“Who knows! Every woman’s different and things are always changing. Listen, I’m not sure what you’re trying to get out of me here. Again: I’m not a woman.”

Sure, he’s aware of that, he replies, but it’s important to him, especially as a cisgender heterosexual white man, to avoid placing the burden of educating him about women’s experiences on a woman, which is why it’s so great to have friends of other genders.

His friend says, “Yeah, I guess.”

At home, legs trembling full of acid, grimacing, he peels off his bloody broken half toenail. The wound looks like a cut pomegranate and he dabs it with alcohol, adding injury to injury, the pain piercing an opening inside him through which more tearful laughter escapes. He does feel somewhat guilty about what he did, yet he will not deny that it felt so, so good to ruin the evenings of the tyrannical assholes who loved to dehumanize innocent single narrow-shouldered men. Just a quick startle, no harm done. Actually, he’s the one who was harmed. The only thing that bothers him is that he knows no one would condone what he did.