Men doing dishes? Stop the presses.

So, I trudged through a six-page article in Newsweek magazine called – I love this part -- “Men’s Lib: To survive in a hostile world, guys needs to embrace girly jobs and dirty diapers. Why it’s time to reimagine masculinity at work and at home.”

I kept waiting for the article to say something, as I listened to the steady, distant tick tick tick of my life go passing by.

And then finally, on the last page, in the last paragraph, there was this little nugget, “Ultimately, the New Macho boils down to a simple principle:  in a changing world, men should do whatever it takes to contribute their fair share at home and at work, and schools, policy-makers, and employers should do whatever they can to help them.”

Oh, thank you Sun Tzu. Whatever did we do without your infinite wisdom?

See, this is the kind of shit that pisses me off.

The impetus for the story is this: more men than women have lost jobs in the bad economy. Further, researchers believe that when jobs do come back, they will be jobs historically held by women. So, Newsweek put two intrepid reporters on the case – charged with unlocking the mystery of exactly how men are expected to face this impeding tragedy. Which makes me wonder – in 2010 – do people really need a news magazine to say that if one isn’t working, one should help out by, oh, I don’t know, CLEANING THE FUCKING HOUSE?

This is not about men. Or men vs. women. I love men. And a larger number than I care to mention will attest to that.

What bothers me is a willingness to accept that men changing diapers or emptying bedpans is some sort of novel idea. Plus, the rallying cry, “and schools, policy-makers, and employers should do whatever they can to help them,” that makes me want to stand on something really, really high and scream, “ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?”

We need policy-makers to tell us it’s only fair to share housework? That’s right -- because we don’t have things like hungry children to take care of in this country. We should dedicate resources to the Get Off Your Ass and Load the Dishwasher Committee. Or the Are Your Damn Arms Broke Committee.

GAAAD!

Back in 1979, my Mom was the only Mom, it seemed, who traveled on business. She left me and my dad home alone a lot. Dad was a construction-worker-grown-old (they are like athletes that way) and made money doing odd jobs once in a while. But his primary responsibility was me. In 1979.

I’ll admit, it was not a Martha Stewart household. Dad cooked truck stop fair like fried bologna and macaroni and cheese. Flowered tops without question matched polka-dot pants. Cowboy boots went with everything. Hair did not always have to be combed. Fishing came before homework, and rightly so.

Back then, it wasn’t an easy life for Dad – always the only guy at Girl Scouts and the PTA – and a big, burly, rough-looking one at that. But I have never heard him complain. Sometimes, he asks me if I can remember what he packed in my lunch every day – and of course I remember – ham and biscuits.

My point is, when my Mom’s career took off, my Dad stepped in without question.  I’m baffled why, 31 years later, we’re still surprised by such a suggestion – so, surprised, in fact, it’s called news.

The baby question. Is God stupid and wrong?

I watch a man push a stroller past my kitchen window while I chat on the phone with my friend Rochelle, who is ranting about her work, while her 10-month-old daughter rides on her back, strapped into some sort of canvas contraption.

“So I told that arrogant little prick,” Rochelle says. “How’s Mommy’s little Princess? Does Mommy’s little Princess see the duck? Quack! Quack!”

Its times like this I’m glad I dropped acid in college. There’s no better training ground for having friends with kids. It’s the only way I am able to accept a tee-tiny pink cup of pretend tea with a straight face and overzealous gratitude.

Babies sprouted in my life last year like dandelions – three born in my close circle of friends within months of each other. Another best buddy is raising 2-year-old Sophie McSoph-a-lot (well, that’s what I call her, anyway). She is the bearer of the aforementioned pretend tea. I sit on the floor between her and a patient, old hound named Java – who is these days sporting gray eyebrows – and together we make dollies bounce on the floor in exaggerated steps.

I’m 37-years-old, and it’s just now dawning on me that it would have been fun to be a Mom. I’m pissed this desire came on so suddenly and so late – when there’s a fairly good chance I won’t be able to do a darn thing about it. First of all, reproductively-speaking, I’m older than dirt. And second of all, there’s no baby-daddy in sight. Why, I wonder, didn’t this urge happen 10 years ago?

