Poodles on Leashes and the Lack of Firemen

February 2008

There is a girl perched upon a bed in a cold room, alone and worried about how her hair might appear to others having not been styled correctly due to lack of tools; and what may the opinions of those others be towards her misplaced fringe.

“Who the fuck are you getting ready for?” he booms, and it is hard for her to tell whether he is joking or if he is actually angry that she is primping.

With hope in favour of him joking, she aims a cheeky “You, babe!” at him, but he just walks out of the room and slams the door.

With an eyelash curler and removal of smudged eyeliner, it is barely apparent that she is wearing last night’s makeup. Fakely fresh-faced, she pursues the door in order to join everyone else who is wearing last night’s makeup in the living room.

But he opens the door instead of her. “Stay the fuck in here. I don’t give a fuck if there’s a fire in here, you don’t leave this room.”

With thanks to a testosterone-fuelled display of violence in the living room, this is where it occurs to her.He finds her attractive enough to protect her delicate eyeballs from a violent exhibition of manhood, but cares not enough to save her from a burning bedroom.

There are some males out there who parade their female companions around. There are some girls out there who fail to distinguish between being a poodle on a leash and being someone’s partner.These men think that receiving respect comes without needing to give it. They don’t respect the girls they cheat on their girlfriends with, nor, needless to say, do they respect their girlfriends. Yet they demand to be respected and honoured like a golden knight, and far too often are given that respect of which they are unworthy.

These women try to fit the mould that their “masters” cast for them and are given a patronising “Good girl!” when they come straight home from work – that is, she is at home, not elsewhere nor with anyone questionable – cooks a scrumptious dinner for everyone and spends her spare time waxing unwanted hair from her upper lip or applying beauty-promising chemicals to her skin to make her even more attractive than she already is. After, of course, bleaching the shower and toilet bowl and scrubbing the dried food scraps off the inside of the oven, like all good little women do. She is to be rarely seen and never heard, unless chatting amongst the other women about the best way to remove lime build-up from underneath the vanity, how much they love their beloved or all the loving gestures they’ve given to their beloved lately.

It is these men and women who have their brains washed with the issue of gender inequality as being nothing out of the ordinary. It is usual for women to mature long before men, but in these cases, the women’s ability to use their own mind is stunted by routine emotional abuse and belittling, and the men completely fail to ever grow up.That is, however, unless the woman happens to wake up to herself and realise men who actually have the potential to get past the “woman as my servant” thing, do exist in the world.

The girl who sits upon the cold bed realises this is a glimpse into an abusive life. That is, it will be if she doesn’t get up and leave. Not right now, but when the risk of getting shot in the kneecaps dies down, she’ll be gone.

She believes there is a male specimen out there who would not have anything bad to hide from her delicate eyeballs, and would indeed rescue her from a fire.