Friends Or Lovers Part 35

John was waiting for me at Pizza Hut. I wanted to return to the scene of our first meeting. He had antic.i.p.ated a long lunch and had ordered a bottle of wine. It felt like a homecoming. At the end of such an emotional week, I was particularly glad to see him.

His contract at IC was at an end. He felt the training had gone well and that there was now a good chance that the SHARE experience would sell well. As we looked over the menu, he chatted about progress. Before I left, I talked to Jo and realised that Johns contribution was not just technical. In the time he had been there, he had formed a committed and thriving team. The way he talked and cut through bulls.h.i.+t impacted on staff morale. Two-months earlier when the department had been formed, there was a group of disparate and irritable people. Now it was a cohesive squad equipped to take on the compet.i.tion. I finally realised why Johns reputation was so good.

"Everything is set," he said.

"Thats good. A week ago I was dreading this, but now Im quite excited about it."

"Mike talked to everyone in the department yesterday. The reaction was really good. He let me say my piece. I was moved that people listened to my views and were so supportive."

It was good to hear that the future was positive for IC staff despite the direction of my own life. We were gearing up for the largest marketing and sales push in our history and even Sam and Elaine had taken the time to speak with everyone. They had organised a drinks reception to round off the day: a last chance to let their hair down before "the big push".

We chatted and exchanged small talk until the food came. Then I decided to get personal. Several things bugged me and I wanted to clear them up.

"John?" I started tentatively.

"Yes, Pen?"

"Why did you sit next to me on the plane?"

"Seriously?"

"Yes, I really want to know!" I said.

"Remember my talk at the CIPD?"

"Could hardly forget it!"

"Well, your a.r.s.e was definitely part of the equation but not the main reason!"

"What else?"

"I noticed you sitting in the lounge. Our eyes met a couple of times and I liked that. You were reading a book, like me. It was a novel by Bernice Rubens, I think. Ive read her novels so I thought we might get on. But it was when you moved in the queue that I realised youd noticed me too."

I was listening attentively, trying to see myself through his eyes and understand how I had impacted on him. He looked at me from time to time, but as he spoke he focussed more and more on his thoughts. His eyes wandered around, looking variously at his food, the table and me. As he did so, his face lit up.

"The clincher was definitely the shoelaces," he said.

"You mentioned that in the speech, didnt you?"

"Yes. When you did that I knew you mustve read Ms magazine."

I did not understand how he could work out that I had once read Ms magazine.

"How could you know that?"

"Easy. Thats where the advice was first given to women. There was an article in the mid-90s telling women how to flirt at work. The headline was quite uninspiring, I remember. I think it was something like 'The Working Womans Guide to s.e.x at Work right before an article about s.e.xual hara.s.sment! Anyway, I pictured you as a single professional woman who enjoyed her independence and men!"

We both laughed at the irony, but I was still amazed that hed made a connection.

"You never cease to amaze, John. Are you really telling me that you remembered this article about tying non-existence shoelaces while in the queue at the airport?"

"Its not so strange Penny. I didnt read the article, I wrote it! I added that bit of advice about the shoelace as a joke. Id never seen anybody do it. I thought the idea was amusing and it would be a laugh for the magazines readers."

"You?"

"Why so surprised? Id just finished my PhD and was full of that stuff. I had to make a living and for a short while I wrote lots of magazine articles."

"I cant believe it!" I said, absolutely gob-smacked.

John looked me square in the eye.

"So there you were doing something to attract me that Id written about nearly 10 years earlier. It was art creating life. I was looking at you in those fantastic jeans and pondering the connection between us. I stood there behind you and realised that my life had touched yours 10 years earlier. I couldnt resist talking to you."

As I was trying to take this in, to comprehend the myriad of different things that he had been thinking about when we met, I realised what a complex and accidental thing attraction can be.

"Do you remember what you asked me on the plane?"

