Sex Reparations

So I have plenty of married friends, most of us do right? How many of yours are happy? The majority of married women I know are unhappy, unfaithful, and unmotivated to leave. Sure, I know a couple or two who I'm sure will celebrate a fifty year wedding anniversary, but they're few and far between. We've called men dogs for years, but like Jay-Z said "Ladies is pimps too." Even though women are just as scandalous as men, we don't blame them for it. It's like sex reparations. Mommies were at home barefoot and pregnant while philandering daddies were sneaking off with secretaries for decades. Sons, it's time to pay for the sins of your fathers. It's not fair, but we all see it in action all around us.

When men have affairs, we blame the man. When one of our girlfriends calls us hysterical after finding a phone number in her mans wallet, we grab a bottle of Patron and a crow bar. We pop in Gloria Gaynor and sell his autographed football on EBay. We'll have overages on our cell phones after talking for hours analyzing everything he's said over the last six years, trying to figure out when he became a lying, cheating, dog. We help her burn his clothes and hack into his myspace page to change his sexual orientation. We don't stop and tell her to get a grip. We don't tell her it's just plain wrong to key his new truck. We go on and encourage this craziness for as long as she wants to carry on like a lunatic. Lord help our boyfriend if he's friends with that loser. All communication ends immediately. No more poker nights, no more basketball games, fellas-if y'all crash your cars into each other and needed medical attention-you better be going to separate hospitals. If we so much as see that dirtbag's number on our man's phone-they're going on P. Probation for at least a month.

So when the tables get turned and our girlfriends are the ones slipping their wedding ring into their coat pocket, what do we do? We blame the man. That's right-it's still his fault. We'll justify our girlfriends behavior; Jen may have monica'd the Verizon guy, but her husband did abandon her to go fight for our country, girl like that can't be left alone for long. We'll tell her old man we're doing girls night at Heathers-Cosmos and cards. We'll wait as our friend tucks in the kids, kiss that poor fool goodnight, and changes in the backseat of our car-before we hit the club and she tries going home with the first guy who buys her a Bud Light. We may try to talk some sense into her, tell her she has a good man at home, and even ask her if she really wants to risk it. Then she'll remind us of how that lazy bastard didn't help at all last week when the baby had the flu. That's all you need, you give her the green light, if he knew how to help around the damn house, she wouldn't be out acting like a college freshman at 32. Now, like all plans, sometimes there's a flaw. Sometimes, that poor fool learns how to put two and two together and she gets busted. Now here's her man 'bout to catch a case, and our ridiculous asses will run over and get all up in the middle of that drama. We'll cuss him out, when he calls our friend a whore. She may be a whore, but she's still our girl and no one uses that tone when talking to her. How bout when our man says a bad word about Mrs. Trifilatis in an effort to defend his boy. It's P. Probation once again.

Why do we enable this kind of behavior? Why do our friends behave this way in the first place? Is this what the bra burners of our mothers generation hoped female equality would bring? Now I'm not saying all men are fornicators and all women adulterers, and everyone has their own reasons. But what if we stopped making excuses for our friends, what if we actually pondered the consequences of our own actions, what If we learned to hold onto a good thing and let go of a bad one without destroying each other in the process?

The Slacker Friend

We all have that one friend, the one we've known our whole lives, the one who is unreliable, immature, and usually trying to borrow $20. As kids we get into all sorts of childhood mischief, a few years later do a stint as rebellious teenagers, take a road trip in college where you learned how to party like a rockstar, and then we grow up and get real jobs and mortgages and life insurance. But not this friend, they're still living in mom's basement delivering Dominos part time when they're not busy drinking or playing guitar hero. We spend decades telling ourselves something will change them, they'll get married, or have a baby, or maybe the PS3 will stop reading games.

When our friend the slacker says they'll be ready in ten minutes, we just assume an hour and are impressed when it only takes them forty five minutes. Anyone else, we're shooting off text messages like "WTF! Whr R U?!" But not our slacker friend, we'll come up with excuses and even blame ourselves! "Well, it is kinda my fault, I know that lazy ass can't wake up before noon without several wake up calls." When they prank call us at work, instead of hanging up the phone, we try lecturing them on why they should be doing something productive. C'mon now, they are 30 damn years old, if they don't know this by now, you can not help them. You're paying the bill on the phone they're calling you from-stop, that'd end the calls. And you're slacker friend will always forget their wallet when you go out to lunch. Instead of making their broke ass do dishes, you reach into your wallet because you're enabling ass stopped by the atm and got extra cash because this friend hasn't had their wallet since 1992.

Now every once in a while we swear off this person. We're tired of dealing with all their nonsense. We try cold turkey. . . and it never works. Three days will go by and we have ignored every call, not responded to one text message, and since we're not there to loan them gas money, they can't just come by our house. Then we're getting ready for work, and as we grab a towel from the closet a box of old pictures falls and there we are, sixth grade-braces and pimples with those stupid Dr Suess hat on our heads and for a second we miss them. But we're strong; we put the pictures back, remind ourselves of the time they peed on our grandmothers houseplant, and head off to work. Jamming out to the Flashback Friday mix on the way to the office, the DJ plays Big Poppa, and there we are, sophomore year, smoke rolling out the windows of their Ford Festiva, and for a second we miss them. We shake it off and remember when they blew off the job interview for a position we spent months trying to get for them. During our mid day coffee break; the secretary, overwhelmed with her wedding planning jokes about eloping in Vegas, and there we are, barely twenty-one doing body shots off complete strangers at Cesar's Palace, and for a second we miss them. We think about how they threw up on our favorite shoes at the end of the night, and go about our day. The problem is, this person has been so entwined in our life for so long, they're everywhere. After a few more days, we break down and call them.

See, the thing about our slacker friend, is yes, they do outrageous things, but they're there for us when we really need them. That time mom found a pack of Marlboros in our JanSport, knowing you'd be shot, they took the blame and we grimaced as our mom got their dad on the phone. When we dated that loser freshman year who broke our heart, they told the whole school he was premature and burned his pictures with you while eating a pint of Ben and Jerrys. And the day we finalized our divorce, they came over with a bottle of tequila. It dawns on us, our slacker friend listens to us bitch about our nagging spouse, out of control toddler, asshole boss, plummeting portfolios, and mild ulcers all so we can be a grown up. We sure make the grass look greener for them don't we?