A Woman's Place Is In The Kitchen, Unless She Can't Cook - The Saga Of A Restive Housewife

Candi Barker was a happy , tucked nicely into her suburban split-level, adoring husband and two lovely children. Her husband gave her one of those frilly cocktail aprons he thought she would look cute in when she served canapes to their guests, and how proud he would be to show off his pert wife to his friends. 

 

Although she felt on the cusp of something big, she smiled and gave him a hug.  There had to be something beyond all this - the women's auxiliaries, the tea parties, the bridge nights, and the endless meatloaf- but she didn't know what; and worst of all, the more she tried to live up to her husband's ideals, she bungled everything.  She couldn't cook worth a darn or balance a checkbook, never managed a hospital corner in her life, scorched her girls' jumpers, dinged the car, let the aphids and Japanese beetles take over the rose garden, and could never finish anything on time. 

Now, if she was one of those dykey lawyers she read about in Ladies' Home Journal, a career woman, on her own in New York City making her way up the corporate ladder; but she didn't know the first thing about business, and was happy when the dinner party broke up into groups, the men to the den with cognac and cigars and the women to the living room to chat about children, fashion, and gossip. 

An article in the Journal summed up this betwixt period this way:

The career girl is one of a kind - determined, independent, canny, and resourceful - for she must be in a man's world.  She has to use every bit of her feminine charm, her sharp intelligence, and her well-honed practicality and no-nonsense assuredness to make her way.  She is at the avant-garde of her sex, a pioneer, an entrepreneur, a doer; and once the wind fills her sails, there will be no stopping her. 

  

The article went on to praise the housewife, for without her hearth and home would be a vacant, airless, dry and sterile place.  There was room for both, but the new winds that blew were to change womanhood forever. 

'What's for dinner, dear', said Candy's husband, seeing the usual disorder in the kitchen - hamburger blood dripping in the sink, potatoes unpeeled in the strainer, and nothing resembling dinner in sight. 

As much as Candi tried to organize her thoughts - first this, then that - the kitchen seemed to have its own life, a kind of mesmerizing stupor which clouded her thoughts and made planning impossible. Yes, she remembered to defrost the meat, but when exactly she had forgotten.  Perhaps when she woke up, that wouldn't be good with all the salmonella around; and the oven had to be fired up well before dinner to be sure the casserole was done in time, but that too was a mystery. 

'Take one of these at around four o'clock', said her neighbor, Jane, referring to one of the new sedatives freely prescribed to women with nervous disorders.  'Mother's little helpers' they were called in the lexicon of the day, phials of little blue pills in the medicine cabinet there if the day got too stressful. 'With a martini would be best', her friend went on; but after that combo she found herself in the chaise lounge in the garden watching sparrows in the birdbath, the cirrus clouds in the sky, and as happy as can be doing absolutely nothing. 

As pleasant as that was, it was no anodyne to her growing restiveness, a feeling of desperate futility and a growing anger at everything.  She hated the kitchen and all its maniacal powers over her. She hated the disgustingly patronizing cocktail dress, and she hated the fucking cat. 

The Sixties were still a few years off, so other than the desultory article or two about career women, there was no apertura, not even a glimpse of what might be other than Kinder, Kuche, Kirke the endless round of homemaking, childcare, and social obligation. 

'What's wrong, darling', her husband said to her as she moped more than usual over the sink; but men couldn't possibly understand the angst, the anomie that women felt.  They were as dumb as rocks when it came to women.  A peck on the cheek, a 'roll over honey' in bed, and a wave goodbye as they rolled down the driveway to work.  Why had she so willingly let herself be trapped in this inescapable prison? Not only was the routine deadening and brutally dull, it signified something.  Women were around just to tune things up, supernumerary otherwise, empty shells, clothes to be hung on a rack. 

Once again, the days of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll were still years in the future, but their forbears were alive and quite well.  There was the neighbor's Librium and Beefeater's, Rosemary Clooney and the Big Bands, and love affairs. 

 

'I would never try that', said Candi, but what else was there?  She couldn't just moon around the garden, all doped up and loopy, and the music was sappy and ordinary.  Sex on the other hand was well within her reach, forbidden fruit, and at the very least an hour or so of 'elevation'. 

'Within reach' meant the milkman, the mailman, the roofer, the plumber, and the electrician, men she ordinarily wouldn't have given a second thought to, but what could be more convenient and discreet?  An affair with Harlan Powers, Senior Vice President of the New Brighton Bank & Trust might be more socially suitable, but the whole schmear of trysts, meeting places, stolen kisses and all the rest was off-putting and dangerous.  She wasn't in the business of destroying her marriage after all, just reconfiguring it more to her liking and satisfaction. 

