IT'S A WOMAN'S WORLD(eventually)

FATHERS DAY 2063  

or THE YEAR 100 A.F.(After Friedan)

   Welcome to any city, anywhere in the North American Union circa 2063, where everyone is celebrating the contribution of fathers to 21st Century life. Everyone, that is, except three AmeriCanadian fathers in the sprawling mega-city-state known as Torontoland.  Their names are Ed, Fred, and Ted, and they're talking a century after the establishment of feminism when women are in charge of just about everyhting, and a little more than half a century after the publication of the Atlantic Monthly article, The End Of Men. Read it here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135

  Let's listen in as Ed, Fred and Ted sit in Ed's kitchen, having a little chat over coffee, and some delightful brownies Ted has brought over.

  ED: Gee, thanks guys for coming over. It took forever to get the kids to settle down. Of course, I can't expect much help from Cheryl these days. She's out playing poker with the girls again tonight. Fourth night this week.

  FRED: Those brownies look delicious, Ted, but I'll just have a sliver. They go right to my waistline and thighs these days, and you know Cynthia practically has a coronary if I start gaining weight. And God help me if she sees a gray hair!

  TED: Where is Cyn tonight?

  FRED: (Sigh) Working late again on a case, she says. Probably chasing the office boy around her desk is more like it. Y'know, when I went to college, my dad told me try to land a doctor or a lawyer. "She'll make lots of money and she'll take care of you and the kids financially," he said. But what good is that if she's never around, and I'm left alone to raise the kids and run the household while she screws everything that moves?

  ED: And then, of course, they stumble in drunk at some ungodly hour and expect you to be waiting at the door in a pair of shorty-shorts, with a pitcher of martinis and a hard-on.

  TED: Then, when you're too tired to get it up, they roar at you: "I MAKE THE MONEY AROUND HERE. IT'S MY HOUSE. WHAT KIND OF HOUSE-HUSBAND DENIES HIS WIFE SEX AFTER SHE COMES HOME FROM A HARD DAY'S WORK????" Then, they hog the remote for the holovision and watch Ultimate Fighting all night.

  ED: Wow, is that what Eva sounds like when she's drunk?

  TED: Yep, that's Eva after an evening out power-drinking with the gals after they seal a big financial deal. She's taken to calling herself a Mistress of the Universe, and grousing about how a Mistress of the Universe shouldn't have to come home to an impotent sap of a house-husband. 

  FRED: Jeepers, that's rough, Ted. I'm sorry. But y'know, it IS a woman's world. They're in charge. Cynthia phoned the doctor the other day and basically brow-beat her until she put me on some sort of turbo-charged version of Viagra. I'm taking it, because I don't want to lose her to some young office-boy. Sigh. It's always been the way of the world.

 ED: Gee, I was an office-boy once. That's how I landed Cheryl. She dumped her previous house-husband for me. So, I suppose I shouldn't complain. But I would've liked to do something more than just go to secretarial college, you know?

 TED: Yup, I know what you mean. I just took liberal arts courses in college because I knew they didn't want a man going to medical or law school. Guess I was just there trying to find a wife who would take care of me. And then Eva came along.

 ED: You know, Fred. What you just said about women being in charge and it being the way of the world. What if there WERE real equality between men and women? What if I could tell my son he can do whatever my daughter can do? Shouldn't we fight for that? Wouldn't it be a better world?

 FRED: Yes, we certainly have more intuition, more sensitivity.

 TED: It'd be a more caring world.

 ED: If we men had more power our sons wouldn't be going to war, that's for sure! There'd be negotiations, not battles!!! 

 FRED: Sounds like a pipe-dream to me. Pie in the sky. Pass me a brownie and pour me another cup of coffee while I go change the laundry.

Comments

[John Keating]

Interesting what a change of perspective does. Of course it would be nice to have a wife who would keep me in the manner to which I'd like to become accustomed.