IT'S A MAN'S WORLD

A MAN, USING A DEEP, PERHAPS GROVELY VOICE, NOT MASKING HIMSELF AS A WOMAN AT ALL, BEGINS TO SPEAK. COULD BE A JEWISH ACCENT. SHOULD HAVE A BEARD.

My name is Joan.

TOUCHES MUSTACHE AND BEARD.

It was a rough menopause.
Benefit from my experience my darlings.

May I tell you something?
I learned a long time ago
In this life
no matter where you start out
you end up a man.
It's a man's world.
It began that way.
And it'll end that way.
Even if the women are running it someday
Hello
it'll still be a man's world.

Listen--I was raised, in the old tradition. My mother gave us women dolls and doll houses and Marilyn Monroe posters and taught us the social conduct of Jackie “O”. And remember, before she was “O”... she was Jackie the gloves, Jackie the pillbox, Jackie the perfect little adulteresses wife. Jackie the... Well...

My mother gave us girls dolls and doll houses and all the doll accessories: doll gloves, doll pillboxes, everything to be a doll wife for a burnt out burping chair with a clicker in his hand yelling in almost in rhythm to the beating of a drum--” GET ME A BEEEEER!” My sisters and I used to study mother’s movie magazines--with Annette (GESTURES BREASTS) the Funicello, Marilyn (BREASTS) of Monroe, the message was always clear (PRIMPING) I was being groomed to be love puppet... for some macho sex animal. Some “is my dinner ready” Mr. Big made in the image of God himself, “Father Knows Best”--no questions asked... MALE. My mother trained me well. All of a sudden I’m twenty and I’ve found Mr. Right, as my mother called him--years before we ever met, of course. And he was everything she ever hoped for.

And my father was thrilled. This guy filled a void in the life of a man with only daughters: they watched football, baseball, basketball--you name it ball and mother and I served them--as they sat burping on the couch together in demented male television lust--seemed they had a preoccupation with BALLS... Soon I learned to make babies, carry babies, care for babies... it wasn’t at all like what I remembered when I was playing with my dolls.... And Macho-burp-fart-spit up Mr. Male brought home the steady paycheck and I set out to please him... And... it was tolerable until one day I noticed what I was doing.

One day, I remember I was ironing and I was watching this talk show. Some Dr. Blah-blah-blah is on the show and SHE’S saying some really important things. All of a sudden, everyone’s asking questions. All these women were asking questions. No more interviews with Sherry Lewis and her chatty little obnoxious lamb. No more recipes to stretch my budget. QUESTIONS:
Why do we allow ourselves to be victims?
Why do we allow ourselves to be repressed?
Why do we accept the mess we’re in
Why don’t we question?
Who said motherhood wasn’t a job?
And who can prove that God’s a man?!!!

Well, I burned alot of laundry ironing that day, but I began to ask some questions of my own. Like: WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?

The program recommended books; I bought them, read them, they made me angry and pushed me into therapy BIG TIME.

The message was MEN RULED THE WORLD and in their quest for power and control, because of their need to prove themselves, sexuality becomes an Olympic game, mowing the lawn becomes a race,, achievements outweigh sensitivity, and FEELINGS, the “F” word, are never discussed.

THE MESSAGE WAS CLEAR and, although I never saw it put into words before, it all sounded verrrrrry familiar. My husbands picture should have appeared on ever page of every book in the feminist section of B Dalton!

One day I was bitching to my girlfriend who was in the midst of a hot affair getting back at her insensitive husband who was acting like a child just because she wouldn't have sex with him. And she said, revolt. Tell him what you want. Don’t hide your feelings. It’s WAR!

So I started my own equal rights campaign at home--
I wanted to get a job.
I wanted to come and go as a free person.
I wanted affection and “intimacy”.
I wanted meaningful discussions.

And my campaign brought about a significant change--DIVORCE!

And it was ugly. We fought over everything right down to the toothpaste. I won custody of the kids. He denied me a life, so I made his miserable. Well, I thought.. let him take it like a man. And to my surprise, and for the first time in our marriage, when he signed the divorce papers... he almost cried. It was moving in that pathetic sort of way.

I went back to school and became credentialized. I had control... I had power... and I had become like him... I was finally competing in the workforce, running from meeting to meeting, commuting, learning to get aggressive or die--you know, I was building a career in America.

Then one day, I remember I was squeezed into the bar car leaving from Penn Station, I was so relieved to be heading home.

There I was thinking about my past and how I had progressed. I was free, liberated, aware, growing intellectually, emotionally and standing on the Long Island RailRoad wearing a three piece suit, holding a briefcase in one hand and holding onto the bar, standing, pinned against a wall during rush hour, smoke hitting me in the face, trying to not spill my gin and tonic, running into the city to my upwardly mobile executive job.

