Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from

Host: The evening hung over the city like a bruise — deep, violet, and tired. The skyline was bleeding light, the windows of tall buildings glowing like the last embers of a long, cold fire. In a dim apartment on the fifth floor, Jack and Jeeny sat by the window, the curtains half-drawn, a bottle of wine between them, and an old record turning lazily on the player.

Host: Outside, the city hummed — sirens, laughter, a distant argument carried by the wind. Inside, the room was thick with the scent of smoke and memory.

Host: On the table, a book lay open — H. L. Mencken, its pages yellowed, its words biting as ever. Jeeny’s finger rested on one sentence, her eyes fixed, her voice low but sharp as she read it aloud:

Jeeny: “Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.”

Host: She paused, the words still vibrating in the silence. Jack took a drag from his cigarette, the smoke curling upward, ghostlike, toward the ceiling.

Jack: (with a faint smirk) “Mencken again. Always knew how to wrap a knife in wit.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But at least he didn’t pretend it wasn’t a knife.”

Jack: “He was a cynic, Jeeny. He said everything was terrible — love, politics, marriage, even hope. You can’t take him as a philosopher of truth. He was just a man who enjoyed the sting.”

Jeeny: (leaning forward) “Maybe. But even a cynic can see what the world hides. You think he was wrong? That being a woman isn’t a terrible experience?”

Jack: (pausing) “It’s not a competition of suffering. Life is terrible for everyone.”

Jeeny: “You can say that, because your terrible comes with options. Mine comes with expectations.”

Host: Her voice had changed — no longer measured, but fierce, alive with something that had waited too long to be heard. The record crackled, a faint jazz trumpet weaving through the tension.

Jack: “You think men don’t know pressure? We’re built to carry weight — to work, to fight, to provide.”

Jeeny: “You’re praised for it. I’m punished for the same. When I speak, I’m emotional. When I lead, I’m cold. When I hesitate, I’m weak. And when I succeed, I’m lucky.”

Host: The light from the window caught her face, half in shadow, half in flame — the kind of light that reveals more than it forgives.

Jack: (quietly) “So you think being a woman is just... suffering?”

Jeeny: “No. It’s enduring. That’s the wisdom Mencken meant. We learn from pain, because it never leaves us. We carry it like a second skin, and somehow still smile through it.”

Host: She poured another glass of wine, the dark red liquid spilling like blood into the glass.

Jack: “But you make it sound like men don’t suffer at all.”

Jeeny: “You do. But your suffering is loud, public, glorified. Ours is quiet, invisible, dismissed. You break a bone, the world rushes to help. We break inside, and the world calls it drama.”

Host: The rain began — slow, delicate, a piano against the glass. The city lights blurred, turning every window into a tear-streaked mirror.

Jack: “You know, I’ve seen women like you — tough, intelligent, driven. But even you... you seem so tired of having to prove it.”

Jeeny: (smiling sadly) “Because we’re exhausted, Jack. Every generation of women fights the same battle in a new costume. Once it was votes, then wages, now it’s just respect — the simple right to be heard without translation.”

Jack: “But look how far you’ve come. You can vote, work, lead. Hell, half the companies I deal with are run by women.”

Jeeny: “And yet every one of them has a story of being talked over, undervalued, or judged for being too soft or too sharp. Power doesn’t erase memory. Every woman carries her mother’s silence in her bones.”

Host: A gust of wind shook the window, and for a moment, the room felt like a confession booth — two souls talking not to each other, but to the truth itself.

Jack: (after a pause) “You know... my mother used to say something similar. She’d tell me, ‘To be a woman is to survive being ignored.’ I never understood it. Not until now.”

Jeeny: “She was right. We learn to be seen without being noticed, to be heard only when we whisper gently enough not to offend.”

Host: The rain grew heavier, the sound steady, endless — like applause for a truth too painful to celebrate.

Jack: “So this ‘wisdom from experience’ — you think it’s something men can’t have?”

Jeeny: “You can have it. But you’re protected from earning it the same way. Society doesn’t make you bleed to prove your worth. Women are educated in pain from the moment we exist — by fear, by expectation, by history.”

Jack: “That sounds like resentment, not wisdom.”

Jeeny: “It’s both. Because to understand something deeply, you have to have been wounded by it.”

Host: Her eyes were wet now, but her voice was steady, clear, almost holy. Jack looked at her — really looked — as if seeing the architecture of an entire life built from patience, loss, and unspoken triumphs.

Jack: “You know what I think?”

Jeeny: “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

Jack: “I think Mencken was right — but he didn’t understand what he was saying. He saw the wisdom, but not the cost. He admired the fire, but not the burn.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Exactly. He called it a ‘terrible experience,’ but he didn’t see the beauty in the terrible — how we grow from it, how we turn our scars into strategy.”

Host: The record ended, the needle hissing in the groove like a serpent asleep. The rain slowed, the room dimmed, and the air was thick with understanding.

Jack: “So tell me, Jeeny — after all that, would you change it? Would you trade being a woman for being free of that pain?”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “No. Because without it, I wouldn’t see the world as clearly. That’s the terrible gift of being a woman — to feel everything, and still choose to love it anyway.”

Host: Her words hung in the room like incense, sacred, bitter, and true.

Jack: (nodding slowly) “Maybe that’s what real wisdom is — not what you know, but what you’ve had to endure to know it.”

Host: The rain stopped, and a thin moonlight slipped through the curtains, washing their faces in silver. The city outside breathed again, its noise returning — life, chaos, and all the terrible beauty of being human.

Host: And in that quiet, Jack and Jeeny sat, not as opposites, but as two witnesses of the same truth — that the terrible experience of being alive is what makes every wisdom, whether man’s or woman’s, truly real.