Frankly Speaking

When you're a young boy, girls are just there -- foreign bodies at the playground or in the pre-school classroom. They might as well be in another world, for as much as you want to interact with them, and you usually don't, unless there's a game of chase afoot.

As you get a little older, you're more aware of them, even accepting. They like to skip rope and play with Barbies, instead of playing sports and with cars, but outside that, they're just like you.

Then the day comes when you're eyes open to them. They're pretty. They smell nice. There's just something about them.

You try to get close to them, but it doesn't work that well. You can't treat them as you do another boy. It doesn't work. And in any case, you're nervous, which doesn't happen with another boy.

Before long, you're shaking your head. And that's before you've had a girlfriend. When that happens, it's all happiness and giddiness, but before long, you're really shaking your head. They seem to act strangely, unpredictably, way different than you think a human being should.

And then you join the universal chorus of males: You just don't understand women.

I've come to understand that women don't simply view life differently, which they do; they experience life differently. They live it differently. It's part of the reason why they're wonderful. They're foils, companions, complements for us, and us for them.

But there always is the mystery, the reason you don't understand them, the reason they are the way they are.

When I was teen, I thought one day that I wish there was a pill, a magic pill, that you could take and it would tranform you into a woman for just one day, just so you know what it's like to be them. There was the physical part to that: What's it like to have boobs and a pussy?

(As an aside, I took a large, lecture-hall sex ed class in college. We had the opportunity to ask anonymously questions of the opposite sex, which were were handled by the professor and his female aides. I remember one woman had asked, "What's it like to have a penis?" The professor's response was that he would say, it just feels natural. I think the response must have been unsatisfying to the questioner, but the question let me know that women, at least some women, are interested in what's it like on the other side of the gender divide, as I am.")

Also, what's it like to have sex as a woman? (More on that another time). But I think it was more than just those things. How is life different for women than men? And how do they experience it?

I thought it would be interesting if there was a day where you could drop out and not be missed and just go around as a woman for a day and experience that. Not like some cross-dresser, or something, but actually as a woman. And then slip back comfortably to your old male self.

I later thought it would be better, though more problematic, if the pill worked for one full menstrual cycle -- 28 days or thereabouts, and then back to maleness.

Well, 28 days would be hard to drop out of being male for. But if you could solve those issues, I still think it would be interesting if such a magic pill existed. It certainly would solve much of the riddle of women. Or at least give you a healthy dose of empathy.

Labels: women