What the Hell, Chica?

Almost a year ago, my mother and step-dad came to visit me in Florida. One afternoon, we were eating lunch at a Clearwater café. We had one of those chatty waitresses on a slow day—which is always fun when you’re trying to catch up with your parents—and during the course of her incessant ramblings, this dumbass chick let it slide that her boyfriend could be “a bit of a beater.”

My mother suggested that she leave him (my mother is like that).

Our waitress responded by fluttering her pretty eyelids over her beautiful, vapid blue eyes, smiling her full mouth and saying, “He doesn’t always mean it.”

I love people, sometimes. I mean, they totally rule.

But that waitress isn’t the end of it. I know literally tens of women who are currently in abusive relationships and are still in love. I just don’t see how that’s possible. Nietzsche once said that women are like dogs and that the more you beat them, the more they love you, but I always thought that was just his expressing what it was like growing up in a house with fourteen women (I mean, any man who grows up in a house with fourteen women is gonna come out of it with a bad attitude about women—law of averages and all that). Apparently I was wrong.

What the hell is wrong with these women?

Look, I’ve been accused of a lot of misogyny before. It’s true I prefer women who cook and clean and shut up when I tell them to, but I’ve never once thought that I should punch a chick (though I do reserve the right to protect myself if a woman ever attacks me—it hasn’t happened yet, but I felt like throwing in a disclaimer just in case). And I don’t think any other men should feel that way, either.

But the truth is, men are messed up and they love to punch stuff. (It really is a nice release.) And really, as much as we love to punch, no person wants to get hit.

Which begs the question: Why would any woman stay in an abusive relationship?

I know a woman whose husband put a gun to her head in front of one of her children. And this woman got upset when her husband divorced her (he went on to beat his new girlfriend and, just for bonus points, her mom—I wish I was making that up).

One more time for the cheap seats: What the hell is wrong with these women?

I don’t have an answer to that question, so I don’t have a conclusion this week (some would argue that I never really conclude anything, but fuck them—they don’t write weekly columns), but I really would like to know.

So if anyone out there in internet land could tell me why a chick would be stupid enough to stay with a man who actually beats her, well I’d like an answer.

I gotta lot of stuff to figure out before the rapture.