Users Now Come In Both Genders

A generation after the woman’s movement began, it’s time to take stock. What has been accomplished? Well, let’s see. Women are now encouraged to fulfill themselves at work, to express themselves at home, and, according to Bruce, David and Jim, to act like jerks when it suits them.

Bruce is still shaking his head in disbelief. As a guy, he never expected this to happen to him. He met Brittany at night school. They became friends.

“We talked every week and I would walk her to her car after class, to ensure her safety, and also to be with her. We would talk about school, work, life, relationships, etc.”

On the last day of class, Bruce asked Brittany if she’d like to go out. She told him she was seeing someone. “No problem,” said Bruce, ready to bow out. Not so fast, said Brittany. She told Bruce there were guys you go out with and guys you marry, and her current boyfriend was definitely not in category two. He wasn’t a keeper.

Then she asked Bruce for his phone number and told him “I’ll call you.” But she never did.

Bruce is bewildered. Why would she say she would call if she wasn’t going to? This is what guys do. But a woman?

“I guess this is a sort of shoe-on-the-other-foot experience. And I have indeed lived and learned. I will never promise to call someone and not follow up.”

When David met Marta, the age difference threw him, for a minute or so. She was 14 years older. But she was so lively, so funny, so worldly, so sexy, so everything, he didn’t care. He got some grief from his family and friends, but she was worth it. They started to see each other regularly. They went to Mexico on vacation.

“Everything was perfect,” says David. “She looked better in a bathing suit than most of the young girls.”

David was at Marta’s apartment one day when her girlfriend dropped by. The two women chatted and laughed and looked at David in a way that made him know they were talking about him. When the friend left, David asked Marta what that had been about. At first she denied it was anything. Then she finally admitted her friend had asked how long Boy Toy was staying. She said that’s what her friends called him.

“I was crushed,” says David.

But he wanted to continue the relationship. After they’d been seeing each other six months, David started to feel that Marta was losing interest. She was busy more often than not. He panicked and asked her to marry him.

“She laughed,” says David. “She told me she had started seeing an older man and they were getting serious. She said I was just a fling, someone who looked good and made her friends jealous. I couldn’t believe it. She made me sound like some bimbo and I felt like one, too.”

Jim figured when Jenny engaged in some hot and heavy necking with him, when she invited him home to spend the night, she really liked him. He never thought she was just using him for sex. Guys did that. But a woman? Unthinkable.

When Jim met Jenny there was an instant attraction. He took her for a ride on his motorcycle and an hour later, they were “kissing up a storm.” When she asked him to come home with her, he was in heaven. Jenny was smart, she had a good job. This was it.

This was not it. This was nothing. Jenny never wanted to see Jim again. Something about her ex-fiance Michael and how she hadn’t really separated from him.

And now Jim says he knows what it feels like to be seduced and abandoned.