My heart stopped beating for about 45 seconds on Thursday night. It was scary as hell and totally the fault of the as yet unnicknamed funny red-haired guy.

Whenever we workshop a story, the Vodo makes us go around the circle and say something we liked about the story. The story we read for class Thursday night had caused quite a flurry of emotion in 4/5 of the class’s female population (yes I am trying on the s apostrophe s here to see if I like it). I say four fifths, because I didn’t get a chance to talk to the fifth woman before class.

The story, written by a man in class was told from the point of view of a woman who has an abortion without telling her live-in boyfriend. It was either very brave of him, or completely insane. I am not sure. I’ve never tried to write from the opposite point of view, because I am a pussy. Some people (Kelly, for instance) do it really well. But I am afraid people will read my male point of view story and say, “Dude sounds like a girl.”

To give the gist of the story, the main character does not fare well after having the secret abortion. After reading the story, as a woman, I sort of felt like I had just been witness to an anti-abortion diatribe.

The subject is volatile, and I was wondering how the class would handle it. I was nervous and kind of zoned out while everyone went around the room talking about what they liked about the story. As we neared the end of the circle, everyone kept saying “I agree what everyone else said.” We always run out of nice things to say, catty bitches that we all are.

“Well,” Funny Red-haired guy said. “I disagree with everything everyone has said so far.”

My head snapped up from my doodles. ‘Here we go,’ I thought. I swear the entire class held its breath. The game was on. I was excited, there isn’t much in life that I love more then a good, passionate debate.

But then Funny Red-haired guy laughed and might have said just kidding. Together the class exhaled.

It was an unusual workshop. I know I left a lot unsaid, and that was tough. I do believe I got a chance to call everyone in the main character’s life “a judgmental asshole.” Which made me feel a little better.

The thing I liked the most about this abortion story is that you get to see things split so clearly down gender lines. The women were all, “if she’s 30 and has a live in boyfriend and she doesn’t want to have kids, why wasn’t she on birth control?”

All the guys were, “Huh, I never thought of that.”

Fucking typical, isn’t it?