The Making of Man, by Rebekah Phillips

Sinead woke up that morning surrounded by dirty shot glasses and an empty bottle of rum. She was lying on the floor, her arm at an uncomfortable angle under her head, and there was an alarming taste in her mouth that was alcohol mixed with something bitter she didn’t remember eating.

Sitting up, she looked at the mess that was her life and said to herself, “What am I doing?”

A week before, Sinead had proposed to her boyfriend, who had calmly and coolly rejected her, and then made it very plain that he didn’t think much of girls who asked boys to marry them. Ever since, Sinead had been drinking, and now her apartment was a mess of empty vodka bottles that were only half-full and day-old pizza that had been left out on the living room table.

Sinead thought about crying, but too many tears had been shed in the last week, coupled with vain epithets like, “Why did I do that?!” and “What did I ever see in him?!” which no one had answered and, Sinead realized, no one could answer. Sinead had cried her tears, and now that no more were coming, it was time to sit back and think rationally about what she was doing with her life.

Slowly Sinead stood up, testing all of her joints, and then went into the kitchen and made blueberry pancakes and coffee. She ate mechanically, not really tasting much, all the while thinking.

Her mind was a marvelous one, as far as brains go. It was in its own way very logical, although skewed and a little morbid. Often it would beat itself to death for accidents of the past instead of letting those little slips go with the past, and sometimes it would even tell her things she did not want to know. However, it was a well-organized and dedicated brain, and it served Sinead well that morning.

First, her brain told her, it couldn’t possibly be Sinead’s fault that this mess had occurred. It was a new era, after all, where women did propose to men and men took their wives’ names, and so her actions should not have been as shocking as her boyfriend had thought them. Besides that, Sinead knew she was a reasonably attractive girl, with clear skin she was very proud of, dancing green eyes, and hair that was, while undeniably mousy, could be made to look acceptable with blond highlights and some gels. She also had a little bit of a stomach, but this did not trouble her too much; a little bit of fat was comforting, and in the long run a little pouch was healthier than not.

Her personality, too, was fairly average, if things like that could be measured. Sinead had her quirks, as all humans do, but she was well-adjusted, liked to laugh, enjoyed horror films, and didn’t mind watching sports with her boyfriend during football season. All of this was fairly normal.

The fault, then, Sinead’s brain told her, was not in her actions, but in her choice of a boyfriend. He had obviously been a bad choice. He had always had a terrible habit of petting her hand in public like she was a small dog, and he wasn’t very good at reading social cues, but he had been reasonably smart and attractive and put together. She had been optimistic that it would work out, but apparently not. Her ex-boyfriend was a loser. He had not been even a little appreciative of the effort involved in getting down on one’s knee and preparing a little speech, even though he had made clear it was the man’s job to propose! Well, if he didn’t have any sympathy for her, she wouldn’t waste any on him.

 Sinead stirred an extra scoop of sugar into her coffee and sighed. The real problem, she knew, was that she wanted a Disney-style, fairy-tale ending, in which she and her husband would share a hundred in-jokes and listen to the same music and quote the same movies. He would call her “beloved” and wake her up with breakfast in bed, and not panic if she happened to deviate from the cultural norms of how a woman should behave. Sinead knew she wasn’t looking for perfection—she herself was not perfect—but she wanted someone who was perfect for her, whose flaws matched perfectly with her own, someone who thought along the same lines. Once she had not thought that this was so unrealistic. Now she was wondering if she had set the bar too high. Maybe all there was in this world were men who smelled of alcohol and watched too much football and burped unpleasantly at dinner, men who watched horror movies with their girlfriends but refused to watch a chick flick with them, men who thought that a woman’s place was in the home.

“The problem,” Sinead reflected, “is that women think that they can change men—that if they get a specimen that’s close enough to the Real Deal, with some tweaking and minor adjustments and fashion advice, they’ll turn out to be Prince Charming after all. But that isn’t how it works. If only we could build men from scratch!”

And that’s when that brilliant brain of hers struck gold.

She would do what Frankenstein’s monster had only dared dream of. She would defy the expectations of biology, of eugenics, of everything, and build herself a creation made for her. It would be Adam and Eve all over again, where a partner was created to satisfy the needs of the one. Sinead would have love!

And so Sinead began. She worked late into the night, reading and tinkering and scrapping and starting from scratch again. And when it was finished, Sinead stood there for a long moment, stunned. It seemed bizarre that she should have finished at all, and, staring at her creation, she felt shyer around him than she ought, considering she had created him.

He was fairly average-looking, a little taller than she, with dark hair and eyes. He stared back at her levelly and said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Sinead said. “Want to go out for coffee?”

They went out for coffee. The Man (Sinead had neglected to name him, thinking somewhere along the line that he ought to have the right to name himself) stared, goggle-eyed, at everything, pointing and asking, “What’s that?” like a child.

Sinead had not realized creating a man would be so like having a baby. For a while she tried to be patient, but after a while it just got annoying. How long can a girl answer questions about what food tastes like, or why a person is dressed a certain way, or how a plane flies? The answer for Sinead was: not long.

When at last they reached the coffeehouse, Sinead had to order for The Man, because she didn’t trust him to order for himself. He, meanwhile, sat down next to a guy with a laptop and started asking questions about how it worked and what it was.

“Downs Syndrome?” the woman behind the counter asked sympathetically.

“Let’s just say he hasn’t left the house in a long time,” Sinead said. She collected the coffee and went over to The Man, trying to drag him away from the poor guy with the laptop.

“I don’t want to go,” The Man said. “This is interesting. So, what’s the difference between Windows Explorer and Mozilla Firefox?”

Sinead sat there for a few minutes, trying to decide if she should engage in geek-talk or drag The Man away. After an hour of indecision, the guy with the laptop said he was going to be late for work, but left his phone number for The Man in case he had any other questions about computers. The Man asked him what a phone was.

When at last the over-obliging guy the laptop was gone, Sinead tried to talk to The Man about himself. Was he happy? What did he need? What was his favorite color? How did he feel about watching a move tonight? But The Man did not pay any attention. He kept staring at everyone in the café and asking those very annoying questions.

He didn’t like his coffee. He wanted to re-order. Sinead, exhausted, gave him five dollars and her blessing to order for himself. Sure enough, once he got to the counter, he wanted to know what things tasted like and what a latte was and what the difference between an apple and a pear was. Eventually Sinead rose, grabbed The Man bodily by the arm, and dragged him home.

That night, Sinead made him a nest on the couch. The Man requested that she tuck him in. She did so.

“Sinead?” The Man said, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes,” Sinead said, thinking of ways to kill The Man in his sleep.

 “I think I’m gay.”

“Oh, God,” Sinead said.

The Man was gone in the morning. Sinead gave up on biology, moved to California, joined an all-female commune dedicated to living in tune with nature, and was eventually tried in a court of law for creating a human being without contacting the proper authorities first. Sinead doesn’t mind jail. She says it’s better than the real world, and she counts it as a blessing that the only guy she has to put up with on a daily basis is the warden, who slips her moonshine whiskey on Sundays.