And... I had another question. WHAT THE HELL WAS I DOING? I looked around, and in the reflection of the window (it was night) I saw this man... Dressed in a woman’s dress. Holding a briefcase. He looked familiar-- at first glance I thought it was my husband... But it wasn’t my husband--IT WAS ME!!! And I burped. My God I thought, what happened to me? Had I liberated myself or did I just volunteer for a new kind of slavery? Was I freed or fooled? What was important? Me dressed up like a man in my business suit; was this equality? Or just similarity? What was the difference? Was everything I thought to be “happiness” my idea--or the idea of others who weren’t happy, trying to make me believe they were happy by getting me to join them in a last ditch attempt at an un-thought out prospect of freedom?--That was my longest question. What was freedom? Yes I realized I was “free” to compete in a man’s world, now that I was recognized as equal--and now I was supposed to be happy. I had an American Express Gold, and credit up the kazzoo... I was equal! I was a complete equal in every respect. But the question I forgot to ask myself was... “Equal to what”? I didn’t want to compete in a man’s world. I wanted it to be a woman’s world. But everywhere I looked the women had vanished. Bought into the hypnosis of the external justification of success. The idea that if I had mobility, I was free. I was equal--BUT EQUAL TO WHAT? The thought reverberated in my head like the sound of a falling woman echoing off the canyon walls as she descended into hell. EQUALLLLLLLLL TOOOOOO WHAAAAAAAAT?!

I had gained entrance into the world that had now turned my husband into a zombie... to survive this hostile environment--I slowly became like a man...

I regained consciousness and there I was in the bar car. I began to see my husband in the window of the bar car. And then... in the mirror. In every mirror, and in every window. I didn’t want to look but I had no choice. I had to be properly groomed to go to work. I had to fit in to an image. So... I went back to therapy again. My first session, I walked in, sat down and screamed: EQUAL TO WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!

You see, for me, my liberation was really just a more active type of enslavement.

So the years went by. And I continued to live my life like a man.

And now that I’m retired... as in tired again... I look back and see that I misunderstood my husband. Oh don’t get me wrong: He was a typically male, macho, aggressive, success oriented, desensitized, profoundly limited human being who thought he was perfect because he had a credit card and knew all the names of the Jets, the Mets and God knows who else. And he was the way he was because of the “system”. From the cradle to the grave he was suppose to be the strong one, the aggressive one, and “bring home the bacon!” Oui... an unfortunate choice of words for someone as un-religious as myself! You see, right or wrong at the time, I totally misunderstood my husband.

But what he needed wasn't a liberated wife. And what I needed wasn't to be liberated into a man's world.

He needed to stop doing what he was doing fifty hours a week every week to support her because that's what he was taught to do. He needed an environment that allowed him to be sensitive. But I didn't give him that, nor could I. He needed something to help him overcome his stupid, ridiculous, psychologically devastating, repressive masculine upbringing that his mother and father participated in and thought was so wonderful and rewarded him for, as did the society he lived in.He needed to see that his feelings were his real assets, and that his weaknesses were his strengths because they had hidden depths and profoundly significant potential to make him see the world in a different way.

He needed, basically to be reborn.

But I didn't understand that because I was angry at him for being a typical male. What did I think he would be? I don't know. I don’t know.

Darlings, what we need, is Human Liberation--so we see each others potential and provide for it, nurture it. And be a little patient with each other.

And nothing will change until we realize we have to let it change.

That one day, we can be excited when our spouses change, and accept them for their changes and cheer them on for their next change.

One day, we can love each other for what and who we are and see each other’s miracle even if we have to give up our Gucci's.

And above and beyond that, we need patience. A human being is one large miracle that progresses through one thing only... MISTAKES... Human beings do nothing but make mistakes, and then maybe, they get it right--if they're lucky, they get it right the first time, then screw it up the second. And I ask you, how can we openly make mistakes, feel good about each other while we screw everything up trying to get it right, if we don't forgive our mistakes and have patience with ourselves and each other?

We can't. It’s as simple as that.

And if we don't change, do you know what we're all doomed to become?

MEN.

God help us ... MEN!

BLACKOUT

"SPELLBINDING.... 'in Perfectly Norm-iLL People," his second solo, Monteleone slips with ease from one character to another with an original or hysterical line to draw you in."
SCN

" BRAVURA PERFORMANCE... Monteleone demonstrates a convincing range in evoking 10 different characters" 
Steve Parks
Newsday