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COLUMN
 Saturday Night Fever
This week I got stood up. Not once, but twice. By two different...
ladies. About an hour before the time. So I took solace in the words of
Henry Thoreau "The man who goes alone can start today;
but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready"
and went to the theatre. Alone.
In retrospect, I should be grateful. You see, when you're alone you
don't have to keep on worrying about whether or not your partner is happy.
And it gives you so much more freedom to mingle. For example, the Angelina
Jolie look-alike standing at the snacks table at the opening of Breathing
In. Alone. And then there were all those exotic... beautiful... lithe...
flexible... female acrobats in the Yunnan Acrobatic Troupe at Artscape. I
didn't once have to worry about drooling too obviously, or whether my
mouth was hanging open. I must admit, I found their performance quite
inspirational for acrobatics of a different nature.
Driving home it dawned on me I was beholden to no one. I could go
anywhere I wanted to. Do anything I wanted to. I was possessed with a
sense of freedom I'd never felt before. So I went home, cracked open a
beer and watched telly. Several beers later my thoughts returned to the
two women who had stood me up. Not that I was particularly upset - I
hadn't had lascivious intentions with either of them - but it irked me
that I was dumped at such short notice. I felt like I was being
taken for granted. It was... disrespectful.
I was reminded of a story a girl friend once told me about how she had
crushed a guy who had approached her in a club. I asked her if he had been
offensive. She looked at me, baffled, "No" She replied. "But why be so
cruel?" I persisted. She gave me a bored, pitying look. "Because I can"
She laughed. Now I am a staunch believer in the age old adage "What goes
around comes around". So next time you wonder why Mr Fantastic took your
number and never called, that was karma coming back to bite you on the
bum, ladies. So do the decent thing. Be a bit more respectful. Cancel more
than an hour advance. It doesn't take much effort. And needless to say,
although said girl friend is never short of a date, she is perennially
single.
Women often wonder why men seem to have much closer friendships than
they do. The answer is simple. Because men around the world have a common
bond. And that bond is pain. A painful story about a time, a place. A
woman who carelessly and without a second thought inflicted a deep, deep
wound. A wound that eventually healed but left a scar forever.
As William Shakespeare famously said, "If you prick
us do we not bleed?... And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?" So
ladies, show a little more respect. Don't take us for granted. And who
knows, maybe Mr Fantastic will call.
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