The miserable have no other medicine,

But only hope.

— Shakespeare, Measure for Measure III, 1

A young lady told me recently that “Women got easy and men got lazy… and it’s a shame.” That’s so true, for most men will tell you that it’s easier to get women nowadays than in the past, and as a result men don’t try as hard.

But still, there are women who can’t seem to get a man, for whatever reason…but they hope. They say that you live in hope and die in Constant Spring, which is a Jamaican inside joke that refers to the geographical areas of Hope and Constant Spring. It’s no joke for some women, as there are so many who live their lives longing and hoping for someone to share it with. When this doesn’t happen and hope diminishes, that’s when they become desperate.

And desperate times call for desperate measures. Usually it’s when time creeps up that desperation sets in, and people deal with this in different ways, as we’ll discover right after these responses to Emotional Prison and The Vagina Monologues.

Hi Tony,

It is true, most of us are doomed to become just like our parents. But not all of us are locked into this prison. Those of us who have the fortune to be able to branch off and become the individuals we want to be are lucky to be free from this prison. Though no matter what, we will always take some personality traits from our parents, because it was they who we grew up with. You are only in a prison if you want to be. It’s all a mental mind frame and whether you decide to take yourself out of it or not, it’s all up to you. The truth is, no matter what trial you have faced in life, you do not have to be trapped within its grasp. You do not have to let the mistakes of the past bind you and prevent you from moving forward. Let go and get over it…move on.

Catherine

Tony,

Wat up? I was very impressed with your article, Vagina Monologues, and big up to the playwright too. It must be a great play to watch. I am a playwright too, so anything to do with theatre excites me. Can you believe I am reading your article from New Zealand? I am a Zimbabwean and love catching up on Jamaican news because I am a diehard reggae fan. Awesome, keep on writing.

Stanley Makuwe

Auckland, New Zealand

Hi Teerob,

Your article The Vagina Monologues, was very interesting indeed. I think you hit the right spots and it was seriously entertaining. However, you missed something on one very important point. In listing all the names for the vagina, you did not mention the favourite Jamaican name for it, ‘pum pum.’ I have actually written a poem about the powers of it, and your column, in my opinion, supported the ideas in my poem. Here’s a verse.

The power that makes men behave like boys

Giving up their wealth and earthly toys

For a romp in the hay, as they say

At any given time, on any given day!

Duhaney

My fellow columnist and colleague, my good friend Sharon Leach, really made me stand up and take notice after reading her article titled, Story of my Life that appeared in the Sunday Observer August 8, 2010. So much so that I had to pick up my phone and give her an urgent call. “Sharon…your article…was it fact or fiction?” Sharon writes brilliantly and is the author of many short stories and other pieces of fiction, so naturally I thought that this was one. I was wrong, for The Story of my Life, was really a truthful slice of Sharon’s life, as she verified to me.

The gist of the story was, she dated, albeit briefly, the guy who delivered DVDs to her home. She writes, “It started out innocently, as these things do…I didn’t hear from him all week. I tried to rise above naked disappointment; maybe the chemistry I’d imagined between us was simply that, vain imagination. But love stories that intense tend to burn out quickly, don’t they?…After a few months the affair sort of imploded, collapsed in on itself.”

The gist of the story was, she dated, albeit briefly, the guy who delivered DVDs to her home. She writes, “It started out innocently, as these things do…I didn’t hear from him all week. I tried to rise above naked disappointment; maybe the chemistry I’d imagined between us was simply that, vain imagination. But love stories that intense tend to burn out quickly, don’t they?…After a few months the affair sort of imploded, collapsed in on itself.”

Of course, these are only snippets of the story, but it read like a classic love story, and that’s why I asked her if it was fiction. When I laughed, in what some would say, was a typical male chauvinistic guffaw, chiding her for going out with the DVD delivery boy less than half her age, her response was, “Well, you men do it all the time and it’s okay, plus men your age don’t want women my age anyway, so where does that leave us?!”

This desperation manifests itself in various ways. First the woman starts to do things that she would not normally do, as proven by her choices in men. I do recall hearing women in their 20s and 30s admonishing me and telling me that they would never date a man who was of a certain socio-economic class, doesn’t have a nice car or live ‘somewhey’. They could pick, choose, and refuse men, and the common cry was, “No taxi man, no jelly man, no conductor for me.”

But as the years roll by and the pickings become slim, anxiety turns to desperation, and all men become fair game, regardless of age, class, colour or creed. Still, there is the danger of going too young and having to deal with an adolescent male, as Sharon points out in her article. “That’s the thing about 23-year-old boys, they think that every older woman they meet is waiting to tumble down on top of them. They have to be disabused of that notion very quickly.”

Sharon is not alone in thinking this, for many women have expressed this same sentiment. Ironically it doesn’t work the other way around, and men who squire young girls are not seen as being desperate. But there are other inherent dangers when older men cohabit with young girls and many suffer the consequences.

A woman pointed this out to me recently saying, “Young girl is going to be the death of plenty older men.” And this has been proven true in many cases where the older man has met his demise because of his young nymphet, or by some young jealous ex-boyfriend who couldn’t compete with the cash and fancy car of the older man.

Who remembers the old reggae song, “Young gyal business mash up Jamaica.” You only have to follow our news reports and see that in many cases of violence meted out to older men, a young girl is at the centre of it…or she is the victim.

But back to desperate measures which occur all too frequently. Because of this desperation, many women will lower their standards and settle for almost any man, as long as he’s a man, and fiercely defend their stance.

“You can talk all you want; yes, he may be married, and yes, he may treat me like crap, but at least I have a man in my bed from time to time…and you don’t.” I see it often, and I know lawyers, lecturers, senior managers and bankers who have some little jingbang-wutless-no-ambition-no-job boy as their lovers, all because of desperate measures. Women got easy and men got lazy, and it’s a shame.

Even women who swear that they’d rather be alone than scrape the bottom of the barrel, succumb to desperate measures when a man, any man, pays her any attention. But does it last?

Sharon Leach continues: “I’d become fond of him too. But by this, I was over the cougar thing; I was over him. I didn’t need the changes I had to go through with him. I could get that nonsense from a man twice, hell, three times his age.”

That’s the thing about desperate measures, one day you may simply wake up and realise that there is no need to be desperate after all. I really admire Sharon for sharing the ‘Story of my Life’ with us, as it did pique a lot of interest. It also highlighted the double standards that exist regarding men and women, based on my initial reaction when I asked her, “Sharon, how could you?” But if I had written that, about dating a girl less than half my age who delivered DVDs to my door, it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows or solicit a phone call. Way to go Sharon.

Still, maybe one day I’ll do a similar article, ‘The Story of my Life,’ but chances are I’d be tarred and feathered and run out of town. But at least it wouldn’t be classed as a desperate measure.

More time.

seido1@hotmail.com

Footnote: At times we Jamaicans are just too hard on our athletes and expect then to be superhuman, even when they perform way above average. I recently heard someone criticising Usain Bolt on one of those call-in sports programmes, saying that he had underperformed this year. What is wrong with some people? Usain had the joint leading time over the 100 metres of 9.82, plus he also did 9.86; plus the fastest 200 metres this year of 19.56, plus barely missing the 300-metre world record by a hair, which he ran in cold, blustery, miserable conditions, plus was on our relay team that has the fastest time this year where he ran an incredible 8 point something split. And yet some people say that Usain Bolt underperformed this year. Do they expect him to break his own amazing records every time? Give the man a break and allow him to be human. Even when he ‘underperforms’ he has no equal.