I scowled with frustration at myself in the reflection of the coffee machine. Of course, I believe in equality, but I’m certainly a feminist, I repeated.
This was when a red-headed woman stood in front of me while waiting in line for our morning Gloria Jean’s coffee. She was tapping on her AirPods with sharp, polished nails.
Mystery Red wore a tailored dress suit that clutched at her slender yet curvaceous body. A tiny strap purse under her pillowy armpit. I glanced away discreetly when I saw her full and rosy cleavage. Remember your training, James! I scolded myself.
Last week at Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc., there was a presentation about Women in the Workplace. (The company had been holding these ever since our CEO got caught flicker-whipping an English literature major in his office. How that student won a sexual assault case at 21 is beyond me. Poor guy, I mean. Poor girl. I mean, poor woman.)
As the coffee machine buzzed and the heady scent of steamed milk and perfume stirred my loins, I recalled the first point:
1. Listen when a woman speaks.
I tried my best to comprehend the actual words Mystery Red was saying on her phone call. ‘You made the first ten thousand: congratulations,’ she purred. ‘How about we make that twenty thousand with a daily upload schedule?’
So empowered, I thought admiringly while adjusting the unfortunate tightness in my trousers.
‘One grande skim skinny caramel latte, extra hot.’ Mystery Red whipped her juicy words at the freckly teen cashier.
Ever since my CEO’s sexual misconduct court case, I had become a changed man. Before, I would’ve pressed my hardness on the thigh of Mystery Red until she squirmed enough to think of me as a brooding and bulging AlphaMale. Then I’d tell her she wanted my number and, too caught off guard to say no, she’d simply give it to me. That was consent enough. How wrong I was! Legal repercussions really give a manly man perspective.
Don’t end up on the registered sex offender list like Mr Grey, I begged myself. Tightening my sphincter into a raisin, I repeated the second point of last week’s presentation:
2. Women are people, not sexual objects.
Freckles repeated Red’s order with the price. ‘9.85,’ he rasped without looking up from the till.
How rude! I thought indignantly. Women deserve eye contact, but not so much eye contact that they get turned on or creeped out. Women. Are. People. Not sexual objects.
As Red reached into her shiny purse, I stared into her magnificently independent cascades of fiery curls. Trying to keep flaccid, I continued to remember my mandatory HR training.
3. Women want to be engaged for their brains and not their bodies.
‘Do you read?’ I blurted out, struggling to remember the last book I flicked through. Did it have ‘darker’ in the title?
Red reddened at the sound of my voice. ‘What?’ Her voice was the crack, snapple, pop of a charcoal spit. ‘You think I’m illiterate just because I run a webcam studio?’ She tapped at her left AirPod with a glistening acrylic. ‘No, I’m not talking to you.’
‘Uh, uh, uh,’ I crumpled like a headless chicken.
‘Uh, uh, uh—I make $555 an hour with my nose up a cunt.’ Red flipped her curls, grabbed her extra-hot latte and whipped her BMW car keys out of her purse, all while staring at me.
What a multitasker! Women really can do anything.
‘Books are for pussies,’ Red finished with a hiss. She then tapped her right AirPod with a dazzling acrylic. ‘That’s why you gotta listen to me, honey.’
Unsure what response was meant for who, I simply nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, that’s why I asked. I want to listen to you.’
Red opened and closed her mouth. I tightened my smile, telling myself: The cleavage does not exist.
Before she could reply, Freckles popped a teste behind the register. ‘Uh, uh, uh—is someone paying?’
4. Men are paid more than women. It’s called the gender pay gap.
‘Oh no, allow me,’ I said without a second thought, tapping my card on the EFTPOS machine. The bright green tick practically made me beam and definitely did not make my loins twitch. Women. Are. Not. Sexual.
My grin faded when I saw Red frowning at me like molten lava. ‘I’m worth a lot more coffees. Stop skimping on me, Mr Comm-Tech-Energy-Intel-Lawyer-Whatever.’ She tapped on her AirPods before turning her back to me. ‘Yes, I make more. Skimp for skank.’
Then Red headed for the exit, a mirage of tailored fashion, long orange ringlets and click-clacking heels.
