So we’re hanging out in the lounge room - me, Tom and the Dutch neanderthal - just talking shit after watching TV, and in walks a new person. She’s a tall twenty-something redhead, and she’s on her way to her room but the neanderthal convinces her to come in and talk with us anyway. Let’s call her Stacey. As it turns out she’s in town for a zoology conference and works on seahorses. Thus follows an hour long conversation revolving around seahorses and exactly what it is she’s been doing to them throughout the course of her master’s - as usual in these situations, all the guys will stop and listen to anything she says, and she, being a grad student, wants to tell everyone about her work. This lasts until 2am, when Tom is ready for bed and wants us to go with him so we don’t wake him up when we come in. The neanderthal stays up for a while with the girl, Stacey, which seems to be his right as Alpha Male.

None of these people, I must add, are actually that annoying. Even Mr Dutch Neanderthal has a gooey nougat center.

So the night ends with the neanderthal coming in and asking us ‘would you f**k her? I would f**k her for sure.’ The next night A. has left, and in his place is some Scottish guy and the same conversation happens. We’re up late and Stacey comes in. This time she has the timetable for her conference and reads the titles aloud as we’re talking: ‘body temperature fluctuations in the laughing kookaburra’… ‘phenotypic plasticity in the saltwater gland of crocodiles’ and so on. We talk to the Scottish guy but are always interrupted by some interesting bit from Stacey’s zoology conference or another story about seahorses. She obviously laps up the male attention and poses on the couch.

So after a while, Stacey goes to bed and Mr Neanderthal does the sexual innuendo thing again. And the results are interesting. I will now tabulate the data from both the first and second sampling efforts:

Tom: “she’s good-looking but she talks too much. I wouldn’t want to be with someone like that.”

Mr Scottish: “I walked in and you guys were talking about seahorses. I wanted to get up and walk away but I thought it would be rude.”

Dutch: “I would f**k her but I would put a rag in her mouth or something to keep her from talking.”

These are the sorts of things men say when women aren’t around. It’s ordinary. I was still surprised by how unanimously they agreed that Stacey was annoying, though. Tom even seemed to dislike talkative women on principle, and he himself never shut up (nor did he have much choice when it came to women I suspect, on account of he was short and stumpy). Really the conversation was interesting, and more so because it meant so much to her. I might be biased because I like talking about biology but it amazed me, that quick pronouncement: ’she’s gorgeous but I wish she would shut the hell up’.

There are men, I think, who have a hard time being friends with women, and people who don’t like hearing about things that other people are interested in - and there are also men who like to own the conversation, like it’s their place. I’m still trying to figure out what all this means. It has me a little bit convinced that I’m getting way less than I deserve…

resolved to take a page from the neanderthal book next time.