When Real Men Meet Real Women

This is going to be heavy."

"Right."

"If you publish it, there could be a problem."

"Fine."

"So I am going to tell you," he says.

"Right," I say.

"And if you fuck me over, I'll kill you."

"Right. Fine."

He leans across the kitchen table. "Eighteen years ago," Jerry Lipkin says, "I was nicknamed the Frog Prince. I went to Cornell and became a lawyer. I shed that skin and left the water. I began doing good works. I saw that men and women had bitched at each other for centuries. I started tearing down the walls between the sexes. I began breaking people down into Generic Man and Generic Woman. I discovered a way men could find out what women want--and women could find out what men want. People started flocking. We began the Real Men/Real Women workshops. Since then, I have developed something of a Messiah complex. I am not the Messiah. I do not have anything to do with the Messiah. But if you scripted this, I am what the Messiah would look like."

He is a handsome man with a bad figure. "I am a forceful personality," he says. "I want to win the Nobel Peace Prize by 1988."

"So what does Generic Woman want?" I say.

"Generic Woman wants a generic piece of ass," he says.

"And Generic Man?"

"Generic Man," he says. "Generic Man wants a little mettle, a little housekeeping, a little chicken soup and a good blow job."

I am petrified with pleasure.

"I'm going to have to use that thing about your complex," I say.

"Sure," he says, getting up from the table. He is a tall, thin man, narrow-chested, splayfoot, wearing a purple-rayon shirt.

"Sure," he says, smiling and stepping backward. "What am I but the true Playboy Messiah?"

•

This is a tale about what women want and what men want and what happens when they start telling each other what it is. Of course, if there weren't some silence between men and women, enjoyment would be impossible. (A few of the people I spoke with preferred semisilence: They asked that I change their names.)

Maria Arapakis, cofounder with Jerry Lipkin of the Real Men/Real Women workshops, is standing in the activities room of Alderwood Hall on the campus of Mills College in Oakland, California, telling 25 women to be assertive. The women are sitting on the floor in groups, and each group has a tablet, and Maria tells them to be assertive and write down any messages they want to send to the men. It is the second day of the three-day workshop, and the women are not being assertive. Assertive women are women with bad manners. These women are not assertive. These women have had experience with men. These women are aggressive.

"So what do you want our messages to the men to be?" says Suzette to her group, over by the couch.

"Don't be such assholes," says Sandra.

Suzette starts writing.

"Stop peeing on the toilet seat," says Lorraine.

"These sound sort of hostile," says Suzette.

"Stop slobbering on my mouth while you're kissing me," says Freda. Freda has a small, beautifully built rear and a Ph.D. in psychology and has written a book called Hypnosis with Friends and Lovers and says she is taking Real Men/Real Women because she wants to meet men and is interested in "exploring intimacy at the deepest levels of consciousness."

"Let's think of something nice," says Suzette.

"Stop losing your erections," says Sandra.

"Stop having erections when I don't want you to," says Freda.

"Well, you guys," says Suzette, writing.

"Stop snoring," says Lorraine.

"Stop farting," says Sandra.

Suzette pauses. She is a soft-voiced, white-skinned, full-bosomed woman and has just "come out of a relationship" and is taking the workshop because, she says, the main thing women want is to find out what men want.

"I have one," she says softly.

The women in the group do not cease talking. Outside in the courtyard, the rhododendrons darken in the electric light and the rancid odor of the goldfish pool comes in through the open windows.

"Stop refusing to go down on me when I have my period," says Suzette, over their voices.

The women burst into a sitting ovation.

"Wait--listen," says Sandra, pulling her legs in and grasping her ankles. She is blonde and good-looking and used to be a model, and now she owns her own resource-and-development business and makes a pile of money and drives a Mercedes and has a flashy wardrobe and is at Real Men/Real Women to discover why men don't take up with her.

"The first man who ever went down on me," she says, squeezing her ankles together, "I had a tampon inside me and he put the string between his teeth and pulled it out and flung it across the room."

