Not So Model Home - By David James Page 0,34

man standing near me, who was sneaking quick sideways glances, whispered discreetly, “Slap me.”

I looked at him briefly, not sure I had heard what I heard. I went back to my Roma tomatoes.

“Slap me, Amanda.”

This I couldn’t let go. “Excuse me?” I said.

“Slap me. Step on my nuts with the heel of those stilettos.”

“Do I know you?” I asked, and turned away.

“I want you to violate me with this yam,” he said, brandishing a rather oversized tuberous root vegetable.

“That’s a sweet potato.”

“Well, it’s a yam, too,” he replied defensively.

“Yams are from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a sweet potato. They’re from completely different botanical families.”

“Potato potah-to. I want you to ram it into me, Amanda. Make me your bitch.”

At first I was put off by this man’s appalling lack of knowledge of the origins of basic foods. But my encounter with him had taken a more ominous turn. It wasn’t the sexual component that disturbed me. From the time I was old enough to know what was going on and had breasts big enough to cause male heads to turn, I knew I was being hit on by men from time to time. Creepy fact, but those were the times. There were no sexual harassment laws, no predator laws, or women to stand up for themselves when I was growing up. Of course, it was a great improvement over my grandmother’s time, when she claimed that they left the female babies to the wolves in her Lithuanian village because they weren’t worth as much as a man. So I accepted the evolution that had occurred in human thought, however small that it was.

No, what really bothered me was the fact that from the instant this man used my name, he was acting as if he actually knew me—that he felt comfortable enough to be intimate with me. I knew a line had been crossed. It was unfortunate. I wanted adoring fans, the operative word here being adoring. Adoring meant people standing at a respectful and reverential distance, whispering how much they wanted to be like me—no, to be me—and perhaps snapping a picture to show the folks back home while throwing large bags of gold, frankincense, and myrrh in my general direction. But it concerned me that fans wouldn’t always follow the rules I had laid down in my mind. I discovered that I should be nice to all of my fans, but I shouldn’t be too nice to any of them.

“Get down on your knees,” I said, surprising myself.

“What?” the startled yam . . . I mean, sweet-potato–wielding man replied.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said get down on your knees while I finish shopping,” I stated firmly, extending my index finger with the blood-red nail toward the floor, where I expected this man to grovel. “I have more shopping to do. I expect to find you here when I come back!” I said, raising my voice a bit at the end for emphasis. He never got fully down on his knees, and as soon as I was far enough away, he dropped the sweet potato and ran out of the store.

A woman who was watching all this transpire from a distance drifted toward me. She decided to comment on what she had just seen.

“Men!”

“You said it, sister.”

“I recognized you as Amanda Thorne on Things Are a Bit Iffy.”

“That’s me,” I said, thrusting out my hand to shake. She grabbed my hand and pumped it like an enthusiastic candidate for governor.

“So glad to meet you. When I saw you slap that little French bitch on the TV show, I felt a stab of sisterhood. We don’t need to take that from the male patriarchy.”

“Er, yeah.”

“I mean, men have been oppressing us since we walked out of caves and realized we could do more than breed and cook.”

Now, I’m a feminist to a very large extent. I still have my EVE WAS FRAMED bumper sticker on the back of my Toyota Land Cruiser. I still admire Gloria Steinem, mostly. But when I hear a woman making remarks that involve words like oppression, patriarchy, or forced castration, it’s too much for me. I mean, I like men. I like being fucked by them. I was married to one, for gosh sakes. Of course, he turned out to be gay. But he is still a man, no matter where his penis has been.

“I’m not sure he was oppressing me per se. I think he’s just a bitchy French queen. An equal