The Woman Time Conversion Chart

A survival guide for men who’ve been “five minutes” away from leaving the house since 2019

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6:47 PM.

Dinner reservation is at 7:00.

You’ve been ready since 6:15. Showered. Dressed. Wallet. Keys. Standing by the door like a retriever who heard the word “walk” forty-five minutes ago.

She emerges from the bathroom.

“Five more minutes.”

You nod. You sit down. You turn on the TV.

At 7:23, you will be backing out of the driveway while she applies mascara in the passenger seat using the visor mirror and somehow not dying.

At 7:31, you will be explaining to the hostess that you had a “reservation for 7” with the energy of someone who has stopped believing in the concept of linear time.

Because here’s what women taught me:

Women do not experience time the same way men do.

This isn’t a complaint. This isn’t even criticism.

This is anthropology.

I am merely documenting a phenomenon that every man on Earth has observed but none of us have had the courage to catalog.

Until now.

• • •

THE OFFICIAL CONVERSION CHART

I have spent decades in the field. I have collected data. I have cross-referenced observations with other married men in hushed conversations at barbecues while our wives were inside “just grabbing their purses.”

(They were not just grabbing their purses. They were never just grabbing their purses.)

Here is what I’ve learned:

“Five minutes” = 35 minutes

This is the baseline conversion. The fundamental constant. The speed of light in the female time-space continuum.

“Five minutes” is not a measurement of time. It’s a category. It means “I have acknowledged your impatience and I am signaling that departure is conceptually on the horizon.”

Five minutes is the distance between “almost ready” and whenever she actually walks through the door. It is a quantum state. It exists in superposition…simultaneously almost over and potentially infinite.

Schrödinger’s Five Minutes.

“Almost done” = Hasn’t started the thing you’re waiting for

This one took me years to crack.

“Almost done” means she has completed several tasks you were unaware were required, but has not yet begun the task you assumed was the only task.

You thought getting ready was: shower, dress, go.

Getting ready is actually: shower, dry hair, style hair, first outfit, reconsider outfit, second outfit, reconsider shoes, makeup base, wait for base to set, actual makeup, jewelry selection, jewelry reconsideration, purse transfer, find phone, find keys, one more mirror check, lip thing, and THEN go.

She is “almost done” with step 4 of 17.

You are not leaving soon.

“Just one more thing” = Three hours minimum

Do NOT let this phrase fool you. “Just one more thing” is not a thing. It is a Russian nesting doll of things.

The “one thing” is Target. But Target contains twelve things. One of those things reminds her of another thing at a different store. That store is “right there” (it is not right there). That store triggers a memory of something she needed to return. The return place is “on the way” (it is not on the way).

“Just one more thing” is how Saturday errands that were supposed to take an hour become a full expedition that ends at 4 PM with you sitting in a parking lot eating Chick-fil-A in defeated silence while she texts her sister about something unrelated to any of the things.

“On my way” = Still on the couch

I have verified this with GPS data.

“On my way” means “I have mentally committed to the concept of leaving.” She has not stood up. She has not located her keys. She has not gone to the bathroom one last time (she will go to the bathroom one last time…this is unavoidable).

“On my way” is the announcement of intent. It is the starting gun that signals the beginning of the pre-departure sequence.

The pre-departure sequence takes eleven to nineteen minutes depending on variables I have not yet isolated.

“Ready when you are” = Needs 20 more minutes but is testing you

This is a trap.

If you say “okay let’s go,” she will say “just let me...” and then three things happen that each take seven minutes.

If you say “take your time,” she will take time. Lots of time. Time you didn’t know existed.

The correct response is: “I’ll be in the car.” Then go sit in the car. Play on your phone. Accept your fate. She will emerge when she emerges. The car is Switzerland.

“Give me a second” = Give her several minutes

A “second” is not a unit of time. A “second” is a request for patience of undefined duration.

One second to find her chapstick can take four minutes if the chapstick is not in the first purse she checks. And it is never in the first purse.

“Let me just change real quick” = You should have brought a book

“Real quick” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence.

She will emerge in the first outfit, ask your opinion, interpret your opinion incorrectly, return to the closet, and emerge in a second outfit that looks identical to you but is apparently “completely different.”

Your job is to notice the difference. You will not notice the difference. This will be a problem.

“I’ll be right there” = Start a new activity, you have time

“Right there” is a location in space, not time. She will BE “right there” eventually. The journey to “right there” has no ETA.

I once started watching a movie after she said “I’ll be right there.”

She emerged for the last twenty minutes.

She asked what she missed.

