Women for Men

"Intoxicated by the mists of Venetian canals, her American guardedness lying at her feet like discarded robes, our heroine was ready for Italian Love". When I am quickly pulled in by the descriptive, sensory language of Kate Simon's lead in her piece, "For Women", I have no idea the dark direction that the rest of the piece is headed in. I do wonder why she has capitalized "Love" though and after reading the rest of the piece I wonder how she goes from that beginning to where she ends up.

The language is descriptive but certainly not flowery, it is rather honest and direct at sometimes being down right blunt. The sense that I got for most of the time was reading this piece was actually rather eery, it came across as being very dark and almost creepy to read. Later in the piece she talks about the sensation of always feeling watched; "Ten feet away, around the corner, or observing your reflection in a shopwindow, someone is watching you...", now I get that there may be some truth to this, people are always watching another but does she have to say it in such a stalkerish way? When she talks about the prostitutes walking the streets she says, "Your refusal doesn't send them home to wife, mother and kiddies (who have all decided to agree that he is playing cards). If you won't, the next one will". Two things that are disturbing there, I don't like reading this as if I am the street walker pedaling my fleshy wears, and also the way she makes it seem like this man's poor female counter points are so used to this type of behavior they now just convince themselves otherwise and look the other way, even the kiddies? When she talks about a man suggesting a hotel after meeting at a train station, the woman is again put in a prey-like position that is written about with an eery certainty of her hunted role; "Be prepared, if you accept his company and advice, to share the bed with him and if he is hard up, as he is likely to be, some of your lire". Now, here she mentions lire so I'm assuming this piece is at least 10 years dated, but I wonder does it still hold up? Does it hold up partially?

While the majority of the piece is basically creep some good descriptive language can't be overlooked. When she's describing the "superman" in Lucca for example, riding the streets on his bike persistently circling, "At the point where he must dismount or fall off, he speeds up, dashes around the block, returns, slows, slower, slower, inviting, burbling, cooing like a turtle dove. He cannot possibly expect to carry a woman off on his two-wheeled, onespeed chariot; he looks too poor to afford the opening act of a proffered aperitif and no romance was ever launched on a bottle of mineral water. Undaunted, invincible, he keeps on trying, warbling and wobbling". So here the descriptive language provides detailed imagery but again if I was walking and this guy on a bike just kept circling back around, following me as I made it further and further down a street I would feel extremely uncomfortable and certainly hunted. And why can't a romance be built on mineral water? Women need to be plied with alcohol for a man to have a chance?

In addition to the weirdness of the rest of the piece I just felt like the ending was odd, I didn't really understand it and didn't feel like it felt with the rest of piece. I'm left wondering why did I read this? What was the point of this piece? And why on earth is it titled "For Women"?