Trixie begins the delicate task of explaining women...to boys

Boys fail to understand that sex changes a woman. You can’t expect to have the same kind of relationship with her after you get naked and sleep with her. Ain’t going to happen. Before that fateful day, anything is possible. You can both say what you like, politics, religion, favourite gym, sports team, music. You probably both think the same things are funny. But even if you begin as friends and sex creeps in (nearly always does, right?) the relationship will change. Whether it has a hope of surviving or not is anybody’s guess.

Sex, for women, is an entering of their bodies. (Duh...) Most women think they are their bodies, but anyway they feel it, they’re vulnerable. Some line has been crossed, their life is suddenly open to any kind of disaster or happy ending, emotional or otherwise. They have to justify this breech of their inner strongholds to themselves. Most do it by believing – insisting – that they are in love with the man with whom they are engaging in this altogether delightful and extremely risky endeavour.

Meanwhile, the boy is hoping the exact opposite: none of this love crap. Let things go on exactly as before: he is a free agent, she is a free agent. He wants to maintain the robust, friendly, entertaining interchanges he has previously enjoyed with this woman. Instead, the woman becomes, almost instantly, shy. She weeps at the drop of the hat, she storms, she rages. She tries to change him – face it, most boys seen up that close are obviously in need of some fine tuning. She knows that everyone knows she’s slept with him and now she’s thinking that if she’s going to be seen with him, and her name associated with his around her neighbourhood, then she would like a few of his edges to be less rough. She wants him to bathe more than occasionally, notch the swearing down, quit drinking so much he falls off her father’s porch, drive a better car (hey, even a Chevy Nova or something would be an improvement). She wants him to become the stellar person she has glimpsed inside the lout.

And look at him, he’s terrified. Change me? Change one little tiny hair on my head? Next you’ll want to possess me. You’ll bewitch me with sex or perfume or nighties or something, with backrubs or that warm round butt and before long the boys will have my number. What a pussy, they’ll say, and they’ll be right.

So he’ll assert himself when he’s in Boyland. He’ll tell them whatever, but he’ll make it sound good, like nothing’s changed except he’s an even bigger stud than he let on. And he’ll be rude to her in front of them. He’ll see to it that all Boyland passes are cancelled. Keep her out. And when she finally slips away entirely he’ll say hey, what the hell? I gave her everything but she was never satisfied.

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