Women Are Difficult

This is about how you are difficult. This is about how I am difficult.

“Women are difficult,” an asshole Fox News disciple probably said under his breath, rolling his eyes, to a male colleague, one time, when his female supervisor asked him to do something he did not want to do. But that’s not what this is about. This is about how specific women are difficult. This is about how you are difficult. This is about how I am difficult.

I didn’t decide to be gay because I thought it’d make things easier. But, honestly, yes, since I was already gay, I thought—besides the greater uneasy circumstances—some things would be easier. I guess it’s sexist to think only men can be sexist, just like it’s stupid to think only women can be stupid. Everyone is stupid, especially when it comes to love.

It’s one of those things that are hackneyed, but mostly true, like a Nike slogan or First Corinthians at a wedding. I used to watch romantic comedies and think, “I’d never put up with that shit.” I was right. I have never put up with that shit, just a hurricane of other, slightly different shit. And someone would put up with mine.

I always thought people with relationship drama were basically idiots. I thought anyone who used the word “drama” without the words “award-winning” and “series” probably was an idiot. And maybe that is still accurate. But that doesn’t mean I’m not an idiot, too.

There is an exhibit by Erin Gallagher and Edgar Cleijne at the New Museum called “Osedax.” It is a black box theater playing a 16mm film projection of a Rhode Island shipwreck. The Osedax is a species of undersea worm that buries into the bones of whale carcasses. A whale fall is a whale carcass that has fallen to the ocean floor.

Usually when a whale dies in shallow water, scavengers devour it swiftly. However, in deep water, fewer scavengers exist, and the carcass can provide sustenance for a complex community of organisms over a period of decades. Giant isopods, squat lobsters, bristleworms, prawns, shrimp, lobsters, hagfish, crabs, sea cucumbers, octopuses, clams, deep-sea sleeper sharks, and of course Osedax, have all been observed at whale falls. More than twenty previously unknown species were discovered at whale falls.

Similarly, marine life can envelop the remains of a shipwreck as a foundation and frame for survival. Beautiful man-made coral reefs provide a habitat for an abundance of organisms that depend upon the resources and protection of the reef environment. Fish, sponges, clams, anemones, octopi, squid, crabs and lobsters interact and thrive among these lost ships.

Sometimes wrecks and falls can create their own discrete ecosystem—in other words, a new world.

What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry. What I’m trying to say is, hang on, give me a second, I’m trying to say it. We need to talk, you said. This is what we talk about when we talk about needing to talk.

I’m still trying to talk. It is difficult. Trying is trying. This is about how you are difficult. This is about how I am difficult.

We are difficult and we are trying. We are difficult, but we are trying. I’m still trying. You’re still trying.