It should be said that for all of Candi's devotion to husband and family, as random and ill-timed as it could be, she was no prude.  In fact she rated herself 'Extremely High' on the Freudian scale of female sexual desire explained in another article in the Journal. She might have little experience with sexual pleasure, but that did not mean diffidence or lack of interest.  On the contrary she delighted at the thought of any one of these tradesmen inside her, pleasuring her. 

And so it was that she invited Elmer Swensen, the Fresh Farms milkman into her bed, then Cabot Ilkins the gutter man, and Shohei Yukimura, the Japanese gardener.  Yukimura showed her Edo prints of the sexual escapades of shoguns and told her he would show her how it was done, and for an hour every other Thursday afternoon, they coupled in the most exotic way. 

No matter how recondite and careful lovers in a small town might be, word leaks out, morphs into gossip and before long she was The Harlot of Lincoln Street. 

The economic principle of sunken costs has its social application, and Davies Barker, Candi's husband after so many years of marriage, two children, and a hefty mortgage was not about to lose his investment. He would not divorce her if she shaped up in the kitchen, flew right as a mother, and welcomed him more than casually. 

In so doing, he ignored the first principle of marriage - if your wife is fucking someone else, dump her - but to his credit he was an openminded, surprisingly tolerant and forgiving man. The gossip eventually stopped and he was no longer the butt of jokes down at the gas station; but Candi knew she had him trussed, bagged, and secure, and after a cooling-off period, made her elision into the Sixties where it was she who whooped and hollered from the window of a hippy van pulling out of the driveway headed for parts unknown. 

Most Favored Status In America - Victims, People Of Color, And Bandits Are Heralded While Geniuses Are Reviled

The Left was very unhappy to see a photo of America's genius cluster - Huang, Musk, Page, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Bezos et al around the table with Donald Trump.  'Oligarchs' was the heading on one social media site.  CNN and MSNBC both featured the event, suggesting that it was exactly this concentration of political and commercial power that was at the heart of the dissolution of American democracy. 

Complete nonsense, of course.  This array of America's best was reminiscent of the great industrialists of the early Twentieth Century - Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan  and others who built the very infrastructure of modern America, the foundation on which its geopolitical power would be based. 

Thanks to them oil was discovered pumped, refined, and distributed, a railroad network the equal to none crisscrossed the country, steel mills produced thousands of metric tons each year and with it enabled the growth of cities, and Wall Street became the new financial capital of the world.  Yes, these men wielded immense power and together were an influential political force, but their contribution to America was incomparable and the sine qua non of the country's rise to economic and military power. 

The 'industrialists' of today are revolutionizing both America and the world.  Together they are creating an incomparable technological universe which will not only change the way America does business, but will usher in a generation more advanced in intelligence, more suitable and adapted to a changing environment, and linked to a cybersphere of unlimited information through which every human being will be able to live. A world of true virtuality, a complete interface between mind and machine. 

Oligarchy?  How simple-mindedly dismissive of intellectual brilliance and ignorant of the revolutionary new world these men are developing.  The American Left has been so indoctrinated in the progressive canon that its observers can see only through one myopic lens. 

These men are creating the future, and the genie can never be put back in the bottle.  As much as naysayers howl about the end of life as we know it or the unholy concentration of wealth and power, the train has left the station.  

Never in history have technological innovations been stopped, reversed, or eliminated.  The telephone, the automobile, the computer, the smart phone, nuclear fission, space travel all were roundly criticized at birth - the upheaval of the settled order, the destruction of traditional family values, the corruption of children, the havoc of Judeo-Christian principles - but all are still here. 

These geniuses should be accorded most favored status - given full rein and authority to continue their unprecedented scientific achievements.  Like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Morgan, they are indeed the most influential figures in America, and in collaboration with a supportive government, there is no end to what they can accomplish.  

While the progressive Left refuses to grant these men even a modicum of appreciation or acknowledgement of their historic contributions, it accords most favored status on the least. Victimhood is celebrated, the black man is automatically placed at the top of the human pyramid, anointed thanks to his sentient forest roots and environmental intelligence.  

The transgender is hailed as the first of a new, lasting generation of sexuality.  Women are given an automatic, a priori status and can do no wrong, a more able, intelligent, emotionally mature, protected species.  People of color are ipso facto of greater value, social relevance, and moral stature than whites. 