Everything. She missed everything.

“Running a little late” = The original departure time was a fiction

“Running late” implies there was a schedule. There was never a schedule. There was a suggestion of a schedule. An aspiration. A hope.

“A little late” means recalculate your entire timeline. If you were meeting people at 6, tell them 6:45 but expect 7:15.

The people you’re meeting already know this. If they’re married, they’re running late too. Everyone is running late. The whole system runs on lateness. Restaurants that take reservations have built this into their models.

“I just need to grab my purse” = The purse is a decoy

She’s not grabbing her purse. She’s performing a final sweep of the house that includes checking her hair one more time, adjusting something on her face, possibly changing her earrings, definitely checking her phone, and remembering one thing she forgot to do that will take “just a second.” (See Above…)

The purse will be grabbed. Eventually. After several other things are grabbed, adjusted, and reconsidered.

“Almost ready, just doing my makeup” = You might want to eat something

Makeup is not A task. Makeup is several tasks performed in a specific order with drying time built in between layers.

I don’t understand it. I’ve watched it happen hundreds of times and I still don’t understand it. There are primers and bases and things that need to “set” and other things that can’t be applied until the first things have set.

It’s like watching someone build a house. You can’t put up drywall before the framing is done. You can’t do the... eye thing... before the other eye thing has dried.

I have learned to nod and not ask questions.

• • •

THE EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY DEFENSE

Now, some women reading this are getting ready to send me emails.

“This is sexist.”

“Not all women.”

“My husband takes longer than I do.”

First: I don’t doubt it. Men have our own time distortions.

“I’ll take a look at it this weekend” = never.

“Just gonna run to Home Depot” = three hours.

“Watching the end of this game” = the game, the postgame, and highlights.

We’re not innocent.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned:

Her extra time is not wasted time.

One day I actually watched what she was doing.

She was preparing to be SEEN.

Not by me…I’d see her in sweatpants covered in dog hair and think she was beautiful. But by the world. By other women who would notice her shoes. By her own reflection that she’d catch in the restaurant window.

She was assembling armor. She was constructing a version of herself she felt confident presenting to a world that judges women on appearance in ways men will never fully understand.

While I threw on the same shorts I wore last time and called it good, she was making seventeen decisions about how she wanted to feel for the next four hours.

That takes time.

Maybe the time is the point.

• • •

THE FIELD NOTES

Some additional observations from my years of research:

The Proximity Paradox: The closer you get to on-time, the more things she remembers she needs to do. At 30 minutes before departure, she’s calm. At 5 minutes before, she suddenly needs to switch purses, find different earrings, and “just send one quick text.”

The Outfit Recursion Loop: If she asks “what do you think?” about an outfit, there is no correct answer. “You look great” = you didn’t really look. Specific compliment = you’re only noticing that one thing. “Maybe try the other one?” = you don’t like this one. Silence = you hate it.

Just say “you look great” and mean it. She’ll change anyway but at least she’ll change feeling supported.

The Departure Fake-Out: She will pick up her purse and walk toward the door. You will stand up, hopeful. She will suddenly remember something and veer off toward the bathroom/closet/kitchen. This will happen between one and four times per departure.

Do not get excited until her hand is on the car door.

The Car Continuation: Getting in the car is not the end. It’s a transition. She will finish her makeup using the visor mirror. She will check her phone. She will ask if you have [item] even though you always have [item]. The car is an extension of the getting-ready space.

The Arrival Recovery: After being 35 minutes late, she will walk into the event like nothing happened. She will receive compliments on her appearance. She will socialize effortlessly. You will stand there, still recovering from the time dilation you just experienced, eating a cube of cheese and wondering if time is real.

• • •

THE ACCEPTANCE

I used to fight this.

I used to show up at the bathroom door. “We’re gonna be late.” “What’s taking so long?” “You said five minutes twenty minutes ago.”

This accomplished nothing.

The timeline was never going to change. I was just adding stress to a process that was going to take however long it was going to take.

Now?

Now I’ve adapted.

Departure time minus 45 minutes = When I tell her we need to leave

My ready time = Whenever I feel like it, because I’ll be waiting regardless

Book in the car = Standard equipment

Emotional state = Acceptance, bordering on Zen

She’s going to take the time she’s going to take. The restaurant will hold the table. The movie has twenty minutes of previews anyway. The party doesn’t really start until 30 minutes after it “starts.”

The whole system is built on flexible time.

I was the only one who didn’t get the memo.

P.S. My buddy Mark told his wife they had to be somewhere at 5:30 when they actually had to be there at 6:15.