And then I wonder, what if it had?

I was part of a tightly-woven network of smart, funny ladies in back in SoFla. And I knew leaving them to start an MFA program in Virginia would be hard. But the hardest part of all, unexpectedly, was hearing time and again how envious they were of me. Because I didn’t want them to be envious of me. Especially since I had spent so much time being envious of them. They wanted my freedom, they said, my ability to pick up and go, my unencumbered life where peanut butter and red wine are a perfectly acceptable dinner choice.

“But you get laid whenever you want,” I told my friend Di, a tall, slender blond with a one-year-old baby girl and a husband who earns enough where she can afford to be a stay at home mother.

“That’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said.

Another friend – skidding toward 50 with two children in college – had one too many Bud Lights at my going away party and slobbered into my ear, “I wish I were you.” Which is stupid because I always wanted to be her. Her husband looks like Harry Connick Jr. with dark, sexy curls, and can cook for crying out loud. What more could she want? Didn’t she get that if I had a husband who looked like that, I wouldn’t be wasting time trying to write a damn book.

This is why any decision we make about marriage and babies is absolute bullshit, said my friend Lisa – who stepped off the career tract five years ago to raise her son. Now that he is finally in school, Lisa can’t find a job in journalism because while she was changing diapers, the industry imploded. Now jobs are scarce. The money is worse than ever. She did land one interview, at a publication that seemed extraordinarily hesitant about hiring a Mom.

“Isn’t that illegal?” I said.

She didn’t answer me. Instead she said, “What am I going to do with my life? Who am I going to be?”

Sometimes my friends and I agree that God is stupid and wrong and that women should be able to have babies well into their twilight years – like men. But honestly, I don’t know if that’s the answer either. I really don’t want to be 70, sitting on a toilet, holding a plastic pink stick with a positive sign on it – trying to remember who I hooked up with after bingo last month.

Plus, I know that the moments I spend with my friends’ kids are childhood nectar – playing dollies, drinking pretend tea, wearing random objects on my head to make them laugh. I get this without having to stay up all night in terror with a crying, feverish baby, or standing obsessively at the window, watching my teen head off with my car keys, or juggling the numbers in hopes of paying for college.

But still.

I try to ignore how happy Rochelle sounds when she turns away from the phone’s mouthpiece – and our boring, grown up conversation -- to speak to her daughter.

“Weeee,” I can hear her say. “You’re on the swwwwiiiiinnnnnngggggggg! Mommy’s little girl is on the swing!”

Rochelle returns to me.

“She’s so freaking smart, you wouldn’t believe it.”

We both fall silent, listening to the smart little princess giggle and laugh.

“Oh, I got to go,” Rochelle says. “She’s licking the swing.”

This is how we do it

I’m fascinated by marriage. Fascinated by my married friends who reveal – in front of their husbands – that they envy my freedom; fascinated by my parents’ 40-year commitment cracking beneath a treadmill of doctor’s appointments and hospital stays; fascinated by my beautiful friends – not yet 30 – who worry their uteruses (or is it uteri?) will atrophy before they meet the elusive One.

Here I’d like to examine marriage and relationships as fairy tale, cultural keystone, fallacy and Holy Grail – through the eyes of women who are somewhere on the path.

My most happily married friend likes to say, “Marriage is not for the faint of heart.” This is especially interesting coming from her, since she once smuggled hash out of Morocco. Another friend said recently she was sold a bill a goods. “It sure isn’t what they told us it would be like,” she said. “I mean, I love my husband and son, but they sort of ruined my life.” Still, another friend was almost hostile in her disappointment, “If I knew it was going to be like this, I wouldn’t have gotten married or had children.”

But despite this, I have friends ages 25 to 63 out there, looking, hoping for some happy, Hollywood ending starring some George Clooney-ish figure. Over the years, I’ve watched as each one met a man, loved him, desired him, dated him, lost faith in him, lost interest in him, and dumped him. Then, once they are free again – what do they do? Go out looking for the next one.

So, this is what I know. My friends who are married want to be single. And my friends who are single want to be married.

It’s a Vicious Circle.