Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 185811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 185811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
And again I wanted to climb him like a tree.
Those silver eyes dancing and his mouth quirking an eighth of an inch up at the ends?
Damn.
We totally had a problem here.
In fact, several of them.
But the one I wasn’t going to get into right then was me thinking about how badly I wanted to treat him like a sex object.
“You know, men get drunk a lot,” I pointed out. “Women do too. They get drunk alone, among only men, or only women, or mixed. It happens millions of times every day and every night. And does every one of those millions upon millions of men get drunk and then go out and perpetrate a sexual assault on a woman?”
His amusement vanished.
“No,” I answered for him. “Because to do that, they have to have the monster in them. Bottom line. You either have it in you to do that, and thank God the vast majority don’t, or you don’t. It has not one thing to do with booze. Or drugs. Or what a woman wears. Or what she doesn’t. Or how she behaves. She has absolutely no responsibility at all for a man harming her. A monster does that because he’s a monster. He just hides it when he’s sober. But when he’s weakened, that monster comes out. And that’s it. The end.”
His big body shifted slightly, but he made no response.
Though I read in that it was his response.
He was with me.
“And the same with any kind of bad behavior a man commits,” I continued. “If he harasses a woman. If he beats her. I’m sick and tired of men, and women for that matter, blaming women for the bad behavior of men. That said, there’s something that helps to make this never ending. You know what perpetuates this kind of thing?”
He shook his head.
“Locker room talk and no man in that room having the balls to say, ‘You know what, that shit does not make you sound cool. It makes you sound like a loser who can’t get laid by a real woman. Knock it off,’” I told him. “When men allow men to talk shit about women, that reduces women to sex objects. It gives the impression all the men in that room are down with reducing women, and with that validation, some men carry on with that, the asshole ones, and they do things directly in an attempt to reduce women. And since it’s men doing it, they have no clue what it’s really doing. Reducing them.”
Mo agreed with me.
He didn’t say it.
I saw it.
Considering he communicated his response (his way), and even though I liked he had that response, I kept talking.
“Turn this around, what do you think of a woman who goes to a Chippendales show? Thunder Down Under? Is that about skanky guys who are probably addicted to drugs and have no other choice in how to make a living?” I asked.
“Skanky, maybe. The rest, no,” he muttered.
I felt my lips twitch but kept at him.
“Though, women who go to those shows are thought of as randy or out-of-control bachelorettes with their bridesmaids or desperate. Why the contradiction?” I demanded.
“Men that watch strippers are considered randy or bachelor party dickheads or desperate,” he returned.
Hmm…
“I do not let men objectify me, Mo. I don’t drag them to the club to watch me dance. They come on their own. And you can look at it two ways, just as you could look at a woman watching men dance while taking their clothes off. I make a damn good living off a man who’s totally down with appreciating the female body and he’s at one with the fact he enjoys it, or it turns him on, and it ends right there. Or I make a damn good living off weak men who are weak because they’re not strong enough to respect strong women, even if those women are strong women taking their clothes off. And I’m okay with both.”
“You’re you,” he grunted.
“And what does that mean?” I asked.
“You’re beautiful and together and confident and I hear you’re talented. Most women who do what you do don’t do it because they’re proud of it. They do it because they’re in a life where they don’t want to. But they have to.”
There was a lot there.
Primarily the fact he thought I was beautiful, together and confident.
Good job I didn’t trip when pivoting to show him the living room.
But also, he had a point.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
His expression registered surprise.
“I don’t have an argument for that,” I told him. “Though I will note that I didn’t ask about how you felt regarding the career of stripping as a whole. Just me doing it.”
For a second, his face blanked.
Then he let out a roar of laughter.
I was relatively sure my toss pillows wobbled.