Freda clasps her hands, drops her chin and rolls her eyes up, and Suzette and Lorraine maintain a deathlike silence out of respect, and then Maria says it is time for everyone to practice the song they are going to sing to the men tomorrow night, and after the song practice everybody is supposed to light a candle and tell about her passage into womanhood, but first Maria reads aloud the questions the women want to ask the men tomorrow morning, and the first question is "Why are some men threatened by successful, well-integrated, together women?"

"I don't know about men," says a woman, "but I'm threatened by them."

•

Gary and Guy are Real Men and are ready to talk about women. Guy is a spinologist and keeps a spine in the corner of his office, where Gary and I are meeting him, and there is a spine on top of his desk and a drawing of a spine behind his desk and a book opened to a spine illustration by the window. Guy and Gary have taken the workshop. They know what they want in women and like to talk about elegant topics. Guy says he wants a smart woman who is sexy. "I like women to fall on top of me in a big puddle," says Guy, "and just kind of flow all over me. Whew! That gives me chills down my spine."

"Yeah," says Gary. "When I make love to a woman, I want that look."

I ask what look.

"The one that says, 'You do it for me, baby,' " says Gary.

"Lord have mercy on me," says Guy, pounding his desk.

Guy is 29, has been married twice, is tall and blond and wears a blue tie with red dots and a tie tack in the shape of two hands holding a spinal cord.

"So what flaws will you put up with in a woman?" I ask.

Gary is sitting across the desk from Guy, leaning on his elbows. They ask what I mean by flaws.

"A short temper?" I ask.

"Yes"; a temper is OK, they say.

"Messy housekeeping?"

"Yes."

"Cursing?"

"Yes."

"Smelling?"

Silence.

"Boy!" says Gary. "She's getting down, huh?"

"Wheeew!" says Guy.

"I want to know," I say. "I want to know about women and their smell."

Gary pulls his chair around so he can stretch his legs out. He is 6'4? or 6'5 ?, has a powder-blue sports coat and is quite an attractive specimen.

"So tell me about women and their smell," I say.

"Clean hair," says Gary. "Clean clothes--I love to peel beautiful clean clothes off a woman. And I like the smell of a woman's body. A woman's genital odor. I must have a faint scent of it."

"Yeah," says Guy. "I start following it."

"Yeah," says Gary.

"It's got to be a clean odor, though," says Guy.

"It can't be rotten," says Gary.

"Not too strong," says Guy.

"If she smells, I don't want anything to do with her," says Gary.

"God, no!" says Guy.

I have been turning my neck looking from Guy to Gary and get a crook--no, I always have a crook; I get a bigger one--and Guy suddenly forgets about women and their smell and fixes his eyes on me.

"Is something wrong with your neck?"

"These pictures of all these spines around!" I cry. "They're driving me crazy!"

"I'll give you the name of a spinologist. You can call him when you get back to New York," Guy says happily, opening a little book.

"I'll never use it," I say. "I hate doctors."

His face falls. Only his nostrils seem inflated.

"OK, I won't give it to you," he says, closing the book. "Hey...." He smiles. "It's your spine! It's your life!"

•

An abstract expressionist named Barbara is staying upstairs in Alderwood Hall during the Real Men/Real Women workshop, and so is a man called Larry, an editor. The second night, Larry invites Barbara, who is pretty, to his room, which has twin beds. Larry looks to be in his mid-30s and has never married; but he says it would not take an exceptional woman: "Not at all," says Larry. "It would just take if I could look in a woman's face and see my soul."

Barbara says does he mind if she opens the corn chips. Larry says to go ahead, and (continued on page 92)Real Men/Real Women(continued from page 84) Barbara sits down on one of the beds.

"God knows I shouldn't eat them," says Larry. "I have to clean my teeth an hour every night as it is. You name it, I do it. Boy, it's from floss to tooth paste to periodontal aids. My whole mouth is fucked."

Larry has his name tag on and a brown Shetland V-neck and jeans and is what women call nice-looking. He sits down across from Barbara on the other bed, cocks up a leg and takes off his shoe.