She figured it out within two events and now adds 45 minutes to whatever time he gives her.

They’re locked in a temporal arms race.

Neither of them will win.

But they’ve been married 31 years, so maybe that IS winning.

Race Power Politics For Me, But Not For Thee

And: Literal Ben Op; Power & Culture; Santorum Redux; Shavian Magic; 'Mein Cheeks'

Rod Dreher Feb 9   ∙   Paid

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Texas Democratic legislative leader Gene Wu advocates a non-white alliance ‘to take over this country.’ And we wonder why young white males are radicalizing…

Here is a prime example of the Weimarization of America — to be specific, what is driving an already unstable polity closer to the brink. Click on this link to hear what the Chinese-American leader of the Democrats in the Texas (!) state legislature says. Quote: “Non-whites share the same oppressor, and we are the majority now. We can take over this country.”

You all well know that I fear and loathe the racialized radicalism of white males on the Right, but damn it, the Left got there first, and continues to push it. You cannot create a politics based on non-white racial identity, and expect whites not to respond in kind, if only for self-protection. The path to illiberal-left identity politics embraced by Democrats and the Left more broadly has led to this.

Meghan McCain points out that people on the Left who miss her normie Republican father are forgetting how they demonized him, and later mainstream Republican politicians, a process that led to, well, take it away, Wilfred Reilly (who is black):

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The Literal Benedict Option

That’s a tweet from a leading pagan thinker — and history supports his conclusion. Monasticism exploded in the late fourth century, throughout the fifth century, as the Western Roman Empire was in its death throes. They were escaping a doomed world without purpose. I shared this information with a priest last night, who reported that the abbot of a traditional Orthodox monastery told him that since Covid, they have had so many young men flocking to their monastery, hoping to join, that they can scarcely accommodate them. Sign of the times.

Power And Culture

Did you watch the Super Bowl? I didn’t. Could not possibly care less. But TPUSA tried to counterprogram the Bad Bunny halftime show. Didn’t work. Thus:

He’s not wrong about the culture, but I gotta ask: how will political power be deployed to advance the culture that Engel prefers? Hard to imagine a democratic way of doing this. Engel knows this, and doesn’t care. He’s into racial identity politics … but on what grounds would Gene Wu fault him without being a racist hypocrite?

Today’s ‘Rick Santorum Vindication’ News

The C. Jay Engelses come from somewhere. Back in the Olden Times, in 2003, when your correspondent was but a thirtysomething, then-US Sen. Rick Santorum gave an interview in which he commented on the sodomy law case then before the Supreme Court. Excerpts from the transcript:

[Santorum]: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.

And then:

[Santorum:] In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality—

[Reporter:]I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about “man on dog” with a United States Senator. It’s sort of freaking me out.

[Santorum]: And that’s sort of where we are in today’s world, unfortunately.

By 2015, ex-Sen. Santorum had been tamed, saying he very much regrets his dog-on-man remark, and, of Bruce Jenner, “If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman.”

Well, if you have a strong stomach, here’s a story from Wales about Darren Meah-Moore, a well-known (as in, was once on RuPaul’s Drag Race) local drag queen was found dead, in full drag, after a night of sexual debauchery that ended with him having sex with a number of men in a local park. One of the men was a gay bloke out walking his dog late at night, and who took advantage of the opportunity to pleasure himself with Meah-Moore … until the dog joined in, and the dog-walker lost interest. Meah-Moore instructed his insta-lover to leave the tumescent dog alone. The coroner found sexual, um, residue from both man and beast inside Meah-Moore’s body.

From the story:

He performed CPR until paramedics took over but Meah-Moore was pronounced dead at the scene. The inquest heard tributes from Meah-Moore's father and husband [emphasis mine — RD] who described him as "caring" and "right at the heart of Cardiff's gay community".

Charming. A gay community leader. Now, there can be no doubt that Santorum’s 2003 remarks were ill-advised, to put it charitably. We have had gay marriage for some time now, thanks to the 2015 Obergefell decision, which drew on the 2003 Lawrence decision decriminalizing sodomy. I am unaware that we have seen an upsurge in man-on-dog action as a result. Nor am I aware that the public has become more accepting of bestiality as a result. So Santorum was wrong, in a meaningful sense.

