I was all ready with my lines of strength, alpha male properties designed to make any man cringe and cower. I dished it out like a suave cowboy with his lasso- swift, accurate, bloody confident.

He did not flinch, he was not surprised.
He only looked at me in the eye, with the gaze of an individual who is a real man and has lived a thousand lives.

"You're human. I'm human. I punch you, you'd bleed."

I was too surprised to react. My chauvinism, my zealousness slapped me back in my own face.

"Well..." I said, trying to recuperate any pride I had left.

"You give what you get, don't you?"

I was silent.

"That's why you treat others the way you do, because that's how others treated you. How can you be so sure...?"

"Sure of what?"

"You're going to wake up the next morning?" he said.

There was nothing left to recover.

There was nothing there in the first place.

"You're a woman," he said, and for the first time, he looked away.

"You should have always been treated like one," he finished quietly.