"Women are here to find out what men want. Men are here to find out what women want," he says. "But I already know what women want. They want men to pay attention."

"Yes!" says Barbara.

"There are actually times," says Larry, "before I go out on a date with a woman that I run through a litany: Pay attention to her. Listen to her. Compliment her if there is a reason."

"Women love that," says Barbara.

"Yeah," says Larry, cocking his other leg. "I know what women want. They want men who are smart, sexy, funny, dangerous and who pay attention."

"The man who has those qualities," says Barbara, wiping her lips, "he could have any woman he likes."

"I have all those qualities," says Larry. "I'm dangerous."

"There must be one you haven't got," says Barbara.

Larry sits forward and gazes at the chips.

"There must be one you don't have," says Barbara.

"Pardon me?" says Larry.

•

Gary is driving me back to my hotel from Guy's office and there is a heart glued to the top of his gearshift and he says it is to remind him to drive with care, and then he says, "I'll be real honest with you, Jean. If you were living around here, I'd ask you to go out."

He casts a bashful look at me.

"Do you have lots of money?" I say, smiling (hoping to restore him to his senses).

(Laughing, taking in a breath.) "Do I have lots of money?" he says.

"That's what I want to know."

"How much money is a lot?" he asks, his voice dropping.

"Well, I don't know."

"Well ..." he says. A great bead of sweat falls down from his sideburn. "I have enough to do the things I want."

"Well, that could be enough," I say. "You know, women really like money."

"Hey! That's not what they tell us," he says excitedly.

"Well, they're lying."

His right ear twitches in real belief, and he blasts the car along.

"Well, tell me about it!" he says.

•

The prospect of men and women telling each other the truth should strike anyone of sense with awe, even horror; but on the morning of the third day of the Real Men/ Real Women workshop, the men are sitting on one side of the activities room, the women are sitting on the other, and Jerry Lipkin and Maria Arapakis have addressed them ("The women will ask a question first. Then the men will have a chance to respond and give their varying points of view. When you stand and share your view, please speak only from your own experience ..."). Things go nicely for a stretch, and then the men ask the women what a penis feels like in a vagina. Maria is one of the first to stand up.

"Two things come to mind," she says. "It feels warm and alive."

The men like this and they like Maria, though they are afraid of her. She is dark and dressed up, her hair pointed, almost pronged on her neck, and wearing bracelets, black-and-bone earrings, a cobalt star on her cheek and pants that fit tight around the ankles. Maria's son, Mark, a college boy, is sitting with the men and levels his eyes at the carpet.

"What's also fun," adds Maria, "is if a man has a kind of half-on and he gets hard while he's inside me." Her son is wound tight, and his whole existence and function seem aimed at one spot on the carpet. "That feels good, too," says Maria.

Eight or nine more women stand and tell how a penis feels in a vagina, which seems to blow the whole penis-in-a-vagina experience out of proportion, but then, women think a penis in a vagina should be blown out of proportion. After a while, they run out of things to say.

"What is the sexiest thing a woman can do to you?" they ask the men next.

Arthur, who is short and portly, bearded, an ex--CBS journalist, with a hairy chest and a grayish-lavender shirt, and is now marketing director of a computer-communications company, stands with his hands in his pockets and waits for attention with one foot slightly forward.

"One of the towering experiences of my life," he says, "was when I was driving a woman across the Golden Gate Bridge during commute hour. We got stuck. And out of nowhere came a wig, which she put on her head. She unzipped me and attacked me, just at the moment I was paying the toll." The men break into applause. "That is high on my list of sexy things."

The men are still applauding. Arthur fans out his collar wings with his thumb and index finger, and behind the noise, a small voice starts talking.

"To hear you say that in front of all these people----"

Maria's face and neck suddenly flush red.

"I can't understand it."

It is Mark, and he is on his feet.

"I know," says his mother softly.

"I never felt this way."

"I know," she says more softly.

