Cockblocking

Frozen turkeys have no gender, all the parts of a living turkey that determine its sex having been long since removed. This goes double if you've been cooked and eaten.

So I don't know, really, whether the animal whose body became me was a turkey cock, or a turkey - um, hen. Nonetheless, as a direct (if spiritual) descendent of a fowl, I feel myself qualified to digress at some length on the phenomenon of cockblocking.

You may or may not be familiar with the term (though, if you've arrived here by googling it, you probably are). Generally speaking, to cockblock someone is to act in a manner that prevents that someone from getting laid. So, for example, a girl with a lot of gay male friends can be cockblocked if she goes out with one for a nice dinner and dancing: other men, who might be interested in approaching her, assume that she's on a date.

Similarly, women can cockblock their gay male friends. The term can even be used by a straight man to describe the effect of hanging around with a platonic female friend. I don't think it's generally used among lesbians, since in that case cocks aren't involved at all. But I could be wrong. I'm posting from the big happy freezer in the sky, okay? I might be a little out of touch.

But the most insidious form of cockblocking comes when the cockblocked person - let's say a woman - has feelings for the cockblocker. She's in love with him. He might or might not have similar feelings for her, but for whatever reason, he's not prepared to act on them, if he does. But he likes her and enjoys her; she's smart, she's pretty, she's funny, she's pleasant to look at and to be with, especially as she's so anxious to please him. He knows what her feelings are and enjoys those, too. So he encourages her - not too much, perhaps, but just enough, here and there, to ensure that her feelings don't fade, that she'll still hang on, hoping for him, hoping for more, wanting to be loved in return. They spend plenty of time together. She's usually very flirtatious, and he enjoys flirting back. But there's a clear line he's drawn that she can't cross; she can't get too close to him. She doesn't know how he feels about her.

Oh, he doesn't mean badly. He probably doesn't have a lot of experience with women, and discovering that this one has fallen head over heels for him is heady, but a bit intimidating. He's not a bad person by any means - if he were, why would a smart girl like her think he's so wonderful? But he's cockblocking the hell out her, because as long as she's hung up on him, she can't even think about anybody else.

I watch them, bemused, from the great joyful freezer in the sky. I pity them both. Heaven is knowing you're lucky you don't have any of those complicated gendery bits.