After the accidents made him impotent, Howard took to pointing out the social differences between men and women as if they were justification for the discrimination that society leveled at women. He would tell her at least once a day that, “I’m the one who wears the pants in the family and that I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to some fool woman’s half-baked opinions.” He would go on to rant that, “The only time a man has to listen to a woman’s orders is when he’s a babe in diapers and I have no intention of letting ANY woman, (“Especially my wife, for God’s sake!”, he would usually mutter to himself in a tiresome aside.) tell me what to do!”

 

Despite Howard’s irritating male chauvinism, Anita was secretly amused to see that he suffered from a severe case of male dependence and helplessness. Howard was completely unable to care for himself without her assistance. The only dishes he knew how to prepare for himself were sandwiches and cereal. Unlike most men, he had never mastered the arcane art of barbeque cookery. He couldn’t even make a can of soup without scorching the pot and making a mess on the stove. When it came to doing laundry, he was absolutely hopeless. He seemed incapable of putting his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper or putting away his clean clothes. Howard even had trouble dressing himself in the mornings. Every morning Anita would dutifully help him get dressed and knot his tie for him. He couldn’t even find matching socks without her assistance, much less color coordinate a shirt with a tie. Howard even needed her assistance to bathe himself. She had to come in and scrub his back for him whenever he took a bath. Sometimes Anita felt like she had married an overgrown preschooler rather than the man who had asked her to marry him. She was well aware that his chauvinism was only a psychological defense against the feelings of insecurity and helplessness he had buried in the innermost reaches of his being. Despite his expertise in his field, he had been put out to pasture the moment his presence had irritated management. He had discovered that he was unneeded and disposable, a mere bagatelle to be dispensed with the moment good taste and sense prevailed. She knew his bullying was only his way of demonstrating to himself that he was still a man. Anita put up with his childish tantrums, picking up after him when she got home from work and silently enduring his chauvinistic dictums without uttering a word of defense or criticism.

 

Anita had always had to make the important decisions about their household. Aside from his love of flashy gold jewelry and fine Italian suits, Howard had no taste. His idea of interior decorating would have been to use an empty telephone cable spool for a coffee table and to hang an oil painting on black velvet depicting John Wayne on the wall. Howard wasn’t merely uncouth, he simply had no conception of what couth was. The very concept of color coordination and style matching was beyond his keen. If the salesmen at the men’s store where he purchased his suits had a sense of humor, they could have sold him orange checked suits and he’d have never have discovered the joke. He would have been as happy in a tar-papered shack if he could have his TV, air conditioning and his beer as he was in their superbly appointed home.