"We chatted for ages, I mustve asked you many things," he replied.

"About s.e.xism in the army!"

"Did I ask you that? My goodness we must have got on well for me to ask you that!"

He had forgotten. To me that question had separated him from everyone else Id ever known. To him, the question was old hat, a party piece that hed asked hundreds, if not thousands of times.

"Yes! You were very forward," I said.

"You mean there are people more forward than me?" he joked.

I tried to think of one, but could not.

"Well, theres me!" I answered.

"Yes," he laughed. "Youre definitely more forward than me!"

As we laughed, I wanted to tell him of my discovery.

"I have an answer for you."

"To what?"

"To your question, dummy!"

"Oh, that?" he said mockingly as I realised that he was jesting with me.

"If you have, Pen, then you have my total respect. Usually I have to spend ages giving hints and heavy clues before people work it out."

I hesitated. What if I had missed the point and was about to make a complete fool of myself? I dismissed it quickly from my thoughts. If I was to become a fool again, it would take its place at the back of a very long list of foolish thoughts and actions. I wanted to know whether my answer was the one he was looking for so I set aside my fears and told him.

He looked gob-smacked. "How did you come up with that?"

He was truly amazed. Just as I was about to panic that Id made a huge gaff, a grin started to spread over his face. His hand moved to his cheek and he rubbed it as his mouth stayed open. He was truly amazed.

"How did you work it out, Pen?" he asked.

"Its strange, really," I said.

So I started to tell the story. Mike had been fondling me while I was talking on the phone and in my head I kept thinking 'hes dying for me, really dying for me. That phrase kept popping into my head. And then, as I started to tease him and goad him I had a sudden realisation that I wanted him to be strong I wanted him to be stronger than me. So I started to resist him. Initially, I felt bad, as if I was doing something wrong, but I wanted him to overpower me to prove to me that he could. I wanted to test that his love was so great that I couldnt stop him expressing it.

And in the next instant, I thought how unfair it was that I should be testing him, making him use force to get what I dearly wanted to give anyway. I was encouraging him to be aggressive and I started to wonder why I was doing it. Then it hit me. I wanted him to prove he was stronger than me. Never before had I thought of s.e.x as a kind of test through which men had to pa.s.s to prove their strength. Never before had I thought of the problems that might create.

So I set out for John what had been going through my head. If he was not stronger than me, how could he ever protect me? And the moment I felt ashamed of thinking this way, I stopped resisting him. And yet, the phrase "hes dying for me" kept spinning through my head. Suddenly, I put these two thoughts together. I wanted him to overpower me so that I would know he was strong enough to protect me, even die for me. I wondered about that phrase. Why do we say 'hes dying for me? Where does that expression come from? There I was lying there wanting him to prove that he would be prepared to die for me.

Johns question popped into my head it was one of those flashes of intuition that have no explanation. What could be more s.e.xist than expecting a man to die for you when you were not prepared to die for him? Would I be prepared to die for him? I would kill to keep him, but that was not the same thing as being prepared to die to save him. I wanted him to be prepared to die for me, but I realised that I would not die for him. So I stopped teasing him and started to care instead about giving him as much pleasure as I could.

It gave me my first true glimpse of the power that women can wield that we make a man feel that he has to prove his willingness to die before we will love him. Mike, I knew, would sacrifice himself for me, but not in the movie hero sense. A few days before, when we had been driving home, he told me that he would let me go if I wanted children. I could not imagine making such a sacrifice.

"But your question, John," I continued. "It stopped me insisting that he be prepared to die for me as a pre-condition of my love. I gave it to him willingly, no preconditions, no tests."

"Thats it, Penny! Thats what men are taught to do. Usually they never think twice about it for the entirety of their lives."

"We expect men to die. We expect them to die to protect us. And for no other reason than they are men," I said, finally.

