Page 59 of Duty and Desire

His look did.

“That’s bullshit,” I told him.

He silently disagreed with me.

“And it’s manthink,” I informed him.

This made him look amused.

And again I wanted to climb him like a tree.

Those silver eyes dancing and his mouth quirking an eighth of an inch up at the ends?

Damn.

We totally had a problem here.

In fact, several of them.

But the one I wasn’t going to get into right then was me thinking about how badly I wanted to treathimlike a sex object.

“You know, men get drunk a lot,” I pointed out. “Women do too. They get drunk alone, among only men, or only women, or mixed. It happens millions of times every day and every night. And does every one of those millions uponmillionsof men get drunk and then go out and perpetrate a sexual assault on a woman?”

His amusement vanished.

“No,” I answered for him. “Because to do that, they have to have the monster in them. Bottom line. You either have it in you to do that, and thank God the vast majority don’t, or you don’t. It has not one thing to do with booze. Or drugs. Or what a woman wears. Or what she doesn’t. Or how she behaves. She has absolutely no responsibilityat allfor a man harming her. A monster does that because he’s a monster. He just hides it when he’s sober. But when he’s weakened, that monster comes out. And that’s it. The end.”

His big body shifted slightly, but he made no response.

Though I read in that itwashis response.

He was with me.

“And the same with any kind of bad behavior a man commits,” I continued. “If he harasses a woman. If he beats her. I’m sick and tired of men, and women for that matter, blaming women for the bad behavior of men. That said, there’s something that helps to make this never ending. You know what perpetuates this kind of thing?”

He shook his head.

“Locker room talk and no man in that room having the balls to say, ‘You know what, that shit does not make you sound cool. It makes you sound like a loser who can’t get laid by a real woman. Knock it off,’” I told him. “When men allow men to talk shit about women,thatreduces women to sex objects. It gives the impression all the men in that room are down with reducing women, and with that validation, some men carry on with that, the asshole ones, and they do things directly in an attempt to reduce women. And since it’s men doing it, they have no clue what it’s really doing. Reducingthem.”

Mo agreed with me.

He didn’t say it.

I saw it.

Considering he communicated his response (his way), and even though I liked he had that response, I kept talking.

“Turn this around, what do you think of a woman who goes to a Chippendales show? Thunder Down Under? Is that about skanky guys who are probably addicted to drugs and have no other choice in how to make a living?” I asked.

“Skanky, maybe. The rest, no,” he muttered.

I felt my lips twitch but kept at him.

“Though, women who go to those shows are thought of as randy or out-of-control bachelorettes with their bridesmaids or desperate. Why the contradiction?” I demanded.

“Men that watch strippers are considered randy or bachelor party dickheads or desperate,” he returned.

Hmm…