I go through the phases, craving female company, the crazygirl syndrome, the oversensitive wailing, the bitching about
every.
little.
thing.
As soon as I start rolling my eyes instead of clucking my tongue in sympathy, it's time to find boys, simpler creatures, with their literal take of the world, their saying what they mean, their resolve.
Girls are all, "If? And? But!"
Guys are just like, "."
I like communicating with girls, having conversations that exist more in our heads than our words, but man, does it take some energy interpreting phrases that have at least two meanings, that are both sympathetic and judgmental, respectful and crude.
Like that chick who owned a smoothie shop in Nosara, when Samantha said of our Costa Rican headquarters, being friendly like she is, "It's so beautiful in Samara!"
"Mm," the bitch drawled out of the side of her mouth, keeping her eyes glued to the register, clearly snobbish when it comes to her beach towns. "I'm glad you think so."
My bar boss, she tries out lines on me sometimes when she has to confront someone.
"I'll tell him, 'I really love seeing you on Mondays!'" she suggested, confident her meaning was clear that she doesn't want that customer in on Fridays to avoid the on-again off-again drama with another regular.
I straddle the line with my unfeminine response: "There's no way he's going to understand what you mean by that."
I brought over blueberry muffins (sans streusal topping, featuring coconut oil rather than veg--highly recommended) to the bar boss' house on Sunday evening as a peace offering for several weeks of fuming silence. Without actually discussing why we hadn't spoken, we got to The Bottom of things, only to find there's a whole other world under there. The bottle of pinot fueled the apathy, and we chatted about Hawaii instead of The Issues.
I brought the leftover muffins into my coworkers, all male nowadays, as a thank you for writing me a computer program to do bits and pieces of my job for me, rather than hiring a new assistant.
And therein lies another gender conundrum: food for girls is an apology; for boys, a gift.