"To hear you say how a penis felt in front of all these people----"

He lifts his face toward her. His forehead looks as if it has been smeared with something white and jellylike.

"I'm angry about it," he says in a low voice. "And I need to leave the room."

Stan, the sexologist, gets up and follows him. Nobody else moves. It is as if everyone is sitting at a dinner party, and the dinner party has been jovial and stimulating, and suddenly one of the guests gorges himself on pig guano.

"It was hard for me not to rescue him," says Maria shortly after the door closes. Her hand is at her waist and pressing into her belt buckle.

"It took courage for Mark to share," says Freda.

"What is also interesting to me," says Maria, "is that I didn't think twice about saying it. He's been in the workshop before. I've never watched what I said. He's seen me for 15 years as a single woman. I never watched what I did, either."

She laughs nervously.

Larry casts an uncertain glance at her, wondering whether or not to take his turn; and then a rattle is heard, the door bangs and Mark walks back into the room. The men rise to their feet and begin clapping. Mark, who is, with one or two exceptions, taller than any of the other males, goes to his chair but does not sit down.

"I can listen to all these people," he says, "but when you say it----" He looks at his mother.

Maria's face and neck are still red and tense, and she is sitting straight up in her chair.

"Intellectually, I know you have sex," says Mark, "but there is something more than intellectual going on."

"Yes, I know," says Maria quietly.

"And I just want to say"--he glances over at the women--"I don't like the question. It's a little too porno. And that's my view of it. And I am ready to continue."

He sits down, folds his hands in his lap, crosses his ankle over his knee and fixes his eyes on the carpet. The men and women are silent. Ten or 15 seconds pass. (continued on page 208)Real Men/Real Women(continued from page 92) Nowhere else on earth is life as moribund as it is in this activities room.

He stands back up.

"I just want to make it clear," he says, raising one shoulder, "that I'm not going to have any more problems with questions about sex. I don't want everybody to be inhibited." A thin, quiet smile appears on his lips. "And don't worry about hurting me," he lowers his head, "because I'm ready, you know, to take part. And, ah, the thing I like about a woman," he raises his eyes, "is, ahhhhh, you know, her tits and her ass."

•

My old flame, Mike Troy, the famous boy, the Olympic gold medalist, immortal of the Big Ten and god of Indiana University, whom I have not seen for 20 years and who formed, absolutely and finally, every ideal I will ever want in a man, calls, and we make a date for dinner. Then I call my friend Marsha back in New York.

"Whattya wearin'?" she says. I say I am going to wear the black velvet and the leather. Marsha considers this.

"That should do it," she says.

•

In the Bay Area, a beautiful woman who is a graduate of Real Men/Real Women is standing in the doorway of her office with a book in her hand.

"Three things I must have," she says by way of greeting. "A man who is great at oral sex. A man who is passionate. And a man with some size."

I ask her to define size.

"OK. Let me say this. A thin dick turns me off."

I ask her about length. We move inside.

"Well, I'm uncertain ..." she says, walking over to her desk. She has long legs and a ponytail. She sighs and frowns.

"So, what is the range you find acceptable?" I ask.

She sits down, crosses her thighs and lapses into thought.

After a minute, I penetrate the silence.

"Well, what do you say to five inches?"

"Five inches?" she says reflectively. "Five inches. Five inches. Five inches."

She opens a drawer and gets out a ruler.

"I assume you mean erect," she says.

She lays the ruler on her knee and marks off five inches between her thumbs. "Well ..." she says. "Five inches might do if it weren't too skinny."

"Let me see," I say.

I walk over to look. She holds the ruler between us with a serious, even a straight, face, with her thumbs on the marks.

"Jeez!" I cry. "Five inches is up there!"

"Yeah!"

"No--here.... God!" I say. She is holding her left thumb at the bottom of the ruler, on the blank space, instead of at the one-inch line.

"Eeeeeeeeeeek!" she screams. "OK. OK." She moves her thumb up to the one-inch mark. "OK. Here's five."

"OK," I say. "Forget five. Move up."

"OK. Here's six--so that's six."

