HERS, pron. His.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary


With the shortest entry in his infamous lampoon, Ambrose Bierce, a genius of social commentary, summed up the legal condition of American women in the late 19th century.  A gal getting married in the Victorian Age gave away the bank, whether she liked it or not.  American law has advanced a little since then, but men still can’t keep their hands off their wives’ things.

The other day I was waiting in the checkout line at a store when I overhead the woman being served chatting with the cashier.  She said, “Never—and I mean never—loan money to a man you’re involved with if you expect to see it again.  Husbands, boyfriends—they all live by the same motto: what’s yours is theirs.”

She spoke with an authority that suggested long experience, and I seconded her opinion.  “In fact,” I added, “never loan a man anything you want to see or use again.  It’ll come back broken, used up or not at all.”  The cashier—a naïve young thing—looked from the other woman to me and back again with an expression of growing panic.  In the manner of someone who’s arrived at the scene of a fire too late to do anything about it, the other woman sighed resignedly, “Oh, no.  I see you already did.”

Men appropriate their other half’s things unrelentingly and unrepentently and engage in bizarre schemes of imagined payback.  One woman I know loaned her fiancé a sum of money.  Much later, in the course of an argument, she mentioned how much it bothered her that he never made a payment on the loan or even mentioned it again.  “What do you mean?” he said.  “I bought all our power tools!  Wasn’t that enough?”

Even worse is when your guy borrows something of yours to loan to a male friend of his.  Then you’re up against the inertial force of two congenitally bad-mannered borrowers to get the thing back.  A man will never ask another man to return something he’s loaned; it goes against some deep instinctual taboo.  Eventually, both men will simply forget about it and look at you like you’re nuts if you enquire after your long-time-not-seen possession.

What elevates bad borrower syndrome to a really infuriating level is when men refuse to accept responsibility for the things they break, lose or use up.  Last winter, on a particularly bad weather day, I loaned my husband K— my all-wheel-drive car.  I didn’t need it that day, and I certainly didn’t begrudge him the ability to get to and from work safely.  I happened to be shoveling the driveway when he returned, and I immediately noticed that the windshield wipers on my car were askew.  K— got out of the car, and the first words out of his mouth were, “When’s the last time you replaced your windshield wipers?”  “Two days ago,” I said truthfully (having thought ahead about the coming storm).  “Really?” he said, surprised.  “Well, they don’t work now!”

I didn’t have to think for two seconds to figure out how he’d broken them because I know exactly how he drives and how he treats his own car.  But would he accept the mere possibility of having had something to do with the demise of my wipers?  Not on your life.

Well, on that cold and snowy night I couldn’t be bothered trying to fight the good fight any more.  It was getting too dark to shovel, and I was tired, so I went inside to take a good long shower.  I’d just laundered my towel and I’d forgotten to replace it, so I used K—’s.  Then I changed into one of his oversized denim shirts I found slung over a railing outside the bathroom.  (Man, there’s nothing better to relax in than a “boyfriend shirt.”)  I slipped on a couple of his extra large (and extra comfy!) cotton socks, too.  I needed to forget the broken wipers, so I downloaded a chick flick to K—’s iPod and deleted some of that crappy rap music he listens to sometimes (who’d want that garbage, anyway?) to make room for it.  I watched it in bed propped up on his orthopedic pillow, and then because I was too tired to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, I downed the glass on his bedside table.

As I snuggled down into the covers and began to doze, I heard K— get out of the shower and grumble something incoherent.  He walked with a squishing sound. He opened and closed the door to the linen closet, and then he rustled around in the hallway for a bit, making more inarticulate noises.  Eventually he came to bed.  “Have you seen the clean clothes I left in the hall?” he asked, “And do you know why my towel’s all wet?”   “Not I,” I smiled groggily, and nodded off with a conscience as clean as a baby's.