Wow, what a boss babe! I thought, ignoring Freckles scratching questions at me about what I wanted to order because there was a line.
At Gloria Jean’s exit, Red knocked into another woman who was walking in. ‘Watch it,’ Red groaned and then tapped on her AirPods again. ‘You know what, yes—you too.’
The knocked-backwards woman was a frizz of dirty blonde hair and wore flowy lawyers of tan and brown cardigans over jeans, faded canvas sneakers, and a blue-and-yellow shawl around her bony shoulders. Despite her airy frame, Blonde had a strong voice when she bellowed into the cafe: ‘When was the last time anyone thought about Ukraine?’
Red popped her lips as she laughed in response. ‘Babe, you didn’t hear? There’s real shit happening in the Middle East.’
For the next few moments, it was as though the coffee machine stopped whirling and steaming, the street outside stopped whooshing with cars, and the growing line of people behind me disappeared: it was just Red and Blonde going at it. They swapped words like ‘independence’, ‘illegal’, and ‘annexation’ with ‘apartheid’, ‘innocents’, and ‘injustice’.
My training at Grey Enterprises Inc. did not train me for such a moment. Women in the Workplace only covered how men like me were the problem and if there were more women CEOs, the world would be a better place. One woman fighting another woman was not a numerical bullet point of discussion.
Then I remembered the last slide in the presentation.
5. Men should be the solution, not the problem.
‘We’re all equal here,’ I reminded Red and Blonde. Walking towards them, I loosened my tie to communicate that I was approachable and safe. ‘I’m sure we can come up with an understanding agreeable to both parties.’
However, Red and Blonde just kept screaming at each other. Spit, milk foam, and tendrils of clashing, coloured hair flew between them. The image pulsated between my thighs, making it difficult to stay focused on how women should be valued for their ideas and not their looks.
I cleared my throat but found nothing to say. The line of people behind me drew in closer; I could see some of them in my periphery using their phones to record. Somewhere, Freckles was croaking about how he would call the police if Red and Blonde didn’t leave immediately.
Then it hit me. The presentation was about women in the workplace … not women in a coffee shop! Maybe the rules were different? Maybe I could still be a brooding and bulging male, but more of a Sigma type instead of an Alpha? Relief washed over me and I got a semi-hard-on immediately.
Tightening my tie, I stepped between the women. They fell back on their heels instantly, glaring at me. Whistling, I took the Red’s coffee (really mine; I paid for it) and took a swig. Then I slipped my business card into her empty hand. Whatever ‘hub’ she was running, I wanted to see it. Women are the future of business!
‘What do you think—’ Blonde began.
‘I think,’ I interrupted with a seductive rumble in my throat, ‘politics should be left to the politicians. You both have such inspired and passionate thoughts. Maybe you can both run for office instead of upsetting everyone’s morning?’
Blonde gaped but tucked a strand of hair behind her year. Red scoffed about getting her coffee back but bit her lip as she spoke. Were they nervous? Aroused? Both?
In the corner of my eye, I saw Freckles croak behind the counter. ‘Yeah, listen to the man.’
A murmur broke through the line of faceless and phone-recording people in the corner of my other eye. One person whispered in a voice hoarse with age, ‘What a gentleman.’ A younger tone piqued, ‘Our mornings should already be upset by murdered babies, but okay.’
Before anyone else could throw in their two cents, I quickly tucked another one of my business cards into the folds of Blonde’s blue-and-yellow scarf. She looks like she could use a date. I could help!
Then I patted each of the women on the shoulder with my free hand and whispered so low that only they could hear, ‘Women really can do anything. I hope both of you like topping from the bottom.’
Weiner Derzog is a writer and filmmaker who believes that: Writing is like a curse weighing on the entire landscape and whoever goes too deep into writing has his share of that curse. Writing is a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger. Yet Derzog also believes that: When we take a close look at writing, there is some sort of harmony … the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we, in comparison to that enormous articulation … we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. Therefore, Derzog has come to the conclusion that: We have to become humble in the face of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication and overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe.
While Weiner Derzog is tugging a steam boat in the middle of the jungle, he does not care if you choose to contact Winnie Dunn for more information.
