ll get the bulk of the bad press when, God forbid, she might want to see a guy a second time after a sex-filled midnight tryst. Maybe it happened only once when the man was going through a momentary lapse of common sense. Maybe he decided it wasn’t so bad the first time, and went back for seconds. Men should take Act II as a heartfelt compliment, because you can take it to the bank that if there’s no Act II, then you either sucked in bed or earned the nickname Pee-Wee.
But if a guy wants to see the woman again after one night of sex, and she agrees, they call it a budding relationship. If she didn’t want to see him again, they call her a whore. If she wants to see him, but he doesn’t want to see her, he claims he’s been a victim of “fatal attraction.” I beg to differ. You don’t get it both ways.
I have a dear friend in my social group who claims he’s going through a Michael Douglas-type situation with an alleged Glenn Close personality dead-ringer. Both of them are equally attractive, have their shit together, established careers, and are fun to be around. Neither of them is desperate for attention from the opposite sex. In another world and time, I’m sure they would have made a great couple. . . just not in this one.
Knowing them both, I have grave doubts that he’s suffering through the level of harassment he claims. He hasn’t exactly come home to find a bunny rabbit boiling in a stock pot on his stove. Men have enough ego to believe they’re being stalked when a woman just might want to know him better. Most of them don’t know what stalking is.
In the real world, yes, there are some women who are very much capable of making a guy’s life a living hell. But the fact of the matter is that women suffer from psychotic men a lot more often than the general public will ever know about; we play in an entirely different league of fears, one in which very few laws protect us.
“Stalking” is a difficult crime to prove, or even to convince the police to get involved in. I had a man call me almost 100 times in a single night, and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department wouldn’t even call the guy to tell him to stop. Women live with the fear every day, knowing that men ultimately have the capability of overpowering us at any time by sheer physical strength.
The truth is, nobody forces men to have sex with women. They do it of their own free will, be it under the influence of love, liquor, or lust. What makes the naughty romps more convoluted is when the sex occurs between two people in the same social group. It’s bad enough when the two are strangers, but when they were once friends, everyone is forced to take sides, and it becomes the ultimate he said/she said merry-go-round. The end result is separate guest lists for summertime gatherings. It just isn’t right.
So can things really go back to where they were before? I say they can.
Women are capable of being amazingly adaptable to almost any situation we’re given — provided there are reinforcements and rewards in place for doing so. Men, on the other hand, are much quicker to permanently sever ties and not only burn the bridge, but to blow up the road that took them there to start with.
In my eyes, when a man says “Can we be friends?” after sex, what he’s really saying is “Please don’t slash my tires.”
When a woman says “Can we be friends?” after sex, what she’s really saying is “I want to be friends, and forget we had sex.”
The unfortunate reality is that what she wants could work, but only in a perfect world. And this ain’t Disneyland.
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2002.
