When All the Men Have Stopped

After you’re with a straight man for a very long time, the straight male friends you cultivated in your single days largely fall by the wayside and your circle of muscles with trucks and few familial obligations narrows to mostly then men your partner, boyfriend, or husband knows. When that man stops loving you, your access to the rest is immediately cutoff.

So, what does your world look like when the men stop? What happens when there are no more of them, they don’t help anymore, because suddenly none of them love you?

I drove from West Hollywood to Redondo Beach, back to West Hollywood, to Atwater Village, to Venice Beach and now I’m finally crossing Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills headed back home to Laurel Canyon with my best friend’s paycheck in my purse after a long, hard night.

I’d collected her most essential items — two Ikea bags of laundry, a couple boxes full of toiletries, a dozen velvet hangers clenching the last of her nice clothing and a few miscellaneous keepsakes — from the home of the last man who loved her and moved them into a new place on the other side of town. Anyone familiar with Los Angeles can easily comprehend this as a labor of love, and if you’re not just know I’ve been in my car for five hours today despite navigating only a 25 mile radius.

This is what happens when the men stop working. This is what happens when the men stop loving you. With no brothers, no dads, no boyfriends, you’re forced to call upon the women in your life for physical and emotional labor and you cross your fingers that their babies or spouses or jobs can wait, that they can drop their families and commitments to help you because you’re desperate, and you feel so guilty.

She’s moving into a desperate place, albeit a safe place, due to a desperate set of circumstances and I’m the only one here to help her because all the men stopped working today. All the men have stopped loving us, and I don’t have a husband or a child or even a pet so I said yes.

I didn’t know what to do besides hurry, and I didn’t know what to say as we rushed her things into this new Venice room, into a house with a roommate she barely knows. Desperate situations call for fast decision making and drastic action and we do whatever necessary. You’ve got to push yourself through it and maybe cry later once the dust settles and all the bills have been paid.

I’m crossing 3rd Street now. The Beverly Center is on my left. Despite how close it is to home I know I’ll likely never shop there because I too was recently in my own desperate place. I’m broke. I’m surviving. I’m living in a studio apartment for the first time in 14 years because the last man I loved stopped loving me. I had to figure something out quickly, so I did.

The other day someone I know Tweeted a picture of their sister. She’s the only one helping him move during his own desperate time. The caption read, “She got real tonight,” and then he quoted her: “Most of my life I’ve been figuring out how to do the job meant for three grown men all myself. I’m pretty good at it now.”

Men are so helpful when they love you, but when all the men stop working, when all the men stop loving you, you end up having to do a job meant for three grown men all by yourself, and you must get it done quickly. You anticipate the onset of your emotional diarrhea so you have to hurry. You don’t want to start shitting all over yourself until you’re safely back at home, alone.

My friend will be calling me soon so we can flesh out yet another game plan. We’ll work out a way for me to get her check back to her — money I’d accidentally driven off with because the moving was so frantic and hushed, us trying not to wake the new roommate because it was so late at night and we’re both so tired.

No one tells you what your world will look like after suddenly finding yourself without a man who loves you, when the last man who loved you hates you instead, when you’re ashamed and alone and desperate. It’s exhausting, but you’ll be okay if you’ve got one, maybe two women you can count on to get the job done, no matter how insurmountable. We’re pretty good at it now.