Hi, this is Frank Flaherty. Welcome to Brooklyn, that highly overhyped part of NYC, for another weekly episode of “Dad, Interrupted.”
“Dad, Interrupted” is a newsletter where I describe, in lighthearted, moderately embroidered stories, my family-man misadventures. The cast includes my wife, my kids, my friends, my in-laws and assorted chuckleheads I bump into.
This week’s menu is long and varied. It features women winemakers, the artist Judy Chicago, a mouse trapped in a closet, and the University of Wisconsin women’s rowing team.
But at its core it’s really about guys and dolls, men and women, ladies and gents. These days, we now know that life goes beyond that old binary, that the old binary does not describe all our fellow humans out there. But the old binary is still around and it’s worth pondering every now and then.
I call this story “Of Mice and Women.”
I am in the bathroom one weekday morning and Jeanette is knocking on the door. She wants me to vacate this bathroom so she can use it.
“Honey, I’ve got all my stuff here,” I say. “I’ve got to get to work, and anyway don’t you usually use the other bathroom?”
“I can’t use the other one.”
“Is the sink or toilet messed up?”
“No.”
“Okay, then…?”
“There’s a mouse.”
“Running around the other bathroom?”
“No.”
This deposition-like conversation unfolds whenever Jeanette wants something but doesn’t want to ask for it outright. So I must ask tiny questions and get little nibbley answers until the picture crystallizes, kind of like assembling a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
I continue with my questions:
“Is the mouse running around outside the bathroom?”
“No.”
“Then…?”
“It’s trapped.”
“Where?”
“In the closet next to the bathroom. In some box or something in there.”
I pause. The puzzle is coalescing. I say, “So, to get to the bathroom you’d have to walk past the mouse that’s trapped in the closet?”
“Yea.”
“Is he squeaking?”
“Yea.”
I pause again. Then I say, “Would you like me to get rid of the mouse? And would you like me to use that other bathroom?”
“Sure, if you want.”
Technically, my very artful wife has requested nothing. But take a step back and see what is happening here. My wife is asking me to assume a very traditional sex role.
Now, not only am I a feminist and Jeanette a feminist, but this is PARK SLOPE, the land of uber-enthusiastic feminists of all genders. Park Slope is full of dads pushing strollers and hanging up laundry, and briefcase-toting women heading to Wall Street.
In fact, Park Slope is not just feminist; it’s push-the-envelope feminist. Winemak’Her is a local bar that serves only wines made by women winemakers. Several years ago, our Prospect Park was the site of a 200-foot-wide fireworks display by the artist Judy Chicago. The display was in the shaped of a butterfly, which is Chicago’s metaphor for the vagina.
The Slope has also been the site of a feminist BDSM dungeon. What is that, you may wonder? Well, the woman who founded it did not allow female submission scenarios. Only male submissives allowed!
Now, I’m not mocking these things. Whatever their individual merits, I understand and heartily approve of their larger cause, which is gender equality.
But my feminist wife has asked me to be the family mousecatcher. Doesn’t this summon up those old-timey scenes of terrified ladies standing on piano benches while the man of the house tries to thwack the mouse with an umbrella? And yet, this is happening in Park Slope, aka Feminism Central.
Let me add that this is not a one-off situation. I have confirmed this with many other men in my very forward-looking part of Brooklyn. No, I haven’t done an official survey, but I think I can with confidence say the following:
Whenever mice, rats, cockroaches, clogged toilets, any dead creature, garbage, wasp nests, slugs or sewage backups drive up and into our lives, many of the otherwise fierce and feminist ladies of famously feminist Park Slope sashay right back to traditional sex roles.
Has something smelly, ugly, slithery or necrotic shown up in the house? Call the dad. Call the husband. Call the boyfriend. Call the big brother. Even call that somewhat creepy guy next door. Any port in a storm, if you know what I mean.
Sometimes, the women of Park Slope offer a specific justification for why they can’t do these unpleasant, traditionally male chores. When a toilet is clogged, for instance, my wife Jeanette will say that she “just can’t get the hang of” the toilet plunger. Which is exactly what happened two weeks after the Mouse Affair. I looked up from the book I was reading, and there was Jeanette, handing me the plunger and pointing to the upstairs bathroom.
Now, Jeanette is tall and strong. Her genes are good — her father was 6’3” and her brother was 6’4”. When I met her and found out she had gone to the University of Wisconsin, I told my tall, strong new friend that she should have tried out for its nationally ranked women’s rowing team.
Want more proof? A few years after Jeanette graduated from the University of Wisconsin, and before I had met her, she gut-rehabbed a building in Kentucky.
“I ripped down the lathing with a crowbar” is one of the first things she said to me. That’s the kind of thing a guy remembers.
So: While I believe that Jeanette thinks she can’t get the hang of the plunger, I also believe that she CAN get the hang of the plunger.
“Are you a feminist only when it’s convenient?” I asked her as she pointed upstairs. When I say things like this, I raise my eyebrows in a way that I know she detests.
“Twaddle, twaddle and more twaddle,” she says. “It’s learned helplessness. It was drilled into our heads and our mothers’ heads for decades that women just can’t do these things. We’ve made good progress on some supposedly male fronts, but we aren’t there yet.
“This is especially true of boomer women, people my age,” she adds. “You men made us this way. Now, take the plunger.”
I put down my book and head upstairs to get to work. But, secretly, I’m smiling. What the strong, feminist women of Park Slope don’t know is that, at least some of the time, we guys like to chase the mice, squish the roaches, snake the pipes and do all the other yucky stuff a family requires.
We like to be needed, and that’s a fact.
Of Mice and Women