I can’t think of a more fun place to Christmas shop than Brattleboro, a funky, friendly, easy to navigate place, a cafe town. I went into this Vintage clothing shop and while Maria was in the dressing room trying something on I scrambled around to get her some good stuff to put under our feisty little tree. The women in the store joined in, distracting her, hiding my presents, helping me and the shop owner stuff them into a bag.

Like the cafe photo below, this store was all about women. And I realize lately that I have always loved women. This sometimes drives Maria a little crazy – she thinks I sometimes love women too much. But I tell her that I love women in the way that Gabriel Garcia Marquez loves women. I see them as warm, funny, open, emotional, sensuous. I idealize them, admire them from afar, see them as mysterious, fertile, inaccessible. For most of my life, that was true. Maria suspects me of continuous flirtations, but this is not true. I just love women.  I will always love women, I can’t  help it, but that does not mean I don’t love one woman more than all of the others.

Men don’t have shops like this devoted to them.