What a journey I had travelled. For the last 20 years, since I had been introduced to feminism, I had been taught (and taught others) that war was caused by men, fought by men, for the benefit of men. It had taken me all this time to see it a different way. War might be fought in the minds of the men who fought them to protect those they love. Perhaps it was not even for this reason. For them, perhaps, it was to show themselves worthy of someones love. As I faced up to the truth that I would not die for my man, but wanted him to be prepared to die for me, my own part in mens violence became clearer to me.

John interrupted my thoughts with some of his own.

"If we cared about equality, Pen if we valued men as much as women - we would be recruiting the strongest people to fight our wars. Many women are strong and fit, even if the average man is stronger than the average women. By rights, our armies would have many women fighting alongside men. Equality means that women would insist on their responsibility to fight, not just their right."

I thought about this for a second and suddenly became bold.

"Then thats what we should do," I said. "Its only fair!"

"Fair, yes. Sensible, maybe not."

"Why? Surely we should recognise this....." I said with ardour of a convert.

John stopped me.

"There is another point of view," he said firmly.

I gestured for him to continue.

"Lets suppose that there was a battle and after there were 1,000 women left in a village who could bear children, but only 100 men. Would the society be able to survive?"

"Of course. And those men are going to be busy, arent they?"

"I suppose they are," he said.

His face, however, was not whimsical.

"But what if it was the other way around? What if there were 1,000 men and only 100 women left?"

His question made me think. It would take countless more generations to rebuild a community if this happened. I thought about his words but challenged them.

"I dont buy that," I started. "If women and men were fighting on the front line together, not only would they be building mutual respect and enduring relations.h.i.+ps with each other, when the battle was over there would be roughly equal numbers left. I think any community would be happier as a result of that, wouldnt they, even if there were not as many left. Women have fought alongside men in revolutions so why not in armies?"

He smiled at me.

"Would you fight?" he asked.

I hesitated.

"Would you?" I responded.

"I dont have a choice, Penny."

"Of course you do," I insist. "We dont force people into the army."

John disagreed.

"Look at the history of war. If I refuse to fight, my own government is likely to put me in jail where I can be expect to be beaten, b.u.g.g.e.red and left to die. If I fight at first, then change my mind, I am court-marshalled for cowardice, not bravery. Not long ago I would have been executed if I tried to reject violence. My only other alternative would be to take up arms against my own government which means fighting my own people, my own brothers and sisters. Either way, Im left with no way out of violence. I can choose the enemy, my own government, or a court of law. Even if my own country supported a right to conscientiously object, would I get mercy from the enemy?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember Fallujah?" he enquired.

"Fallujah? In Iraq you mean?"

"Yes. No man between the age of 15 and 55 was allowed out of the city before the US forces attacked it. Remember the phrase they used? The soldiers were 'clearing the ground. They cleared the ground by shooting everyone they came across."

"But thats genocide," I objected.

"No," John replied. "Only men were killed. The women and children were allowed to leave. Even if my own side spares me, the enemy wont. They dont care if I support the war or not, theyll still kill me. Again, I have no choice except to fight."

"My G.o.d!" was all I could say. The horror of this appalled me. I felt sick. John saw my discomfort.

"I dont have the choices you do, Penny. Its not a question that really means anything to me. Its not true that men love war. If we did, there would be no need for conscription, no need for draft laws, no need for military laws to punish deserters, no need for court marshals, no executions or jail for men when they reject violence."

I wondered what it must be like to grow up constantly wondering if, one day, you would be forced to fight against your will. Suddenly it made sense that little boys played with guns. Its not necessary to teach them, they simply work out for themselves that one day they may have to fight.

"Keep saying these things, John. Dont let anyone stop you."

He nodded and the conversation moved onto an a.s.sortment of trivia as we finished off a lovely "stuffed crust" pizza with char grilled chicken, peppers and extra cheese. After a second bottle of wine, I was too drunk to drive home so we walked it off in the park and visited a coffee bar. I had a truly wonderful day.