David Mamet writes about writing about women. Here’s a piece:
But true depiction of women is, I think, rather different, and takes into account two things: the ways in which they are similar to men, and the ways in which they differ. For to say that all people are equal is not to say they are the same; and to confound the political with the practical gave us the enormity of feminist literary theory.
Puts me in mind of some really disparate things: losing my virginity, a lifetime friend who doesn’t talk to me anymore, MTV’s The Real World in Las Vegas, and the New Jersey Nets.
A) Katya, the first girl I had sex with, gave me a copy of Mamet’s Writing in Restaurants, which includes the essay, “Women are Bitches.” She was the first Art School Girl of Doom in my life, and sometimes I wonder what became of her. But I don’t wonder enough to go webstalking.
B) John, whom I grew up with, gave me a copy of Three Uses of the Knife, another book by Mamet. He also staged Oleanna, the performance of which is the spur for today’s article by Mamet, but I was living in another area when John staged it, so I never got to see it. He stopped talking to me in September, and sometimes I wonder what became of him.
C) On The Real World in Las Vegas, there was some dude who, within 48 hours of moving in, was getting it on in the hot-tub with two chicks. All three of them were unstable in interesting ways, but one of the girls was particularly nuts. As I recall, she threw a fork at the guy during dinner a few weeks later. He flew into a rage, and wanted her tossed from the show. The group had a big meeting where the guy said something that sorta stuck with me: “She throws a fork and hits me in the eye: she’s just being a bitch. If I react and hit her, then I’m a guy who beats women, for the rest of my life.”
D) Three seasons ago, Jason Kidd got traded to the New Jersey Nets for Stephon Marbury. My buddy and I bought a half-season ticket plan that year. We’d gone to 10 games the year before, when the team was atrocious as usual. In Kidd’s first year, the team turned around completely and became the best squad in the east. They made it to the Finals that year, before getting whomped by the Lakers. Thing is, the reason a player of Kidd’s ability was on the trading block was that he’d punched his wife during an ugly incident, the season before. And I struggled for a while with the issue of cheering for the guy, because I’ve long considered hitting a woman to be one of those rubicons that you can’t really come back from.
