BAY OF (MACHO) PIGS

I'm filling in at work for someone who's on vacation. Part of her job is handling letters to the editor.

So I get a call this morning from a guy who asks, "Who's in charge of letters?" And whaddya know? I'm obliged to say, "I am."

He tells me that his wife wrote a letter to the editor when she "wasn't thinking clearly" and that she doesn't want it published. He says he needs to "retrieve" the letter. I say OK, fine, but I have to hear that from the actual letter writer and not someone who purports to be speaking on that person's behalf. I explain to him that the policy is to confirm letters with the people who write them, so when the letter arrives I will call his wife and if she decides that she doesn't want it to run she can tell me then. Or she can call me before then, if she desires. He gets a strain of huffy incredulity in his voice and says, "But I'm her husband. And I don't want it to run."

The macho-pig-seeking missiles in my brain automatically begin to launch — I hear all the hatches opening with metallic, unstoppable determination — but before they exit my mouth I am able to defuse them. And I also successfully resist the urge to say, "Dude. Do you have any idea to whom you are speaking? You are speaking to someone who worshipped Simone de Beauvoir in high school and flirted with Andrea Dworkin in college. Dworkin, hon. Are we clear?" Instead, I re-explain the letters policy in a calm, clear voice, leaving him no idea of the doomsday destruction he has just been spared.

He repeats the "argument" that he is her husband. And I repeat the rule that only letter writers may "retrieve" their letters. In other words, paper covers rock. He says, "She won't." I say, "That's her decision."

We've reached a silent, uncomfortable détente.

He grouchily hangs up. I sit there for a minute wondering:

(1) Did I just have this conversation with a grown man in the year 2008?
(2) How do people live like that?
(3) What kind of a personal world does he inhabit that makes him think his request would naturally be honored?
(4) Will he now take his frustration out on his wife in some hideous way?
(5) Will he blame Barack Obama's victory for women becoming uppity?
(6) Where did I put that copy of "Intercourse"?