Saturday evening I accompanied a female friend to a party in Nottinghill Gate. We knew each other from New York in the 70s. Our mutual associate was hosting an 18th birthday bash for his daughter. Youth downstairs with the DJ and adults in the kitchen with the wine and booze. MOre old faces popped up during the evening and I was introduced to a longtime comrade’s mistress. I congratulated the long-nosed blonde on their 6 month daughter. The baby was lovely and my comrade was happy to be a father.
His mistress had heard about my living in Thailand and my family there, saying within ten seconds of our shaking hands, “Asian women must be nice.”
“In what sense?” I had a good idea where this comment was heading.
“In that they’re so submissive.” Her smile was slathered by a smirk.
“Submissive?” Western women hated the idea of western men with another race and I slashed at the mistress with a hushed viciousness. “I’ve lived all over the world and been with many women. I’ve never known one race to be submissive; not niggers, chinks, gooks, or honkies like yourself, but I do know how white people use racism to feel good about themselves.”
I walked away thinking I had said enough, but realized that I was wrong and reversed my tracks.
“Have you ever lived anywhere but England.” I knew the answer. “No, you go on vacations and make observations that reinforce your prejudices. The only women I know that are submissive are those who have been beaten by men or society or their family and that can happen anywhere. In the UK one in twenty women have been raped. Is that submission? No, it’s subjugation. In the USA that figure jumps to one in four. And what happens afterwards. The women are too shamed to report the assaults. Now that’s submission.”
“I’m a feminist.” She offered in her defense.
“Only for your own kind and not women of another color, so you’re a racist feminist.” I had said enough and went for a glass of wine. My old comrade followed and I looked at my feet, thinking about how to apologize. He poured me some white.
“You were right. She’s just the mother of my baby and nothing more.” My comrade’s late wife had been my good friend. She was Jamaican. My comrade was white. Racism was not in either of their blood.
“Well, something more, because your daughter wasn’t born from immaculate conception.”
“No.” He looked over his shoulder at his mistress. She wasn’t in the least bit contrite. “She’s no Virgin Mary, but she is submissive in bed.”
“Better you than me.” My lovely wife in Thailand was submissive only to her love for me. “Mine is a terror. I’m the one on the bottom in bed and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Lucky man.” My comrade clinked my glass and we drank to the liberation of women, for love is as much about taking as giving, and I like to give it all.