the crying game

I hate to admit it, but this lyric got me thinking:

I want to be inside your heaven
Take me to the place you cry from

I listened to both American Idol finalists groan that ditty through my drippy, coughy stupor the other night. It was not a healing experience. But through that snuffly haze, a couple things struck me about that song:

First,

A sudden, but — I’m quite sure — abiding hate.

And, second, those lyrics about wanting to go to someone’s cry place? Pleeeease.

Now, looky here. Some poor guy in the throes of musical self-loathing and a flagging “adult contemporary music” career might sing that crap and droves of girls might still listen and swoon, “Oh, that is soooo sweet! He rilly cares about my feelings!” And he may really care about your feelings, sweetie, but that doesn’t mean he really wants to see you cry. He wants a little somethin’ else. But we girls are suckers for the notion, at least, that he loves us soooo much that he longs to share even our ghastly “cry place” with us.

Get real, chippies. Men love us in spite of our cry place.

But back to that song. Now Bo, the runner-up, the one who could have possibly sold it, doesn’t have to record those soul-sucking words.

But Carrie does.

And girls just shouldn’t sing that.

Ever.

Ev-aaahhh…..

I mean, what red-blooded, meat-eatin’, heterosexual guy wants to be swept away by a love song where the girl wails and implores him to “take me to the place you cry from”?!

Not that I’m opposed to men crying. It’s really not that.

I’m just sayin’.

I mean, men, doesn’t that make you feel rather …. icky? No matter if the singer is as fresh and lovely as the dawn, as Carrie is, don’t you feel …. a tad wussified if she sings that to you?

Do you want to take us to your cry place?

Because lemme tell you this: She’s a liar. She’s lying on behalf of all women, which I really don’t appreciate. So let’s come clean and talk a bit about the cultural crying game.

The truth — as I see it, of course:

We don’t want to see your cry place any more than you want to see ours.

And if the place a guy cries from is real close by and visited often? Well, he’s better off schlepping himself down to some dank neighborhood pub where he can sob into his Guinness alone, for all the lavish sympathy he’s likely to get from a woman. Most men, though, don’t have a “place” close by, a fact for which every woman on the planet should drop to her knees in eternal thanks.

I once dated a fellow in college who was a real crier. He used more tissue than I, routinely sniveling through my precious supply of Kleenex. He never offered to replace them either, which was equally bothersome, forcing me, in my private, elegant crying jags, to sog my pillow or my sleeves. I did not date the sniveller for long. There were other reasons for the breakup, but I can’t say that wasn’t a part of it, however small.

It’s exceedingly unfair, I know. It’s not that we don’t care when men cry, but I do think it causes us anxiety. Perhaps its very nakedness and messiness ties into our primal notions of the feminine and the masculine, of who “can” cry and who “can’t,” of who should and who shouldn’t. In my life, the number of times I’ve seen my father cry can be counted on one hand. Actually, one finger. He either just didn’t do it or didn’t show it. I’ve never thought to ask him about it, which I suppose is telling, too. The same restraint could not be said of my mother, though, who was more, ah, forthcoming.

But that’s the way we expect it to be, right? That’s even the way we prefer it. Right? Perhaps it’s sexist, this crying game, but it seems quite deeply entrenched in our psyches. Maybe that’s why my reaction to those lyrics was so fierce, so negative. It’s just buried there, expectations and all.

Most men’s “cry place” seems quite far away, actually, visited only on occasion. They seem somehow less manipulative with their tears, saving them for that which is truly deep, monumental, or transforming. And because women don’t witness this that often, because men generally do “spare us,” I think the emotional muscles women need in order to respond rightly are a bit weak and flabby. No matter that we may seem calm and compassionate on the surface. Inside, we just may be freaking out, shaken, wondering how to make the world right again.

But our cry place? Ohhh, it’s much, much closer. We’ve all been there. Probably far too many times. The place is a mess, what with the scattered wads of sodden tissue and the empty, dripping containers of Haagen Dasz strewn about. Which we didn’t even share, I might add. Frankly, some of these places need serious renovation to repair the perpetual leakage.

And, men, we don’t just “take” you there, which sounds nearly inviting; we lie in wait to kidnap and drag you away from all you hold dear, which in that moment is pretty much anything and everything else. At least I do, ha! But, you lucky men, with all that overexposure to the horrid cry place, all that working out, your cry management muscles are more taut and supple and ready for the teary challenge, real or contrived, trauma or TV commercial.

I admire you, men.

Such stalwart forbearance in the face of our sometimes quixotic natures.

A (*gasp*) difference between men and women?

Or a societal expectation?

Both?

So I ask what I asked earlier — because I do want to know:

Do you want to take us to your cry place?

You’d better tell me.

I just might blub if you don’t.