Double Time ✓

15 | roll

None of my guy friends are like that, thankfully. If you're a guy that cares about his impact on the world, there is a constant anxiety in the back of your mind asking whether your friends are secretly misogynists or whether unwittingly you've ever made a girl uncomfortable. It saddens me to hear that Bay has run into the type of people who only cares about themselves.

My lips part and Bay reaches a hand out again, this time to tip my jaw closed. "Hold your rebuttals, Vierra. That's the greater evil. The lesser evil are the men who believe they are good men. They love befriending women and not trying to fuck them—gold medal," she quips. "They know feminist terminology now. I check my privilege. I paint my nails and love my mother. I'm unlearning my biases every day. But when you look at their relationships, their sisters and mothers and girlfriends are all fit, neurotypical, and attractive. Bonus points for culturally diversity because I'm intersectional. I'm not saying they only respect women they're attracted to, but Nice Guys conveniently don't invest in the women who tangibly challenge their world view. Just the ones that boost their social capital. They surround themselves with women to be their green flags."

I have a lot of woman friends. Is she talking about me?

My head is spinning. A wave of dizziness passes over me as the weed hits my bloodstream, but after it lifts I just feel rubbery and relaxed. More than ever I want to know the truth of Bay. I want to know what she thinks. What she really thinks of me.

Is her aversion to dating based on bad memories or casual observations? If there are bad memories, who hurt her? Who did she hurt? Why does she dislike me? Am I a Nice Guy to her, which really means a bad guy?

I ask whether she's dated women before.

Bay clicks her teeth, disappointed. "I've tried. I can't be equal with men, but I can't be individual with women. You know what happens when you remove gender barriers? Oh, my God, you completely get me. The clitoris! Dress pockets! Sharing makeup and clothing! We have so many shared experiences and traumas! They all mistook commonality for compatibility and fell so fast, so unguarded. It's like they wanted to merge their emotional world with mine. Slow down, but they don't slow down, and then I had to cut and run," she tells me, matter-of-fact. "No gender or orientation is exempt from heartbreak, so now I'm exempting myself by not participating. Okay. You may rebut now."

I don't think I could put together a coherent thought if someone paid me. Is this some hidden trauma speaking or just the Philosophy major side of her?

All I know is that when Bay opens up like this, and pain comes flooding out, I feel like I'm staring into some sort of cavern, a crevasse. Initially it's just darkness, nothing but darkness, and then are fireflies or stars that blink out of the shadows. Her criticisms of society are true, but only from one perspective. A different viewpoint would change the picture entirely.

"Maybe when I'm thirty, the men will have finally resolved their internalized misogyny and the women will have delineated their sense of self from the people they love and then I'll try again."

"Do you think a relationship is failed if it ends? Because that's reductive."

"What use does an ended relationship have—"

"—life experience. Knowing yourself better. Knowing others better—"

"—that I can't get elsewhere?" she finishes. "I feel like a love guru without ever having participated in it, just from reading and watching and paying attention."

"But you're making such sweeping generalizations. Not every person our age has something wrong with them."

"That's your rebuttal? Whataboutism? Seriously?"