I am reading “The Bitch in the House”, 26 short personal stories by women about their own struggles with love, sex, and the formal roles of mother, wife, mistress.

I thought of doing a companion piece called, “The Bastard in the House” but as my son says, “Who would read it?”

Is the inner emotional life of most men that complicated?  Would they care about anyone else’s in any case?  And what would entice women to read something about what they already think they know?

Besides I think “The Bastard” is actually more varied than “the Bitch”, who is basically the nag who looks after all the details and hounds the poor man all the time with complaints and shrill demands.  That is actually straightforward.

The “Bastard” is probably broken down into several types: the distant, unemotional, controlled and controlling figure; the violent, abusive boyfriend; the male slut or philanderer or serial cheater; the shiftless, lazy do-nothing slob; the sub-combinations of these.

So, on the one hand, the narratives would be more varied; on the other, what could they have to say about why they behaved that way or their emotional life?  “I have my faults but I want to be loved for who I am, I hate women  and anyway, she’s just a bitch.”

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there might be some material there, who knows?  I am sure there is a lot of anger in many of them, but how many have tried to come to terms with it and could then write rationally and objectively about their experience?  After all, almost all the women who contributed to the book I’m reading now are professional writers.

I highly doubt that they contsitute a representative sample of women either.  Too many of them claim to have been unpopular when they were young, too many were shy, fat, too thin, too tall or too smart.  They are writers because they were not part of the mainstream.  At the same time they can claim to be coming to terms with issues central to how women define themselves.  Perhaps men just don’t define themselves in terms of these relationships.

And could I find some professional male writer who will admit to having beaten the crap out of his girlfriend?  Not likely.  So what I have to find is males who can write well who, as part of their efforts at self-definition, have struggled with one or more of the following relationship killers:  emotional detachment and control, financial dependency on women, ignoring the need to contribute to household order or cleanliness, or serial cheating.

All I have to do now is find such people and get them interested in writing their story for me.  What are the chances?    

On the other hand I might just reread the stories I am dealing with now and try to imagine how the males negatively portrayed in them might tell their own tales.

What do you think?