When governed to maintain law and order, society is racist and exclusive, say progressives.  Crime is not a breach of civil and moral law but a legitimate expression of an oppressed people.  The police are the criminals as are their white, privileged, elitist investors. 

Everything is subject to the Bell Curve, the normal distribution of people and events. Einstein, Kant, and Shakespeare were at one asymptote representing those with intelligence so rare that it is shared with very few. Severely mentally retarded adults are at the other end of the scale, doomed by crossed and defective genes to never advance beyond the age of a child; and the rest of us are in the middle, under arc of the curve, sharing modest intelligence with millions. 

Artistic talent, practical genius, and religious insight all are subject to normal distribution.  

Wealth is a result of brains, creativity, savvy, and energy; and it is no surprise that it too is subject to the normal distribution.  The One Percent have made it to the top of the economic pyramid – or in statistical terms, to the asymptotic end of the curve – because of these talents.  

The American Left has not only focused on the low end of the curve, it has dismissed the mathematical configuration entirely.  Society's differences are not a matter of genetics but social influences; and as such can be addressed and eliminated.  Accordingly, the most privileged - there because of exogenous, predictably corrosive forces - must be brought down from their unfairly exalted position, and those least favored raised up to take their place.  Eventually society as a whole will homogenize and there will no longer be social distinctions. 

The Soviet Union tried this and failed.  There was no way of forcing mediocrity on the brilliant, and no way of raising the intellectually slow to positions of influence and productivity.  There is, has been, and always will be a bell curve and a division of society by the best and the brightest and the dimmest and slowest. 

Yet the American Left insists on beating a dead horse.  Socialism, the equalization of society through social engineering, is still alive and well and at the heart of the progressive movement. As in the days of  Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Enver Hoxha of Albania, the dismantling, discrediting, and dismissal of the most productive members of society comes first.  The raising of the masses with an open field ahead of them, can then prosper and grow.  

Which is why the American Left has been quick to criticize Musk et al.  According to the progressive canon, they are the problem, not the solution  Genius clusters are oligarchies, not assemblages of the smartest and most able.  They are oppressors not facilitators, dictators, not men of the people. 

Great civilizations have been created by great men, the kings, emperors, shahs, and shoguns of history; by Newton, Bohr, Einstein, and Faraday; by Palladio, Wright, Corbusier, and Gehry; by Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and Schopenhauer; by  Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Vermeer. 

The Left, in keeping with its socialist canon has dismissed Western civilization because of its colonialism and slavery.  All else is incidental, insignificant, and irrelevant; and this bias has spread to include genius per se.  There is something antithetical about genius, relying as it does on individualism, personal enterprise, and insight. 

This of course will not stand. History will not be denied.  As much as the Left may howl, whinge, and cavil, the genie will not be put back in the bottle.  The American geniuses will continue their intellectual juggernaut, the world will be revolutionized thanks to them, and the fitful attempts to restore socialism, a discredited, failed, and totally fantastical political system, will end. 

Sexual Triage - Hopes For The Star Of Bethlehem, But Only Much Sorting And Waste

Brandi Adams was thirty-six, not very old by today's standards of longevity but old by the ticking of the biological clock. 'I've still time', she said, but when one added up preliminaries - cruising, sifting, sorting, vetting, and triage - there really wasn't much. By the time she found some semblance of Mr. Right, she would be at least two years older if not more.  

One mustn't hurry these things, but all in all after time for a reasonable engagement, settling in to marriage, and waiting a proper amount of time for children, the clock would be running down. 

So it was no time to ease up on the throttle and about time to give the old engine more gas, to 'get on her hurry stick' as her mother used to say, or 'time and tide waits for no man' as her father, fond of adages and aphorisms reminded her more often than not. 

But how?  She had just about run out of options. The Oak Room at the Plaza, the Senators' Lounge at the Willard, vernissages and grand openings at the Met and the National Gallery, dive bars, C&O Canal bird walks, and college reunions, all proven venues for meeting the right men had not panned out. She was left high and dry with only online dating apps remaining, and that was one route that she, a reasonably attractive, well educated, Washington professional would not travel. 

Or would she?  In these days of AI and the mining of big data, the chances of finding a match were vastly increased. It wasn't like the old days of filtering hundreds of responses, giving one or two an in-person try, and amazed at the vacuity of the whole affair.  'Professional' had its own cadre of second-hand paralegals; 'creative' meant rearranging deck chairs; and 'inspirational' meant fundamentalism. 

