This entry is really a tribute to my brother, a man who grew up with 3 sisters and now has a wife and 2 daughters. The man has literally been swimming in estrogen since birth. It wasn't until I became an adult that I truly apperciated the fact that he never tried to kill any of us. Between my teenage mood swings, the knock-down screaming fights my sister and I used to have over cassette tapes and all the damn tampons and pads, he managed to remain relatively calm and well-adjusted. This is amazing because here's the thing: women never stop talking.
I'm going to guess that the men's locker room at my gym is a tomb of silence compared to the endless noise happening in the women's locker room. Underneath the whirl of hairdryers there is a constant rumble of chatter. Discussions make quick and dramatic leaps from new make-up to pumpkin pie recipes to painfully detailed prattling about the implications of a text some guy sent over the weekend. When my family gathers together, it's 7 women and 2 men. My brother and father sneak off to the corner and have quiet conversations about who knows what. Football? Baseball? Chicks? Beer? No. Ok, maybe football and baseball but my father is absolutely no help in the testosterone department. He grew up with 4 sisters and 1 brother. My father is a bona fide chick magnet; almost all his closest friends are female and he keeps getting married. He was thrown into the estrogen pool at birth and gladly wades around in that shit.
I feel sorry for my brother. I can see it in his eyes: the hunger for silence or, at the very least, someone to play video games with. He's actually asked my sister and I to date more so there would be more men around. But the few times he's met my boyfriends, he never approves.
I went to my brother's house one Sunday morning with coffee. I was heading out for a day of shopping with my sister-in-law and the girls. My brother was sitting on the couch, reading the paper. Upstairs, his wife and the 5-year old, Q, were arguing about what Q was going to wear (yes, that shit has already started). His wife was also urging Q to hurry up; meanwhile, the Q was full of questions: "Are we going to lunch, Momma? Can we go to Big Bowl? Is Aunt Dee coming? Is Auntie Cha Cha coming? Is Grandma coming? Can I ride in Grandma's car? Is there a play area? Can I have hot chocolate? What's for dinner, Momma?" The baby, Soybean, was interjecting her own grunts, squeals and screams, demanding a diaper change or her nuk or just to be held. Additionally, you could hear them all running, stomping, throwing things, turning on the water, turning off the water, Soybean's various toys playing their little charming tunes.
I sat on the couch and looked at the ceiling. Then I looked at my brother. "Wow...your house is loud."
My brother glanced up from his paper with weary eyes, shook his head and mumbled, "You have no idea. I don't know what I'm going to do when Soybean starts talking."
Obviously, I am female. And when you get me together with my girlfriends from high school, we talk. Over the years, boyfriends have come into our circle and just watched us talk endlessly. Sure, they join in here and there but only the brave ones. We hardly take a breath. To be fair, we all live all over the country and have a lot of catching up to do when we get together. But we never shut up. Once, my friend Amanda brought her boyfriend Geoff to dinner with us. We all loved Geoff; he was smart and when he got a chance to talk, he was funny. Somehow, our dinner conversation turned to diamonds and how none of us would ever accept a diamond ring because of all the horrible politics, slavery and murder surrounding the industry. For God knows how long, we went on and on about how any man who gave us a diamond was clearly a Republican asshole and deserved to be executed. The next day, an extremely nervous Geoff proposed to Amanda with a diamond. Because of our rambling, breathless conversation the night before, he had to add a disclaimer about the diamond and how he'd made sure to purchase her diamond through a responsible company that upheld rigorous ethical standards.
Now, I still think that diamonds are shady (but I totally want one. Totally. Want. A. Diamond.) but I think back to that night and think about poor Geoff, sitting in the midst of our non-stop chatter with a diamond in his pocket, preparing to propose to the woman he loved when, suddenly, her stupid girlfriends popped his balloon. Maybe if we had just shup up for a hot second and asked Geoff how he was or what was new with him, the who diamond thing would never have come up. Or maybe it still would have. The point is, we never stopped talking the whole damn night.
I happen to enjoy not talking. As I've gotten older, I truly see the value in it. It's ok to sit in a room with someone and not speak. I dated a guy once who had some bizarre urge to speak to me in the mornings. I do not speak in the mornings. The woman at the front desk at my gym always says "good morning" and I smile and grunt. I most definintely do not speak until I have my coffee in my hand. I remember laying there while he went on and on and all I could think was, "Why are you talking to me?! Stop it! Dear God, stop talking!!" Then when I'd finally convinced him to take me to the coffee shop (because he had no coffee maker. What kind of person doesn't have a coffee maker?!), he'd talk the whole way there. Drove me bananas.
But I suppose it's karma for filling my brother's young world with endless noise and scaring the shit out of the men who have been unlucky enough to sit through dinner with me and my girlfriends. The brave ones stuck around and married a few of us and understand that when we all get together, it's best to sit back and let it happen. But I wonder what would happen if we didn't feel the need to fill every second with sound. Maybe we'd hear something.
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