What Men Don't Understand Read Online Free PDF Page A

was not proud of it either.
    They were silent for a while. A couple of minutes later Antonia spoke.
    “Do you remember the girl who looked like a self-important lady who was in the waiting room?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    She was with me in the living room where we had to undress and where we were asked to lay down on a stretcher to prepare us. We were both lying waiting, and suddenly she began to mourn inconsolably. Then I realized how young she was. She said she was terrified and that her mother didn't know. She had gotten a friend to accompany her, but she did it reluctantly. Never anything like this had happened to her. She was very afraid.
    “Poor thing, she seemed the opposite. But I guess it wasn't good for you that she collapsed while you were about to enter, right?”
    “I don't know, I think I forgot about myself when I saw her like that. There we were the two of us, each one lying on her stretcher, waiting. I reached out and we held hands. I told her not to worry, I said everything would be fine, and then they got me in and I left her a little quieter.”
    A nurse came in, and after asking a few questions and checking that Antonia was already recovered, she instructed her to visit her gynecologist in ten days. She also gave her some pills in case she'd feel any discomfort.
    When they left, walking quietly along the sidewalk, they hardly spoke. There was a sunny and spring morning, and the world seemed to be the same again, but only from the outside. Antonia, walking very slowly, saw it differently.  

Patti's falling out of love

    Only a year before he met Patti, Alan was a winding and attractive guy from the University District of Seattle, who fully enjoyed his success with women. He worked as assistant director at the University of Washington, and among female students, opportunities appeared with obscene ease. His early thirties, his kindness, and his scruffy look, combined perfectly with his blue eyes, his black tousled hair and his goatee. The students in her twenties saw on him the personification of alternative atmosphere that reigned in the district, the perfect male specimen to feel protected and initiated, and perhaps a bit neglected by their immaturity. An explosive mixture that was accentuated by Alan's apparent disinterest to flirt. His attitude was not part of any tactic, rather the opposite. Alan was meeting many more women than he wanted, so he'd rarely pay attention to a girl until she'd show an obvious interest. So when a candidate for a good time of sex would show up, he just wouldn't reject her.
    His reputation spoke for itself, and only the most attractive girls dared to get in his way. The ones he had ignored bear badly that contempt, and it was worst if it had somehow been public or had spread through some evil tongue.
    It was the year 1995, the most successful for Alan. Although, in the same way that "grunge" showed obvious signs of decay, there was very little left for Alan to start his own fall as a heartbreaker.
    Once summer break came, Alan thought he'd have a little break, but he didn't. Summer classes for foreigners and remedial courses followed encouraging sex in abundance, and in the alternative bars where he used to hang out, there was always more some flirtatious looks to pay attention to. That's how he met Patti. But that was several months later. Meanwhile, Alan continued with easy sex, and a collection of faces, bodies and names that no longer bothered to remember.
    Like every year, winter rain became a fellow who seemed to rinse citizens delusions, washed under the gentle trickle of short and dark days. It was when Alan, under the effect of that discouragement winter considered seriously changing his lifestyle. He had seen too humiliating attitudes in many of the girls I had been with. It was depressing to thing that, even when he didn't want that to happen, it was because of him that they'd run in a frantic and degrading race to get him.
    He had discussed this with his