Boys and their Kites ~ Dumped, with Strings Attached.

Ever been dumped?

It’s an odd and distressing feeling that often results in strange and unnatural behaviour, much self questioning of the ‘what’s wrong with me and where did I go wrong’ variety, and the opportunity to experience times of the day (and night) when you’d normally be sleeping that wonderful, post orgasmic, ‘happy relationship’, cuddly sleep.

Well, that last bit might be a bit OTT, a bit ultra-rom.

Ultra-rom?

Ultra-romantic ~ I just made that up.

If you’re a girl and your ex is also a girl you might now engage in some deep and meaningful self indulgence (or self flagellation if you’re into that sort of thing), or a bit of subtle stalking, or, indeed, the not-so-subtle variety described by Karen McLeod in ‘In Search of the Missing Eyelash’ or that which gains us notoriety in the US courts.

I, of course, do not do this sort of thing.

Even given the opportunity, I would never even think of stalking Madge, even if she lived next door ~ which she doesn’t ~ or happened to be the best friend of my best friend ~ which she isn’t.

I would remain aloof from all that.

I may, however, dream of doing unmentionably unspeakable, cruel and unnecessary things to one Guy Ritchie … who I prefer not to think about in the same fantastical (somewhat irregular) breath as Ms Vogue.

Enough of that!

Be calm.

Subside …

But do we go through the same deceitful hoops that men go through when they terminate us?

That mawkish ‘can we still be friends because I still love and respect you’ that so many of our het sisters fall for? The ‘I want us to still be friends while I have a serious relationship with your best friend’ palaver?

Mostly not.

Women dumped by women don’t tend not to go for the mawkish; we’re more inclined to go for the jugular.

But our heterosexual sisters are suckers for this ploy ~ and it is mostly a ploy.

Men, like us, are flawed creatures, though they are less likely to admit it.

Each of us has serious design faults.

And, sadly, ours feed into theirs.

Whereas we tend to be emotional and romantic, men are driven by a different set of urges which include an inability to let go once they decide we’ve outlived our usefulness, have unfortunate stretch marks or are no longer the primary focus of their sexual desire.

This can take as long as seven minutes ~ if we’re lucky, and include foreplay in the estimate ~ or last as long as … well, forever.

Any why?

Because, to men, we are like kites.

When we are ‘new’ it’s fun to take us out and display us regardless of the weather. They love to show us off, remarking casually on the brilliance of our plumage, our exquisite, aerodynamic structure, the way we swoop and dance even in the strongest wind, allowing us to drift with languid and sensual ease, seemingly out of control, on the most delicate zephyr but never truly free of that controlling manly thread.

Having attached us to them by this invisible chord they (sometimes) test the strength of their invisible gossamer bond by letting their friends have a turn at the controls.

Rare, but not unknown.

And it’s standard practice to keep looking at ~ or lusting after ~ the other man’s kite.

The shop window, of course, has an endless fascination.

Once we become weather damaged they buy a new one but, every so often, they have to keep reeling the old one in just to prove they still have ownership rights and to make sure no-one else can stake a claim.

And just because they can.

They are uncanny in their perception too.

The minute you become vaguely interested in some other handler, there they are, on the phone with the sonorous voice and the invitation to ‘come on over’ or invading your inbox with their irresistible (and often rhyming) rhetoric.

We fall for it, every time.

And how do they do this?

They play us like harps, is what they do.

They pluck the strings that they know will make us behave as they want us to. They tune the hope peg, caress the romance string and harmonise with our emotional pitch.

They also have a good go at polishing the body of the instrument in the hope they can still get to play on it whenever they choose before putting us back in the closet (alone) when they’re satisfied.

Satisfied?

Yes, and on a number of levels, the most important being that while they have you emotionally connected to them you won’t be going out looking for someone to replace them, thus endorsing another of their design flaws which is their sexual insecurity. This, and minimising their need to ever be sexually jealous because we ~ exercising our right to fully utilise our own design faults ~ allow them exclusive access to the honeypot that they want but no longer actually desire, well, not for more than the seven minutes it takes to complete the act (foreplay, post coital grunts, optional cigarette and phoning a cab included).

And, of course, even though they now love someone else, they can also love us. It’s a man thing, the new age SNAG, the metronomic, metrosexual Movember man.

They love our company, we have so much in common, we are soul mates in ‘that special way’ that somehow stops short of actual commitment, and afterwards ~ when they know they have us hooked again ~ they go back to ‘her’ and we go home to our cold single beds, alone.

Alone.

Which is the whole point of the exercise.

But we live in hope ~ which isn’t a nice, homely, whistlestop town in Kansas where the wind blows softly o’er the plain and the kids roam free like the buffalo, but rather a frozen, lonely, unhappy wasteland where we anguish over the not-quite-made promise of something we can never quite bet on.

The poker machine that we just know is about to deliver and allow us to be the woman we had always dreamed of being, woman times two, Woman Fulfilled.

True?

I reckon!

And while I have no intention of returning to that self-defeating, self-destructive cyclic arena ~ in any way, shape, or form ~ I can assure that I have been there, done that.

Often.

As have you, I have little doubt, whatever your gender might be.

In my case with one foot in each camp.

I have been called The Cynic of Love and, in defensive mode and usually by guys, asked what the feck a lesbian would know about men and their sexual proclivities.

What, they shout, would you know about our ploys, our sexual secret handshakes and our designer flaws and foibles?

You’re a lesbian, they pout, what would you know about the heteronormative paradigm. You’re just a bloody dyke!

I laugh quietly, and take that as a compliment.

And reel the silly man in ~ as though he was a kite.