Her eyes widen. She shoots her thumb to eight in a reckless, lavish gesture and, indeed, seems ready to squander the entire ruler.

"If men knew women did this, they would die," I say.

She looks up and laughs in a deep, velvety chuckle, and taps the ruler against her thigh.

"But who would ever tell them?" she says. "We have to keep men's egos up, or they couldn't perform at all!"

•

Jerry says there is time for one more round before lunch, so the women ask the men, "Why are women important to you?"

The men think about it a few moments. Larry takes the floor. "There is something different about you," he says.

The women smile politely.

"Something--magic." He runs his thumbs around the inside of his waistband and hitches his pants slightly, and suddenly his voice goes up beyond his normal range. "Something I can't live without."

His words are ardent. The women stop smiling and glance at one another.

He sits down abruptly. The corners of his mouth tighten and his nose enlarges. He covers his face with his hand. Guy, the spinologist, goes over and gets a box of tissues. Larry removes his glasses, hunches over and wipes his eyes. Then he stops and gazes across at the women. His face is wet and amorous. The women encourage him. He grows looser, rounder, flabbier, more tender. This drama is of short duration. A moment later, a second man stands up and says why women are important to him and breaks down; then a third breaks down sooner than the second did; then a doctor remains entirely dry-eyed and merely opens his mouth, presses his hand to his breast and pantomimes ripping out of his skin the heart that has grown so mellow; and the more miserable the men appear, the more masculine they become--for to be a man and go off your nut over women is nothing; and to be a man and go off your nut over women in front of women is also nothing; but to be a man and go off more of your nut than the last man who went off his nut over women in front of women is a competition, and that smacks of balls.

•

"Maria and I have been in a relationship for three years," says Jerry Lipkin, "so I didn't feel so great when she started talking about a penis."

"Even though she was talking about your penis?" I say.

"As it turns out, she was talking about my penis."

"So why does that bother you?"

"I didn't know it was my penis."

"Oh."

"How would I know?"

"You're saying there was no way of knowing it was your penis in particular."

"No way."

"Because she just said a penis?"

"Exactly," says Jerry with the note of sadness that mingles with a man's enthusiasm when he speaks of his penis. "I was in ... the ... dark."

•

"This is where the men and women walk around and drink in the incredible unity that exists right now in this room," says Maria after the question-and-answer period is over. "So if you would please push the chairs back and, without physical contact or verbal contact, just spend some time connecting and making--no hugging! no hugging!--eye contact. OK. Let's move the chairs."

People move the chairs, and then a song is played on the stereo cassette recorder and they slowly walk toward one another. Gazing into the eyes of Californians has an unpleasant effect on me. I am standing outside the room, behind the door, when Arthur finds me.

"I've seen people cry today," he says. "I've seen people laugh. And I've seen no emotion on your face."

I smile at him.

"I wonder," he says, "what you, as a journalist, think of this."

"Ahhh!" I am surprised.

"All right," he says. "I was wondering if you, as a woman, were getting what was going on." He raises an eyebrow and looks through the doorway toward the side of the room where the men were sitting.

I concentrate my thoughts in that direction. This dampens my fervor. No, I say, I do not know if I'm getting it.

"You mean, as a woman," he says, putting his hands in his pockets, "you don't understand men." He starts jingling some change, and suddenly I remember what he said about the wig, the toll booth and the towering experience.

I switch my eyes back to his face.

He drops his eyebrow. He is a nervous and sensitive man with a head in the shape of a boiled potato. I think of the woman in the wig. My imagination presents a vivid glimpse of her "unzipping" and "attacking" Arthur, and the thought crosses my mind, if one in my position can talk of thoughts, that no woman understands a man until she undresses him or no woman undresses a man until she understands him. One or the other. I do not understand men, in spite of everything, and do not know which.

"Be assertive!" Maria's voice comes through the door. "Spend your lunch hour how you want to!"

