"Oh—being with girls."
"I never found it difficult—except when they were tight. Then my impulse is to run."
"There we go again! Women mustn't drink. But you—being a man—don't care if the boys get blind."
"Did I say so? Having been a drunk—and quit—I detest drunks. A common example of the law of opposites in operation. I force myself to associate with them, sometimes, because I owe drunkenness a good deal of quid pro quo—"
"Like an Alcoholic Anonymous?"
"Like that—without the self-canonization. An American man—with a few drinks in his blood stream—is able to become a shade more human. To shed the posture of men demanded by his era and its women. To show he has feelings, to be introverted—unless he gets out of hand—and even to think a little bit. To cherish and fear, to appreciate and revile, to show some evidence of the democracy and human brotherhood he is always talking about—and always doing his best to defeat by getting to the top in nefarious ways. I don't mind guys being slightly tight. Excepting for the danger that they'll go beyond that stage—which they so generally do."
"But women! Dear, dear!"
"The average American female with three or four cocktails in her becomes a living exhibit of the frustrations inherent in the feminist myth of these days. Together with the compulsions."
"Yes, Mr. Wylie?"
I grinned at her. "She sets out to prove the myth she has not been able to live up to, sober—that women are superior to men and also the exact equals of men. She does this by turning into a bad imitation of a man. She argues. She imagines her arguments are brilliant and crushing—when they are non sequiturs and ad hominems. She directs. She orders. She demands. She judges—she is a little tin magistrate hurling charges to unseen juries and handing out sentences on her enemies or auditors. She is both the defending and the prosecuting attorney. She is everything but a lady and everybody but the prisoner. Which shows, of course, that she feels imprisoned when sober, and also envious of males when she goes around in her sober mind trying to convince herself and everybody she is their equal and also their superior."