There’s a Christian Mingle advertisement that absolutely drives me bonkers. A woman sniffling and holding back tears utters the magic words, “He’s my second chance.”

Now there’s mingling and mingling, some tit for tat and this and that, but to cry because some organization helps you find a man a second time, a Christian man she hopes, although anyone can hide behind any label, is beyond my comprehension.  It’s not that loneliness is not sad, for I can attest to that–sad beyond all measure, for as my mother said, “Loneliness is a bitch”;  but to consider oneself lonely because someone doesn’t have a partner is sacrilegious, especially in light of Jesus’ existence. We can’t count Paul, for he thought that it would be better to marry than to burn.  He and the rest of the early Christian folk thought that Jesus was heading back round in their lifetime to gather them in his fold. For sure, even today. one must be prepared to encounter the divine and live an ethical, god-fearing life, even if one has trouble with God thought. By the way, some early Christian folk believed in reincarnation but that was stamped out by the Second Council in 553 AD.

The problem with Christy’s-yes, her commercial name is Christy– almost-in-tears stance and Robert’s smiling sycophancy, him sometimes on her right, sometimes on her left, and with those intermittent, timed just right PDA (Public Displays of Affection), is that the commercial argues that a woman is not complete unless she is with a man, any man, as long as he proclaims himself a Christian. Funny we didn’t hear the same from him. But that kind of positioning isn’t surprising, considering that kind of propaganda has been around since Eve and the helpmate theory. Commercialism– isn’t that why Jesus lost his temper in the temple?

That Christian Mingle commercial usually breaks bread about mid-morning; and for me, since that’s about six to seven hours after I’m up for the last time, it’s almost nap time.  Usually I’m tidying up the kitchen or sitting at the kitchen table reading the latest “must read.”  Lately I’ve been scanning and reading in fits and spurts great plays by David Rabe or essays in the wonderful Native American anthology Nothing But the Truth or re-reading Joseph Campbell, who does not suggest in the least that what goes around, comes around–that old ruse.

Once I even slammed down my coffee cup on the kitchen table the minute I heard that Christy whine.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the laws of consequence–I do beyond all measure.  Acts that one does now will ultimately reap what they sow in this lifetime; but it’s not a bite-you-in-the-butt response, as some Christian folk wish on other folk. It’s not chaos theory, per-say, but the laws of physics on a psychological, emotional level translated into human decisions that ultimately result in deliberate and not-so-deliberate actions; and those actions have consequences. The decision I made after my second divorce, not after my first, as I should have, not to let any man define who I was, yup I’m paying for it now, as even as I will tomorrow for those decisions I make today.

That commercial might be better and might give me pause to consider creating a made-to-measure profile on that site, if I’m sure that every male profile on that site is the truth and nothing but the truth, and if I want to change any old man’s diapers in the long run–and to spit out my response to your question, no, a man will not change any old woman’s diapers, unless he is paid handsomely for it, and at that age it’s not sexual favors–if the commercialized Christy  considers herself equal to the commercialized Robert. Oh, if the commercial were paused and listeners shot questions at them in real time, I’m sure that she would say that she’s equal to her man and loves her position as a Christian wife–the temptress who led Adam into sin, the beautiful repentant prodigal daughter who returns with the skin of  a dead snake stuck like toilet paper to the bottom of  her shoe.

Don’t go back to cooking and cleaning, changing nappies if bearing fruit is in one’s future. Don’t go back to piddling around the kitchen, vacuuming dust and cat hair up off the sofa, getting down on one’s hands and knees with a toothbrush getting the crumbs out of corners.  Don’t go back to bending over a bathtub, scrubbing off the crud of  your and his  and your and his children.  Get some exercise.  Read some feminist theory.  Find out who you are for Christ’s sake.  Become a self-sufficient woman who experiences the present in all the physics’ and physic’ singularity.