Men Who Gut Animals and Build Shelters
by Monica Shie

For most of her life, Gina had dated academics. She liked to think of herself as someone who could see beyond the superficial, someone who could ignore a lack of social graces or even poor personal hygiene to appreciate the genius of men who, prior to meeting her, might have been overlooked due to their eccentricities. She was attracted to men who could expound upon a topic, men who others might find pompous or long-winded, and men who liked to provoke by defending unpopular positions in aggressively pointed arguments, prompting listeners to deflect, saying, “Let’s agree to disagree.” During her marriage, Gina grew accustomed to looking up from a book or news article to inquire of her husband, “Who were the Bolsheviks again?” or “What’s the difference between Shia and Sunni?” and without consulting Wikipedia, he would explain the world around her, in substantial detail, making her feel as if she, too, owned this information.