I pick the phone back up. “Gender-based trash talk,” I say, deciding not to ease into it. “I had him make comments that challenged your masculinity, that…suggested you were womanish.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line for several long moments.
“Ash?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Did Kelsier do what I asked?”
“Yeah. He told me I checked like a girl and asked me if I hit one of my shots with my purse. Shit like that.”
I smile as I turn the microwave on. That last is objectively funny.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had the idea when I found out your name is feminine in Icelandic. It’s clearly something you think about, so it made me wonder if you were more susceptible to misogynistic trash talk.”
More silence on the other end as I head over to the dining room table to find the academic text I was reading earlier. The book is where I left it, but I frown to see it’s closed. I swear I left it open to a particular page I wanted to read more carefully. Shit. I’ll have to find the page again later.
“Ash?” I ask again when he remains quiet.
“I’m here.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just…I guess I always considered myself, you know, a male feminist or something,” he says. “My sisters made sure I knew the kind of shit they went through with men and with their jobs, so it’s a little jarring to think maybe I’m not as enlightened as I thought I was.”
Something in his tone breaks my heart. Ash is a good guy. I don’t doubt he’s more cognizant of women’s issues and experiences because of his sisters, but what’s more enlightened, in my opinion, is that hewantsto be cognizant of them.
A light bulb goes off in my head.
“Ash, maybe I’m wrong about how we’re looking at this,” I say.
“No, you-”
“Shut up and listen,” I tell him.
A brief pause, then, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Let’s think about this in terms of your ideal image,” I say. “Your ideal image isn’t that of a macho man. It’s that of a man who views women as equals, one who cares about their struggles and wants to view them as strong. To use your own word, you’re a feminist.”
“Okay.”
“But you’ve also got this thing in the back of your mind that, in your culture, your name is feminine, and that bothers you. But worse, it bothers you that that bothers you.”
More silence, then another, “Okay.”
“The image being threatened isn’t your masculinity,” I tell him. “It’s your image as this enlightened ‘male feminist.’ You don’t want the gendered trash talk to affect you, but it does, andthatmakes you ashamed.”
A longer pause this time. “Okay, I think I followed all that. So…what do I do about it?”
I pull my dinner out of the microwave and set it on the small kitchen table because my large dining room table is covered in books. “I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say as I open the refrigerator. “I’ll have to-”
I freeze as I catch sight of the bottle of wine on the top shelf. It’s not mine, and I have no idea where it came from.
“Gray?” Ash asks. “You’ll have to what? I think I lost you there.”
I stare at the wine, and suddenly the fact that my alarm wasn’t armed when I came home is much more salient.
No, don’t panic yet. Maybe the wine is mine. Maybe I brought it up from the cellar and just don’t remember. Maybe…