Nevertheless, it’s worth considering Santorum’s point in light of Meah-Moore’s disgraceful end. In the Lawrence decision, the always-perspicacious Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissent (scroll down) from the pro-sodomy majority, pointed out that if the State has no right to set laws barring certain forms of sexual conduct, then we have a sexual free-for-all. In Lawrence, the court held that the state has no right to forbid consensual sodomy — but, said Scalia, the rationale it used would mean that no law forbidding any consensual sexual activity could stand. From his dissent:

The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are “immoral and unacceptable,” Bowers, supra, at 196—the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity. Bowers held that this was a legitimate state interest. The Court today reaches the opposite conclusion. The Texas statute, it says, “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual,” ante, at 578 (emphasis added). The Court embraces instead Justice Stevens’ declaration in his Bowers dissent, that “ ‘the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice,’ ” ante, at 577. This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.

Scalia clarified that for him, this is not about homosexuality per se, but about the right of a democratic people to enact their own moral standards into law. He pointed out that the fact that Texas was at the time one of the few states to still have anti-sodomy laws on its books was a sign of how successful gay activists and their allies had been at persuading people, democratically, to overturn them. Said Scalia:

But persuading one’s fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one’s views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts—or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them—than I would forbid it to do so.

He went on:

One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion.

Translation: if this kind of thing is left up to legislatures, then they can decriminalize sodomy without having to decriminalize other sexual acts that deviate from the heterosexual norm. (This, by the way, is why I opposed the Texas sodomy law even back in 2003, despite considering sodomy to be gravely sinful; yet I agreed with Scalia’s dissent for precisely the reasons he gave.)

Based on the reasoning in Lawrence, I don’t understand on what logical basis the courts would be able to uphold morals laws in any matter involving “consent.” In the case of Meah-Moore and Fido, the fact that Fido was the active party in that coupling is prima facie evidence that Fido consented to the evil act. Had Meah-Moore enjoyed his final canoodle with Fido in an American park, it would no doubt have broken the law (I presume anti-bestiality laws are still on the books), but on what logical grounds is bestiality considered illegal? Consent? Seems pretty thin, especially in a case in which the human is the passive partner.

Which, I think, is the point Santorum inelegantly tried to make.

I remember back in those Olden Times, we were assured that legalizing same-sex marriage would tame the passions of gay men in the same way marriage tames the passions of straight men: by channeling them into a binding commitment to a single partner. I wonder what Meah-Moore’s widower thinks about that.

There’s something about this ugly case that reminds me of the plot of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1950s sci-fi novel Childhood’s End, in which the aliens who come to rule the earth do not reveal themselves until many decades had passed, and humanity had had engineered out of its collective imagination the traditional image of demons with horns, hooves, and tails. Because that’s exactly how the alien rulers look! That is to say, by the time the rulers reveal themselves, people have forgotten — or, to be precise, been made to forget, what demons look like.

Drag queens and transvestites have been with us for ages, but only in the last thirty years or so were they normalized, and seen not as a form of clown (at best) or degenerate at worst. Now we have people taking their children to Drag Queen Story Hour, and little boys who dress as women celebrated on national TV. Fortunately, we are still a society that recoils in horror at what Meah-Moore got up to in the park that night. For now. But ask yourself: why is what he did illegal?

You might say, “He did it in public.” OK, but what if it had happened in his own home? The US Supreme Court declared in Lawrence that if people decide to engage in sodomy in their own dwellings, it is no business of the state. And I agree with that result (the lawsuit had been brought by a Texas gay couple who had been charged with sodomy after police entered their home and caught them in flagrante). But as Scalia said, the legal reasoning the Supreme Court used to get to that result in principle kicks out the supports for any morals legislation.

Again, “consent” is a tissue-thin barrier to any number of inhuman acts. As disgusting as you no doubt find what Meah-Moore did, would you consider that it ought to be legal, at least in private, on the grounds that it was a private, consensual act? If not, why not? If the animal had been the passive partner, you could have said it was a case of animal abuse. But the dog was the active partner, who willingly participated.

To use the Court’s language, what is the “legitimate state interest” that justifies intrusion of the state into the private life of Darren Meah-Moore, if he chose to make his body available for the sexual gratification of a dog, especially in private?

I know it’s a revolting thing to consider, but here we are. What are the legal grounds to continue to forbid polygamy among consenting adults? What about forbidding incest between two consenting adults who are sterile (meaning that they cannot produce children)? In the UK, first cousin marriage remains legal, even though the Pakistani community there, which still practices it, has an unusually high percentage of mental and physical defectives produced by incest (e.g., Pakistani Britons account for only 3 percent of the population, but produce 30 percent of children born with serious genetic defects). You could justify banning consanguinous sex on the grounds that incest produces disabled offspring, but again, what if the partners are sterile?

