The male mind

The second last time I was in full-time employment I was a personal assistant to a rather well-known and influential man about town who was twice my age. My boss was an intriguing character. Although I worked for him at a time when he had a most conservative career, he'd reinvented himself. In his earlier life he was a film producer who traveled the world getting funding for projects, determining locations, visiting film sets and so forth. Over the years, he told me many stories of his exploits.

From the very first day he was quite open with me. He understood that it was a waste of time to try to keep secrets around his personal assistant and so he did not keep secrets.

"Feel free to open any mail...unless you can smell perfume, and I'll open those."

He was not afraid to reveal himself to me, although he recognized that there were some perils to this strategy. He once said to me that I, and his previous secretaries (I used the word 'secretary' but he would say that he didn't like me downplaying my role and that I was his 'personal assistant') were the only people to see him 'warts and all'.

I became aware of various personal bits of information. He'd been married before, his wife had been married before. His wife had been in a spot of bother in her past. He'd had affairs. It all became part of my knowledge bank very quickly and to this day I've kept that information to myself, although he is long dead now.

I think the hardest day was when I realized that the set of books he had  me order from overseas at huge expense was for his own home. I had a rather strong sense of scruples and that bothered me, a lot, because I felt I was party to theft, but I kept my upset to myself.

Of course, as a personal assistant, you see people getting screwed over. You see the taking over of small companies and people's lives going down the drain. You see dirty deeds as well as you see great acts of kindness and loyalty; tremendous generosity. You see the whole man.

When I was leaving to have my first child, the Advertising Executive from the Advertising Agency with whom I had almost daily contact wanted to take me to dinner. Finally, after a bottle of wine he revealed his true feelings about my boss.

He can be a Statesman on some days and other days he can act like a petulant child.

I simply nodded in agreement. It was a perfectly true statement. There was no getting around that.

He was a most refined man. He had his suits hand made and he wore incredibly crisp white shirts with lovely sharp ties. He was scrupulously clean and he had a wonderful sense of style which he imparted to me. I guess you would say he was a minimalist. He certainly was not one for clutter and he enjoyed a soft palette in his furnishings. He was very partial to the painter, John Brack, and I too came to have great admiration for his work. All of the paintings he bought for the organization were not only very fine paintings but great investments.

He had a talent for making money, a very shrewd and apt businessman and yet his heart was in the remotest part of New Zealand from whence he came; at heart a very simple man and completely self made with an abiding sense of love for his mother.

He didn't like women to be over done in their dress. He didn't like too much makeup and he'd complain so bitterly when I wore lipstick that I stopped doing it around him. It was passe, he would say. He liked me to wear creme and white clothing, mostly. He didn't approve of black garments at all. I never wore pants to work but I think that was my choice. Perhaps he said something about not liking pants to me one day, but I don't specifically recall it.

What I want to make clear is that he was refined; genteel, with a terribly strong sense of the fitness of things, (with  minor aberrations along the way). The moment he returned from a luncheon he would dictate a 'thank you' note that had to be hand delivered to the host immediately. His manners were immaculate and he only once or twice swore in front of me and then immediately apologized.

Women were respected in his organization and we were, I believe, the first major organization to offer child care in this state. Women were the backbone of the organization and he wanted their lives to be happy and secure. He wanted the babies to have happy homes.

That said, he had a deviant side to be sure. One day he said to me,

Every now and then a man wants to be with a dirty girl; someone quite slutty. You can't live with a girl like that day by day but every now and then a man wants that experience.

Over the years, I've thought about that and I've thought about it more recently again - that dichotomy of thinking - the refined wife that the world gets to see, and the slut. Some men manage to get the two for one deal. Some women can be both.  Many women can't be both and perhaps some men feel that's it okay to go and find a slutty experience so long as they don't bring that knowledge home - so long as no-one is hurt, yes?

Of course some men want it all. They have the wife at home willing to do whatever he wants, but enough is never going to be enough; variety is the spice of life, right?!

I do wonder if there isn't a man alive who isn't secretly in love with Jessica Rabbit or with some buxom bombshell who ooooozes sex appeal; the femme fatale that will always be out of reach. God knows there were plenty of them in Woody Allan's latest offering, To Rome with Love!

Do men secretly wish that they be seduced by such a woman, or do they hope that such a woman will be charmed into being seduced by them; that such a creature of sexual allure will choose them?

My husband has always said, knowing me as he does, that it's the quiet ones you have to watch and I do sometimes wonder if men really know what to lust after. Is that woman who puts so much effort into her perfectly overtly alluring appearance really what she appears to be? I wonder.

Yet, those over sized mammary glands are clearly intoxicating; those great big lips and the big hairdo drive men wild...the Marilyn Monroe whisper; the cheeky smile; the big tease; the untouchable drives them crazy.

There's something about an 'airhead' that men often find so sexual; that gal with the slightly tawdry dress and the bright pink lipstick who can't quite remember where she put her car; whose little head is a bit pickled by that last glass of champagne and who needs some help getting home; that doll who never was terribly good with mechanical things or following maps. I'll never forget my friend, Michael, laughing his head off when I couldn't start my car; thinking it the funniest thing ever that I was so capable with my university work and so bloody useless at anything mechanical. He loved that!

My true dolly state is very private, of course, but when it comes over me I revel in it, I confess. There's no show going on. It's a very particular and distinct part of my personality; there's no shame or embarrassment about it at all. Frankly, it's a relief to let the slut have some air; to bask in her sense of self and her blatant desires; her disinterest in anything else at all but pleasure and the sure knowledge that she must attend to the wants of the man.

Yet, that's not why men love Jessica Rabbit, is it? Jessica Rabbit isn't going to attend to the wants of the man. Jessica Rabbit remains unattainable; seductively,  gorgeously unattainable; on a pedestal; worshipped.

It's all still a bit of a mystery to me; the male mind. And, they say women are complicated!