by Christine Stevens

1 And the Lord God looked upon the First Woman as she came of an age when the skin becomes as a desert and the daily use of a good moisturizer becomes as a Commandment and He said unto her “Thou shalt swab thy self with unguents so that thy connubial appeal endures and the seed of Adam, though thou art no longer possessed of fertile fields, may still at least desire to find purchase in your soil.”

2 And the Woman called Eve replied “Verily I say unto you Lord God, I have come of an age where my desire hath receded as the Red Sea from Moses. Must I really still lay with him? For he doth possess nose hairs of a great length and a breath that could repel a serpent. Not to mention the inability to maintain his staff with a tumescence sufficient for accomplishing a connubial anything. I would desire more a large portion of the fruit of the vine (a cabernet, please) and a potato, baked and fulsome with butter, than to engage in making the beast with two backs with Adam; he hath not any imagination when it cometh to beast making. And though we have known each other in the Biblical sense for lo these many years, it maketh little sense to me that I should be commanded to continue this fruitless act. (In both our defense, forget not, Good Lord, we are in our 900’s.)”

3 And the Heavenly Father quoted himself, saying, “Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” And the Woman snorted.

4She continued, saying unto the Almighty, “Yea though I am allegedly created from his rib, and though we suffered greatly for listening to that damned Serpent (which all of humankind will blame on me throughout eternity even though Adam was every bit as curious as I); and though You My Lord believe you have cursed me for my actions with the pains of childbirth despite the fact that any woman with half a brain understands that pushing a 35 centimeter head through a 10 centimeter opening will just mathematically cause a great howling and gnashing of teeth; and though I withstood this difficulty without any kind of libation or balm and bore of him two children, the Bad One and the Good One – and let me tell you Dear God in Heaven, the both of them were hellions from the start for as they were the First Children there existed not a playgroup nor a pre-school to help socialize those sons of a perverse and rebellious woman – which God Almighty, I realize is an insult unto myself but seeing as how I had not a parenting class nor any pre-natal care whatsoever, how on Your Green Earth could I have possibly known what I was doing with those two? Adam was no help at all as he persisted in pouting over the whole Paradise Lost thing. And now that I think upon it, where were You with the Commandments and the Advice in the Big Booming Voice when my two brats were trying to kill each other?”

5 The Woman ceased in her diatribe for a moment as she sought to recall her original point.

6 “Anyway, verily I ask of thee, after all that, think’st thou this Man should still ‘rule over me?’

7 And there was a quiet upon the land.  Eve said “What sayest thou, My Sweet Lord, Ooo-ooo My Lord? ”  And an answer came there none.  So the Woman spake again, “Oh My God, art thou giving me the treatment of silence? Really?”

8 However, the possible absence of the Creator’s attention deterred her not.

9 “Hast thou learned nothing about Woman in this entire time? With all due respect, Good God Almighty, let me spell it out for you: I fear thou may be setting a precedent that will be difficult to walk back. For if the generations to come do slavishly adhere to the literal meaning of thy Word, then 50% of thy people will be subjugated by the other 50% who may not always be very nice or fair or wise Subjugators. Is it not possible that Man will create laws that could render difficulties unto Woman in, oh, I don’t know, maybe, most areas of her life? In fact, now that I think upon it, why need’st any creature to dominate another?  For All our sakes, please think upon this.”

10 And the Lord God heard not the Woman’s words.

11 So the Woman sighed.

12 And spread her legs.

13 No. Wait.

14 She did not spread her legs.

15 In a final attempt to elicit a response, any response, the woman called Eve slowly lifted her arm and raised a clenched fist unto the heavens, extending only her middle finger and pointing it unto the Almighty.

16 Still the Lord God responded not to this non-verbal form of communication.

17 So the Woman sighed. Again.

18 But this time the Woman’s sigh, though as a whisper at first, soon became a zephyr and the zephyr became a wind.  The sky darkened, the wind gathered strength and merged with all the sighs ever sighed by all the women who ever had cause to sigh. Or exhale for that matter. It began to swirl and gather force. The raging vortex expanded and blew across the land and through the minds of every Man throughout Creation.  It blew away all their firmly held beliefs about Power, Control, and Penis Size. Which are all roughly the same thing.

19 In its place, the Seeds of Equality, Individual Sovereignty and the Belief that Females are Capable of Making Their Own Goddamn Choices were sown.  Which are all roughly the same thing.

20 The clouds parted, the darkness began to ebb and the Woman was pleased. Eve smiled, certain that Almighty God would agree with her paradigm shift and not feel the least bit threatened by it.

21 A Woman can dream.

Christine Stevens teaches, performs and writes in Western Massachusetts.  Her work can be found on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.