Now, especially if you were honest, artificial intelligence could sense these tricked out resumes, detect photoshopping, and probe far more deeply into sensibility and desire than the old mechanisms could. Sentient software refers to programs which reveal true individual reactions to hotel stays, river trips, restaurant meals, clothiers, hair stylists, and more.   Little innuendoes shared between girlfriends on social media, captured and bought by marketing firms, can provide more commercial insight than any 'How Did We Do?' questionnaire. 

The same software, enhanced and improved a hundred times, when applied to dating, produces remarkable results.  Yet, Brandi resisted.  It wasn't that she was snobby or overestimating her charm and sexual allure; it was simply too hard-hearted, mechanical, and unromantic. 

Of course there was Lana, a colleague in her office who, desperate, alone and hungry for love, came back from Lagos with an African husband who satisfied her every craving for six months, then having promised his family a high rate of return on his investment, returned to Nigeria with a sack full of Lana's money, secured from her many accounts with the same canniness as his fraudster Nigerian cousins. 

She got what she deserved, thought Brandi who was amazed that her colleague could have been so gullible, so stupid, and so desperate; but there it was. Love was not child's play to say the least. 

Lana had chosen Africa because white skin and blonde hair was all you needed to attract black men, but she paid a price for speed.  Having a white woman was not the same as loving one, and all she had to do was to look at the thousands of Baby Mommas across the Anacostia River to prove it. 

Men did the same thing, tapping into the going market for Thai wives in Bangkok, complaisant, submissive women for the asking; but somehow these third-tier men never seemed to have problems, the marriages held, children were had.  

Of course a number of these women were in someone else's pay, and had to send back remittances to their pimps on a regular basis or have their families roughed up; but by and large men seeking foreign women did far better than the Lanas of the world. 

No, sexual adventurism was not for Brandi.  Perhaps sexual tourism (Bali was apparently the place for a short-term affair-for-rent) might be a pleasant stop-gap, but she was looking for permanence. 

The trouble was within.  Brandi, like many women like her, were just too picky for words - a pickiness which masked a diffidence if not dislike for the whole man thing.  There were plenty of men who came within radar range and who would have honed in on the target if she had not been so off-putting.  To be honest, she really couldn't abide the idea of some gross man sharing her quarters, coming across her path at unexpected and unwanted moments, soiling things, disrupting things, and being a pain in the ass. 

She demanded attention, fidelity, complete honesty, respect, and courtesy and failure in any category was enough to sink the ship. She could have had Armand, but he hedged his bets about other women; or Felipe who simply left things for her to pick up; or Bart who hammered on about his interests with a fiercely conservative agenda with a sensuous Sri Lankan partner.  barely a nod in her direction.

There is no such thing as perfection, let alone in wandering, inconstant, single-minded, obtuse men; but Brandi seemed to think there was, and he was out there.  Of course he wasn't because even if some reasonable stand-in gave her a pass she would slap his wrist.  

Not that she had lesbian desires, for that kind of thing repulsed her. Of course her image was badly skewed and distorted.  When she thought of a lesbian she thought of Bernal Heights bull dykes in engineer boots, butch haircuts, flannel shirts, longshoreman manners.  She should have thought of Alice Weidel, lesbian German politician who might well be the next Chancellor - a lovely blonde woman with a sensuous Sri Lankan partner.

No, that route was closed.  Her GPS maps didn't even show it, so it was men or nothing.  What a depressing thought, but she was not ready to give up.  Hang in there she did for longer than she ever thought.  Lawyers, doctors, professors, investment bankers, software designers, startup mavens - all reasonable products at affordable prices - but she could never get past first base.  Now 40+ she gave some thought to packing it in. 

If this were a dime store romance novel, Brandi would find her true love and live happily ever after, but her life was too Hobbesian - solitary, brutish, nasty, poor, and short - to have that ending.  

She didn't hate men - she got long quite well with her male colleagues.  She just couldn't see fit to live with one given their manners and obloquy. 

It took her time to realize that she was and would always be an old maid, a spinster, an unmarried, childless woman.  Those were categories of scorn and disreputability when she was growing up, and yet here she was, soldiering on alone, facing the fag end of her life without anyone's shoulder to cry on. 

Oh, she found sisterhood in groups of equally solitary women, widows, and divorcees but they all were women without men, not women who never wanted men, and so the surface collegiality made the association unpleasant.  Better to get thee to a nunnery than to hear the whining misery of these ladies. 

She did go to a nunnery.  Well, not exactly but to an Iowa farm where she tended cows, chickens, and goats along side her cornfield, a perfect match.  Dumb men were a problem, dumb animals weren't.