Are you interested in entering the Short Story Competition?

Her Magazine - Short Story Competition - the winning submission will be published in an issue of Her Magazine.

Entries need to have a maximum of 800 words and will be selected based on their interest and professional standard.

See below for this month's winning entry.

Entries are to be emailed to Her Magazine: hermag@strettonpublishing.co.nz

Desi Lorand is an experienced New Zealand businesswoman offering Her Magazine readers the opportunity to try their hand at journalism by submitting their short stories or articles.

Desi is the Chief Executive of Power Business Services, who provide inhouse and outsourced expert scanning services. Power Business Services’ website can be found at www.power-business.co.nz.


Terms and Conditions:

Entries to have a maximum of 800 words, submitted in double spacing including a short biography of the writer. Entries close 20th of each month. Each entry must be the author’s original work and must not have been published before. The winner each month will be notified prior to publication which will be at Her Magazine’s discretion. Her Magazine retains first publication rights for all winning entries for a period of six months. Entries from the previous month cannot be resubmitted for following months’ competitions – ie. entries can only be submitted once. Each entry should be accompanied by a short biography of the writer. Each entry must be original and must be submitted by the author. The judges’ decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into. Submission of each entry constitutes acceptance by the submittor of the competition’s terms and conditions of entry.

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Winning Entry from the May 09 Issue:

It Could Be Better

I hate forms. They inevitably ask ‘occupation’ and I dutifully fill in the blanks with something cynical like ‘domestic appliance’ or ‘doormat’ or some other cry for help. I’m not a 'stay at home dad’, I’m a ‘stuck at home’ one. I hate being a full-time father. I hate that I thanklessly clean up the same mess day after day. I hate that no matter what I cook, the kids dismiss it as inedible and my partner approaches it with the enthusiasm of Julius Caesars’ poison tester, probing me as to how much oil was used.
Why, I hear you ask with that wonderful exasperated sigh that only women can do, don’t you go back to work?
Who would look after the kids? Who would get them out the door in the morning, do the shopping, the laundry, the school run, taxi them to after-school activities, cook … “Stop whining and get a housekeeper”, I hear you cry.
And this is where I slam face first into the ‘C’ word. My partner has been averse to a housekeeper for some years but has recently conceded that we ‘could’ get one. The problem is that I have become finely attuned to her language – possibly more so than she is.
It started over, of all things, fish and chips. One afternoon, I asked the usual question, “What do you want for dinner?” I got the usual, “Oh, anything will do”, knowing that it wouldn’t. After a fruitless discussion, she suggested, “We could get takeaways.” I never turn down a chance to avoid my daily failure. “Do you want takeaways?” I quickly asked. “Well, we could get them,” was the reply.
In that ‘could’, a light bulb went off and I became aware that she had carefully trained me over many years to take responsibility for things she wanted but didn’t want responsibility for. She wanted takeaways but didn’t want to get fat. If it was my decision to get them, not hers, then she was just a hapless victim in the whole deal.
I tell you, from a bloke’s perspective – this really sucks.
‘Could’ is permission rather than support and is something that is a huge barrier to love. ‘We could’ is a world away from ‘I want this to happen because it will make your or our life better’. In fact, ‘could’ is anti-support because it pre-loads blame if there is any failure. ‘Could-ers’ get to opt out after the event and think ‘I never really wanted that in the first place, I just agreed to it’, even if they suggested it first. The ‘could-ee’ is left carrying the can. If all you offered is ‘could’, you are making no emotional investment in the success of the venture, be it a round of golf or launching a new business idea.
So here I am; waiting for support to return to work or start a business or write the great New Zealand novel and I am stuck with ‘could’. It may seem like a petulant point but it cuts to the heart of how we value each other. The notion that we ‘could’ get a housekeeper carries with it a lack of trust – she expects me to fail at whatever I do and doesn’t want to own any responsibility for a housekeeper. It carries the notion that I am not worth investing in. It nurtures the idea that what I currently do is so irrelevant that we don’t need cover for it – it will work itself out. None of this makes me feel particularly good about myself, or loved and valued.
I’ve spoken to a few women friends about this and it’s a bit of a ‘Shit – I do that too’ moment for them, so maybe it’s just part of the wonderful male/female dynamic. I’m sure the feminists will rush to explain it as a function of an oppressive paternalistic society where women are discouraged from asking for what they want but, after a generation of female empowerment, ‘could’ is a cop out by anyone’s measure.
If you want your partner to be happy and successful, my advice is to expunge the ‘C’ word from your relationship. Want things that they want and commit to the investment needed. I know of at least one business that failed mostly because it was operating on permission rather than support – it’s just taken me a couple of decades to understand that.
By Henry Norton