So much of the moral order depends on the collective memory of Christianity, which provided grounding in authoritative transcendence as the basis for law. And that is disappearing. Don’t be surprised when illiberal right-wingers like Engel arise to say there’s no saving this corrupt democratic order, because liberalism has rotted the moral judgment of the people. I’m not endorsing that view; I’m just saying its comprehensible in Weimar America. And it will increasingly be persuasive.

Once more: the legalization of sodomy, and then of same-sex marriage, did not produce a mania for bestiality (though the idea that extending marriage to same-sex couples would curb homosexual male rutting has been disproven; most gay male marriages allow for extramarital sex). Still, the moral question remains: why is bestiality illegal, given that “yuck!” is not considered a sufficient legal argument?

Martin Shaw’s Travels

In more upbuilding news, I got this from a reader who went to see Martin Shaw in Pittsburgh the other night:

Martin was here!

I learned of the event after it was already sold out. With some luck and more than a touch of Grace I managed to get a ticket anyway.

A friend asked me this morning how things went. This is what I said:

“It was like when you stand on a beach and hear the water coming in wave after wave and you notice a stillness as the water recedes, and then how in the rhythm of the crashing waves there’s also a stillness. And, how before you know it you are still inside and everything else fades into the background. Everything except the awe, wonder, and the love the deepest part of you recognized when your toes touched the sand.”

Thank you for introducing me/us to Martin’s work.

Martin is on a book tour in the US behind Liturgies Of The Wild: Myths That Make Us.

Here he is in a teaser for a new video course, “Tales Of Christian Initiation,” telling the story of Ruth and Boaz. Please watch to get an idea of his charisma.

I’m telling you, if you have the chance to see and hear this man live, take it! And while you’re at it, subscribe to “The House Of Beasts & Vines,” Martin’s Substack. Finally, here’s a link to the Martin Shaw website, which features prominently a quote from none other than Iain McGilchrist, who describes Martin as “our greatest living storyteller.” I believe it.

Martin will appear at the Orthodox Christian Arts Festival this Friday night. It will be held in an Orthodox church in Carrollton, TX (DFW area). Go! You won’t regret it.

Clavicular’s Really Bad Arizona Weekend

It seems that the celebrated Zoomer weirdo who goes by the name Clavicular, and who taps on his cheekbones with a hammer to “looksmaxx” himself, found himself in an uncomfortable situation over the weekend:

What on earth does that mean? This tweet breaks down the slang for you, my fellow Olds. Meanwhile, enjoy Charlie Cooke’s Wodehousian take on the matter:

“Jeeves,” I said, “you look . . . pensive.”
“I confess to a slight concern, sir.”
That, from Jeeves, is rather like hearing that the Bank of England has “a slight concern” about the stability of the pound. It makes you sit up.
“Concern, Jeeves?”
“Concern, sir. I ran into Lady Flashcome this morning, who informed me that that, last night at the Drones, Viscount Clavicular was mid jestergooning, when a group of Foids came and spiked his Cortisol levels.”
“Well, I’m bound!” I said, nodding the old bean. “So that’s what it is, is it? Most interesting.”
I paused.
“Jeeves?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I confess I didn’t quite follow that.”
“Understandable, sir. The essential question, as I understand it, is whether ignoring the foids while munting and mogging moids is more useful than SMV chadfishing in the club.”
“Come again, Jeeves,” I said, for though I had caught the words as they came out, the meaning had slipped past me like one of those greased eels making a dash for the open sea.
“In plain terms, sir, the speaker is asking whether it is more advantageous, in a social setting, to disregard women entirely while attempting to dominate or impress other men through vulgarity and competitive posturing, rather than attempting to attract women by means of artificially inflating one’s perceived desirability—particularly through the presentation of a false identity suggesting superior physical attractiveness and social value.”
I stared.
“In other words,” Jeeves continued smoothly, “it is a comparison between two strategies for attaining social status: one based upon humiliating rivals and cultivating masculine hierarchy, and the other based upon deceiving prospective romantic partners by misrepresenting one’s own attractiveness.”
He coughed politely.
“Neither approach, sir, would generally be considered conducive to the development of sincere human relationships.”

Worse, Clav got brutally frame-mogged by an Arizona State frat boy. And if that weren’t enough, the hope of a generation was arrested for trying to get into a bar with a fake ID, and ended up with two felony charges. O tempora! O mores!

Assuming he is literate, I only hope this young man can take advantage of his jailhouse tenure to do as another young visionary a century earlier did while incarcerated, and produce a world-changing manifesto:

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