On Being Mean and Horrid

 

Girls need mean and horrid from the men they love. They don’t like it, the girls I mean, not at all, especially if mean and horrid is accompanied by sore and ouchy, in their bottoms I mean, or worse, strict and scold-y, as in a good telling off.

But the men who love certain kinds of girls, girls who really do know better than to drink too much, stay up too late, drive too fast, or any of the other things that get girls into trouble, realize that their girls truly require a stern guiding hand and not just on their bums.

Then too there is the matter of semantics. A girl of this kind says ‘mean and horrid’ when her man, he of the stern guiding hand, would call it ‘insistent and unyielding.’

Such a man must insist upon limits to alcohol consumption and the strict observance of rules of the road, and often be unyielding in regards bedtime. This is because he knows he is right, knows what is best for the girl in his charge, because he has carefully considered her needs for as long as he has known her, and perhaps even for years prior to that.

She knows as well how right he is about her and her needs, and in most cases has admitted that he is. And yet girls of this kind are more than apt to forget in the heat of the moment, the instant she thinks she must have one more gin and tonic or the moment she realizes that more fun is to be had if only she could delay bedtime just another hour, that very often, aggravating as that is, her man knows what he’s doing.

This condition exists because this kind of girl is intrinsically, unabashedly, and continuously naughty. There are lapses in her naughtiness of course, periods of goodness where she in fact wonders how she could possibly act that way, but these incidents are intermittent and pass quickly.

Her man, her in-charge guy, sees these interludes for what they are, calms between storms, and so is ever vigilant, ever mindful of his responsibility to her, to them, and to his unwavering purpose of keeping his naughty girl’s worse instincts in check by whatever means necessary.

When she acts stubborn and willful, he is stern and implacable; when she wheedles and cajoles, he smiles and says no as often as it takes to convince her that he will not be cozened. When she sulks he commiserates, but does not surrender in order to see her smile because giving in is not only wrong for her and for them in that instance, but it tells her that he is weak and cannot hold her as she needs to be held in his unyielding grip.

A girl with a mean and horrid, insistent and unyielding man in her life is quite fortunate, which she sometimes will admit to herself if to no one else, but very frequently she feels ill used, mistreated, and quite angry about it.

The man whose girl this is often feels put out, exasperated, even frustrated at the ongoing battle to steer his girl away from her naughty behavior, yet never does he regret his actions nor even hers, because that’s how he always has known her and loved her, and never expects anything else.

And then when the smoke clears, the redness in her bottom fades, her foot stamping is done, his telling off is over, her rage is tempered by his strength, and he calls her from the corner and the cuddles and kisses ensue, neither has cause to complain.

That’s the way they were meant to be, these two. His stern and implacable hand, his eyes, his voice, can guide them only where she leads. And neither would have it any other way.