•

Mike Troy and I drive to Tiburon and have dinner. I gaze into his face. I say his skin looks good. He writes something down in my notebook. We drive back to the city and have a drink at Lefty O'Doul's. At 2:30 A.M., we walk to the door of my hotel. He turns to go. He turns back. We crash into each other's arms. His chest hits mine with such force that I feel a flash of the old Troy, the butterflier, the boy in the bursting racing brief, and for a moment--the only bearable one in the entire evening--I burn with the same fire that aroused me to such riot in my resplendent youth. Then he goes. I walk upstairs to my room. I lie down on the bed. I remember he wrote some lines in my notebook. I get up and find it in my purse. I lie back down. I open it to the page with his handwriting:

Eucerin Skin Cream.

From Any Pharmacy.

Get It or Be Old.

•

After lunch, everybody goes back to the activities room and Jerry talks about the Nobel Peace Prize, and then there is a break and after the break is the Love Theater. "This is a really special time we reserve for each of you to come up in front of the group and enjoy all the power of amplified voice," says Maria. "The way we work it is you get the microphone and express anything you want." After about 20 people express themselves, Maria says the expressing has to be cut short because "the closing ceremonies are so beautiful."

•

Stan and Helen Dale, the famous sexologists, have each other, and Stan also has Janet and Helen has Don.

"We have what men and women want," says Stan.

"Yes," says Helen. "I have a date with Don this weekend. He's 20 years younger than I am."

"And I hope she has a great time," says Stan.

"Oh, come on!" I say.

Stan and Helen are eating at the Hyatt. Helen is freckled and has a short blonde page boy, a black kimono, gold earrings, gold bracelets and glasses on a chain around her neck and has been married to Stan, a transactional analyst, for 27 years. Stan is fat, potbellied, with a large head, gray hair, long, bluish eyebrows, a big nose and square glasses; he wears a navy-blue blazer and a white zip nylon shirt and has had a relationship with Janet for the past seven years.

"Look, Jean," says Stan, "everything that comes out of my mouth will be total honesty. And if you don't buy it, guess what? I can still love you. I can still love the essence of a woman called Jean, who is exciting, who is beautiful----"

"Thank you."

"I'm not talking physically."

"Oh."

"Who is this delicious woman, so try not to find everything I say impossible to believe."

"Good. Fine. Now, what does Janet think of Helen?" I say.

"Totally supportive;" says Stan.

Helen smiles and takes off one of her earrings.

"See, everybody knows everybody," says Stan. "Helen knows Janet. I know Don. Don knows Janet. I know Janet's boyfriend Orv. Orv knows Helen----"

"We are the wave of the future," says Helen, taking an eyebrow plucker out of her make-up bag. "What men and women are going to want--is to be us."

"Hey!" says Stan. "We're not lying to you! OK, I admit I've had twinges of jealousy. The most recent one was when Janet was with Orv, this absolutely gorgeous man. Gorgeous! A physically gorgeous man. A water skier! He has the right body. The right penis. Larger than mine, probably, you know--so now, that twinge comes. They were having delicious sex. But now they're both in my life."

"So what happens when Janet is having delicious sex with Orv and Helen is having delicious sex with Don? Don't you get lonely?" I ask.

"But I'm at home with one of the most delicious guys in the world!" says Stan. "I'm at home with a man I love, I respect, I admire. And I have wonderful sex with him. I can have the most glorious, wonderful time with myself!" He has a low, excited voice with a rich hollowness and a bass echo. "As I think of it now," he says, "my body is tingling."

"Don't you have any flaws?" I say.

"No," he says. "If I did, you see, I would work on it."

"He doesn't have any flaws?" I say to Helen.

Helen is fooling with the eyebrow plucker, trying to fix the back of her earring with it, and looks up at Stan.

"No," she says.

"Are you sure?"

She puts down the plucker and looks straight into his face. He does not smile, as I think he will.

"No," she says.

She blushes. She has a pink complexion and is a far from unattractive woman.

"Does Helen have any flaws?" I say.

"Yes----" says Stan.

The check comes. Stan looks at it and suddenly stops speaking. We glance at each other at the same moment.

