“These women, they chase after the money and the rich man, who is also a vicious man; and the women, too: they have the other side of the vicious equation to manipulate the man and get the money. The man is a pervert whose interest in money was to make up for his inadequacy. If he didn’t have money, he might become a rapist. The woman also takes advantage. They speak the same language; power over another person is the way to gratify the beast of my emotional stagnation. One says, ‘I have power over you because I have money.’ The other says, ‘I have the upper hand because I control the sexual fantasy that drives you.’ Both are wrong. Neither of them is in control of anything. They are both caught on the wave. Both of them are in the storm. Another coffee?”
I nodded assent.
In the kitchen, I watched him open the bag of whole beans and pour a heap into the electric grinder carefully and then place the plastic top over the precariously full device. I was aware that once ground, the coffee would be even more precariously peaked. His mind was on something else.
“After they get through with their emotional whirlwind, these women still have an ounce of sense. Something in them still longs and looks for the nice guy – the really nice guy. Even if they were fooled by the quiet pervert, they can still see the decent, clean guy, someone who talks to them like a human being.”
I waited while the grinder crackled and whirred, pulverizing the beans to powder. He shook the device and then tapped the cap a couple of times to make sure the mound of powdered coffee would stay put. Then, carefully, he removed the top over the open filter receptacle of the coffee machine and let the ground coffee tumble like a little avalanche into the filter.
“Yeah, but even after you take the car to the mechanic, it’s still going to have problems.”
“Yes,” he said, continuing to fill the filter. “These women have diseases.”
“With people, it’s not just physical, mechanical problems. Emotionally, socially, these people, both the men and the women, are basket cases. You see a personal ad, ‘Loves the outdoors, likes sports.’ Well, what can you do with the partner who is in a wheelchair? She can watch from the sundeck of the chalet? This is what it’s like emotionally, socially: they are crippled and cannot go up the mountain with you. They don’t know what you’re talking about, have no interest in what you’re doing on the field with the ball. You see what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” he said. “And you’re right. They run an ad about riding bicycles, as if it were a play-date for children. But when they sit with you, they have nothing but horror stories about their lousy decisions and stupid clichés in place of any insight. And they are just as stagnated as when they were wearing little outfits or doing some other weird thing for their clients. They are still in business. Their marriages are business. Their friends are business. Everyone they look at, they ask, ‘What’s in it for me?’ That’s the way they look at the whole world: ‘What can I do to take advantage, make money, get power?’”
He poured the water into the back of the coffee machine, closed the lid, and hit the button.