By Dee Jay Gordon

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After years of man-bashing with my girlfriends and complaining about the peculiar habits of the male of the species, something finally occurred to me: If men are pigs, it's because women are stupid. Stop that screaming! It's true! A case in point:

A few weeks ago, I met up with a former significant other. For the last two years he'd been living with a young woman, and in the course of our conversation he informed me that they had broken it off. He gave me his pager number, stating that that was the best way to reach him (clue #1). I called him, he came over, we spent some time together (not like THAT!). A week later, he called me and asked if he could see me again. He sounded very far away on the phone, and when I asked him where he was, he told me that he was on a convenience store pay phone (clue #2). "Why are you at a pay phone?" I asked. He replied, "I was on my way home from work and just stopped to call." "Hmmm..." said I, "I find it interesting that you gave me a pager number in order to reach you, and now you're calling from a pay phone when you're approximately a mile from your house." After a bit of hedging, he finally admitted that his girlfriend wasn't quite moved out yet. See, they'd been having problems, she didn't understand him, blah, blah, blah. "Goodbye, " I said.

Now that's not the amazing part. I am never surprised by people's bad behavior, as it occurs too frequently. The most interesting part was when I called one of my best girlfriends to relate this event. "How romantic!" she exclaimed. "What?" I asked, " The part where he cheats on his girlfriend, or the part where he lies to me?" "No, no," she said, "don't you see? He's been pining away for you all these years, and he just couldn't take it anymore. He had to make contact with you! Now he has incentive to break it off with his girlfriend because you two can be a couple again!" Hello? Hello? This I'm getting from a woman who is very intelligent and one of the most honest people I know. I was dumbfounded!

I have an old friend who, for years, has been having problems with her substance abusing spouse. On one occasion he locked her and their one year old daughter out of the house, with no shoes or coats, in the middle of January. She had to walk three miles to get to a pay phone to call someone to come get them. Two days later, she was back moved in and living happily...until the next occurrence.

Then there's the charming bride of Lyle Menendez. What kind of woman marries a guy who brutally killed his parents? And how about all the women who wrote, sent pictures, and made marriage proposals to Ted Bundy before he was gassed? All around us are women who are busily making excuses for why their man beats them, cheats on them, drinks, takes dope, whatever. They cry that men are just swine... as their self-esteem gets lower and lower. I say the problem lies not with the men, but with the idiotic women who put up with them, year after year. Maybe they finally break away from this guy, only to take up with some other loser.

Then, of course, they procreate with this person, and the child grows up to live the only life he/she ever knew: one of violence and mistrust. Wake up, ladies! Stop subjecting yourself and your children to this horrible existence. And better yet, stop blaming men for all your troubles when your unhappiness stems from your own poor choices. Yes, your choices! You choose to live with a rotten man, you choose to put up with the lies and the violence.

I have a good friend who is one of these "pig guys". He once confessed to me that he had dated 40 different women in the past two months. "That's a lot of women!", I exclaimed, "What happened that none of them worked out?" He replied, "They worked out just fine. These women came to me offering their bodies and I chose to accept. Had they come to me offering love, I would have politely declined." He went on to say, "I can't help it if they confused the two. Had they been more honest about their intentions, no one would have been hurt."

How's that for food for thought?

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