The subject of men
I went to meet a group of women to toast one of their birthdays over champagne. They met in a nondescript house uptown that belied what was inside, butter yellow washed walls with paintings ranging from 3d to simple studies of landscape, cushioned chairs where the stuffing was all but gone suggesting years of use, a silver tray with antique flutes, soft lighting and every seat occupied by a beautiful woman – age ranging from 30s to 50s.
I jumped right into the conversation of these women and the subjects covered the ground of any typical hen party – children, young and grown, hormones too plentiful or not enough, nutrition, family, and then we segued to the topic of fathers and from there men.
Yes, that old chestnut.
Since this was a gathering of European women, what I gleaned had a Eurocentric bias – French men seduce better than any other and most importantly they are not afraid of “fluids” like American men, Haitian and Brazilian men like to be squeaky clean (too much so) before sex, African men are delightfully more curious about you and your body than any other men, but they are not faithful, American men want women to do all the work and that is unacceptable.