Jacquie’s Reviews > Acts of Desperation > Status Update

'Once you've said no, a man wheedling feels unbearable. Even if he does it politely, or gently, it overrides the clearly expressed intention. It says: Your choice does not really matter. What I desire matters, and I don't want to feel bad for forcing you into it. So perhaps you ought to reconsider?'

'I thought, not for the first time, that wheedling of the sort he had employed should be forbidden in men. It was already so near to impossible to say no to a man, so difficult to accept the possibility of being hurt or disliked or shouted at. It takes so much out of you to make yourself say no when you have been taught to say yes, to be accommodating, to make men happy.'

'That night Mark kissed me and I let him. It was the easy thing to do, the only thing to do. The idea of telling him not to and the ensuing conversation filled me with weariness. I wondered how many times in my life I had made this calculation, how the men would feel if they knew, if they would care.'

'It was all so ordinary and underwhelming. They were just two idiots in a mess, who kept convincing and then un-convincing one another of things. They weren't star-crossed, just dithering, dependent people who couldn't stay away from each other because they hadn't worked out how to imagine anything different.'

'It's easy to disappear beneath the incessant cycle of chores necessary to keep a pleasant home. Women who were once individuals despair of being made into nothing more than wife, housekeeper, mother - a person whose identity is secondary to their ability to make things easier for everyone else.'

'What must it feel like to be beautiful but also invisible whenever you choose to be? To be a beautiful man?'