"I never get blown out of shape when a woman pays for me, Jean," he says.

I reach for my purse. Unzip the top. Deposit my notebook. Zip it back up.

"I love for a woman to pay for me as much as you love a man to pay for you," he says. "Janet paid for a Caribbean cruise for me a couple of months ago. And she had to go into debt to do it. And she is now probably going into hock further, because the money she withdrew is income-taxable; you know, that kind of thing. So it's a double whammy. But that's fine. I don't argue. It's what Janet wants. You know. And Helen. She's paying for this weekend."

"That's nice," I say.

"Yeah," says Stan. "The only thing that prevents the juice of life is fear."

On the way down to the lobby, Stan and Helen tell me this could be my life and that Stan has multiple orgasms, and then we reach the inner lobby and it is time to say goodbye. Stan starts to put his arms around me. I pat his shoulders.

"That's called burping," says Stan. "Don't hugs feel good to you?"

I say hugs feel good with someone I know well.

"Well, what's the difference between my hug and someone's you know well?"

He advances toward me.

"There's a difference," I say, stepping back.

"What is it?" he says, advancing again. "Fear?"

I step backward.

"Were your parents huggers?" he says.

"Yes."

"Did they enjoy hugging?"

"Yes."

"Did you feel suffocated when they hugged you?"

"No."

I am nearly to the door.

"So, somewhere along the line, you have developed a decision not to hug."

His face is close to mine, and the long blue hairs in his eyebrows stand up.

"I cannot hug you and write about you," I say.

"Oh, yes, you can. You have my total permission to be as subjective and objective as you wish."

"Thank you very much."

I shake his hand.

Affronted, he drops to his knee and kisses my fingers. Helen says goodbye and Stan says he loves me and I am delicious; and I wave to them both again through the glass of the door.

•

Barbara, the artist, emerges from the bathroom while the closing ceremonies are going on and meets Elizabeth, a writer, at the coffee urn.

Barbara clasps Elizabeth's wrist in the delicacy of her sentiments. "I can't stand it!" she says.

"What's the matter?" says Elizabeth.

"It's too much!" cries Barbara. "I had to splash myself with cold water."

"My stars," says Elizabeth.

"That man I was standing next to--the physician," says Barbara.

"He's a nice-looking man," says Elizabeth.

"He's attracted to me," says Barbara.

"He's a very attractive man," says Elizabeth.

"What?" says Barbara.

"He's a very attractive man," says Elizabeth.

"I'm attracted to him, too," says Barbara. Two white spots appear on Barbara's cheeks.

"Go back to him," says Elizabeth. "Wait!" she says. "Let me see how you look."

Barbara's face is wet, her eyes inflamed. Elizabeth wavers. A long silence follows.

"What's the matter?" says Barbara, her voice sinking. Elizabeth shakes her head.... Barbara squeezes her hand and hurries back to the activities room.

•

A cake for Jerry Lipkin's birthday is brought out during the closing ceremonies, and Bea, a publicist, a tallish, curvy woman with a lovely, sharp bust and a flat stomach, and Malcolm, a video photographer, are in the act of sharing a slice.

"I hope you learned something from this weekend," says Malcolm.

"Like what?" says Bea.

"Like you have to stop running after men you can't have," says Malcolm, who is tall and balding, with a long beard and glasses. "The reason I'm hitting you with this, Bea, is that I've known you for five years, and I've seen you fucked over by one man right after another."

Bea laughs softly, but a wrathful flush the color of peachblossoms covers her face.

"The trouble is, men like me initially," she says. "They're incredibly drawn to me."

"Because of your looks," says Malcolm, "and your power areas. You're a very powerful woman. A very bright woman. Sharp. Sexy. Alert. Pa dum! Pa dum! Pa dum!"

"And then something inside me freaks them out," says Bea. "They get real cold and rejecting. And instead of leaving, I hang in there."

"That's because you always think there's hope when there isn't," says Malcolm.

"I always think there's hope when I love somebody," says Bea.

