Girl Talk Hell is what i used to call the part of the sweatshop where i sit near a gaggle of - well, they're older than girls mostly, but gossip and giggle and tell each other "you gotta respect yourself, girl!" in a variety of contexts very much like girls, or, if you squint your ears just right, perhaps hens - chatty women, except that the worst of them has moved away, and the one who most frequently needed the others to butt into her life and tell her to respect herself moved to a different sweatshop, and i've been establishing civil relations with the remnant and replacements, and defending the good name of men against the most base and baseless of generalized stereotypes readily employed in these sometimes harpies' conversations, but today GTH was on!
Denizen A received some email and a voicemail message from an ex-flame, and Denizens B, C, and honorary sometimes GTH Denizen in waiting, yours truly, were psychoanalyzing him and giving her pointers on her response or nonresponse. They told me what men are like, and I didn't really argue except to protest when the VM message was played for me, objecting as I do (and as a representative of all men, everywhere) to the jury of girlfriends who must share in the evaluation of written and recorded communications from boys.
Anyway, I participated, and, listening to Denizen B's explanation of what men will do, remembered that I had received an email matching the general description she had employed (Denizen A's particulars were of course the context, but my ear hears with a literal, context-free bias), viz., from an "ex" significant other (that prefix makes sense appended to bf or gf; but when gf ceases to be gf, does she necessarily become either insignificant or not-other?), and moreover, observed with chagrin that, whereas in the case of Denizen A, I had counseled that she not respond to his messages, for highfalutin reasons of armchair psychoanalysis, girl-gotta-respect-herself-tude, GTH elan, and my own unique insight into how men will do, in my own case, not only did I not have the deep suspicion and antipathy, nor the sense of finite closure (GTH is offended that he even thought about sending her an email, notwithstanding the actual protracted efforts to find her that his VM detailed!) about the former flame in my inbox that GTH has about the man in question, but, despite my own welcoming of that email and my own sincere intention to respond, I had not. yet.
read that to your damn jury. heh.