He remembered her question; he couldn’t forget it. What’s the worst thing a woman could do to him? So many answers, so many directions he could take to answer.

It wasn’t like a man, who could beat or manipulate or get him arrested, who could kill him or burn his house down. Those were threats he could understand, for which he could prepare or defend himself.

With a woman it was completely different. The worst thing they could do was love him. To give him everything they had, and he could give them all that he had. They would have a life and a house together and he would think it was fine.

Gradually he’d become aware that nothing was fine, that his best efforts and struggles meant nothing to them. That he was completely taken for granted and invisible, but he couldn’t slack in anything he did either. They were his jailers.

The insidiousness of woman was incomprehensible. A woman could take even himself from him, and he would be left on the outside, cold and alone, trying to pry open the locked door with all the nothing that he had.

She could hurt him to the core and it would never occur to her to feel bad about what she did to him. She would inflict the pain for his own good, because he deserved it for what he had done, because he needed to come to his senses.

When he came back, broken and suffering, she’d gloat in her own way.

He would rather be murdered.