To the Gentlemen in the Audience

WARNING: While the following contains no violence, sex, or profanity, some readers may still find it objectionable. You were warned.

Y'know, I've worked out why all those sitcoms and movies with families in them always have a scene with a teenage girl locked in the bathroom, siege-engines, Swiss mercenaries, and tubs of boiling oil (leg-wax, possibly) all set to repel any intruders. She's "doing her hair," she says, or she's "got a hot date" and wants to get her make-up right. My favourite is leg-waxing, where the outer, non-privileged members of the household get to hear ripping sounds and agonised screams at the very same time. Fit payment, they think, for being unable to use the toilet ...

And sometimes this is indeed the case. Those clouds of fragrant steam may mask nothing more than hairgrips and mascara. Then again, sometimes that girl is talking in code. There's something going on in that bathroom that she really doesn't want to tell you and you really, really don't want to hear.

I'm still writing in code. Let me be more clear. "My period started today," this girl says, "and I don't feel good. I'm having a hot shower and I don't want to talk about it." Or possibly: "My period was unusually heavy today and halfway through it, in a small, crowded room, I discovered that a) I was on my last sanitary product, b) I couldn't get out of there for a good half hour, and c) that warm meaty smell was me. Hooray for emergency toilet paper I say."

She adds, grinning nastily, "I'm surfing the crimson tide." Eyes glazing over, you back away but she isn't done yet. A life-time of avoiding this subject has boiled over in her disgusted soul and she wants you to suffer for it. "The long dry desert days, the drought of life is over," she says, getting poetic, "The parched inhabitants have prayed to the sky and lo! it breaks and Great Red Rain, the deluge, the ocean-from-above waters the dusty lands." Now you're running but she follows, muttering of washing clothes and blood stains and sneaking around when nobody can see to get rid of the evidence. The filth, the disgust, the fear of discovery. She hasn't even started on cramps yet, or any of the other myriad little quirks of a woman's character at this time that somehow seem so funny when you aren't suffering them yourself.

A curse, they called it. I wonder why.

Now, O my children, forget all I have written. These things are better not thought of by mankind. Just, the next time some female in your household boots you out of the bathroom or shower or sanitary facility on some trifling excuse like "doing my hair and this is the best mirror," don't argue. Don't whine that you need to pee - that's what the bushes outside are for. Don't complain about frippery and the eternal preening of the female. If you do, she might tell you the real reason she's in there. You don't want that, do you?

Don't ask; don't tell.

POST SCRIPT: Uhm, I wanted a change from writing about poetry, okay?