She is disheartened and, dropping her eyes, goes on smiling.

Malcolm is moved.

"That's called whipping a dead horse," he says gently.

•

"What do men want?" asks Glenn, a genetic scientist who has been to Real Men/Real Women four times. "I don't know what men want. I want too much from women. I want everything. Absolutely everything. You name it, I want it. I am not stupid enough to want only a little bit. So whenever I get involved with a woman, I always have a sinking feeling. Always have it. Because she doesn't have everything. Everyone has flaws. I'm perfectly aware everyone has flaws. And that is what makes it so impossible."

•

"What do women want? Well, I like it when a man is hot for me," says Patsy. "Like this one man I've dated for a year and a half. He loves me. He's crazy for me. Whenever he sees me, he has a hard-on. He's talking to me on the telephone, he's got a hard-on. He's driving over to see me, he's got a hard-on. When he's with me, we make love three times a day."

"Geez!" says Bea.

There are six of us in Bea's apartment: five Real Women and myself.

"His name is Rick," says Patsy. "Three times a day."

Patsy is an executive secretary and is milky- and dewy-faced, with red lips and a fawn-tweed business suit.

"He picks me up and carries me around," she says, sitting forward on her chair and holding her feet close together. "If we have a fight and I'm mad at him and I don't want to talk to him, he picks me up and puts me in bed. I get up. He picks me up and puts me back in bed. I get up. He sits on me. He won't let me up till he's kissed me and made love to me passionately and until I finally acquiesce and give in to him."

"You are describing the primitive man," says Bea.

"He is primitive," says Patsy. "He's an animal. And I fight. I fight and he makes me orgasm."

"But is he smart?" asks Bea. "Has he evolved a brain?"

"Oh! He's extremely brilliant," says Patsy. "Very high I.Q. Very sensitive."

And she holds her head to one side, like a doe.

"This is enough to make you puke," says one of the women.

"And he's rich," says Patsy. "His house alone is worth $750,000."

She dips down and opens up her pocketbook and takes out a picture and hands it to Bea.

"I have almost passed out at least two or three times from my orgasms with him."

Bea examines the picture. "He is not bad-looking," she says.

"I don't care what he looks like," says a woman. "The man is a demigod."

"He's shown me six bankbooks," says Patsy.

"This is what women want," says Bea.

"So help me, God, he's shown me six bankbooks. He won't leave me alone," says Patsy.

"Women want this," says Bea.

"When we get in the car--I am not exaggerating--if I don't put on my seat belt, he won't drive."

"Lord knows," says Bea, "you can't help wishing men would be something like this."

•

The women have serenaded the men and the men have serenaded the women and the men and women have made two concentric circles and beamed their love at each other, and now everybody is connected. I am putting away my tape recorder when Jerry comes up.

"Hello, Hugh," he says into the recorder. Then he says, "You know who I'd like to have take this workshop?"

"Who?"

"Hugh."

"Hugh who?"

"Hugh! Hugh!"

"Hugh Hefner at Real Men/Real Women?"

"Yes," says Jerry. "Hugh amid all the love."

•

"But there is a battle scene going on out there," says Bea, bringing in more cookies and putting them on her coffee table. "And we women have been brainwashed. All these workshops, encounter groups and Real Men/Real Women weekends. They tell us the way to get a man is to be open and vulnerable. And let out our hearts. So we talk about our feelings. Yak. Yak. Yak. And the men shit on us without exception."

"Yes," I say. "A woman should have her secrets."

"Absolutely," says Patsy.

"A woman must keep her secrets," I say.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," says Patsy.

"Above everything--above sex, even--males want females who are mysterious," I say.

The doorbell rings. My date, Richard, arrives. Bea invites him in. He is a handsome man, and the women make room for him on the couch, and then Patsy says to him, "So what have you always wanted to know about women? Now's your chance."

Richard shakes his head.

"Naw," he says. "Jean's already told me everything."

"The prospect of men and women telling each other the truth should strike anyone of sense with awe."