I was lunching with a casual acquaintance yesterday, and he repeated this phrase three times. Unbidden. I hadn’t asked him whether his fourteen year old goes to parties- no, merely in response to a bland inquiry “how are the kids”, he had responded, repetitively and slightly hysterically, that his daughter never goes to parties. Never ever.

Nor is he the only one. I have heard this same assurance over and over, ever since Reteah Parsons killed herself, now that I come to think of it. I wonder why?

There was a time, as Axl would say, when parents boasted of the popularity and social success of their daughter. Not too long ago either. Parents encouraged an active social life for their children.Educational and academic aspirations aside, who did not want to see their children beseiged by calls, invites, having fun and being part of a vibrant circle of friends? Not any more.  ”My daughter is sooo smart, she would get such good grades, if only her friends would let her study! I swear, every night, on the phone,  come on out, let’s go there, here, and I think, well, they’re only young once, let them have their fun while they can…” It was a form of humble brag. We are old and uncool and parent-ish, but let our young lovely children enjoy their youth, savour the few years they have of being carefree, footloose and fancy-free.  Not any more, Gentle Reader. Nowadays, parents brag the opposite: “She’s so quiet! She never goes out! Oh yes, she has a couple of close friends, and all they do is stay indoors and read! She will never get gang-raped and bullied to the point  she commits suicide”. They never say the last part, of course, but it’s out there, loud and screamed.

Anyway. As I covertly eyed the fine specimens of Haligonian manhood lounging in the jacuzzi (whirlpool to North Americans) this afternoon, my third “mother’s eye” trained on the Golden Boy and Princess splashing about in the kiddie pool, I noticed that Haligionans had done it once again, rewriting the way fashion operates.

Man jewelry. A dude opposite me was wearing an extremely feminine narrow gold chain with a small squiggly pendant, which clashed unappetizing with his tatooed musculature.  Another guy was wearing a silver/steel thumb ring, and so many nipple-rings that it was painful just to glance at them. And yet a third -I can’t remember- there was definitely something there, but I got distracted by the squiggly gold pendant (why?) and the wealth of nipple-rings, so it wasn’t as eye-catching, I suppose. Square rings? Chains? Something. Suffice it to say, the jewelry of the three men in the whirlpool was far more, and far more in-your-face, than those of the ladies. Ch-ch-ch-changes, as Bowie would say.

I though of some meeting I had to attend, a few weeks ago. The Chairman, an exceedingly professional man ( a lawyer, actually) who yet sported a grey curly ponytail, was wearing a very decorative multi-coloured beaded bracelet, flashing charmingly amongst his long grey wrist-hair.

So, there you have it. Times, they are a-changing. Whereas yesteryear your average manly man would rather be caught dead than wearing anything other than the aforementioned gold band, now he is proudly suspending all sorts of bizarre, if not downright weird things from all parts of his body, nary a care in the world. Progress. Equality.

Tonight will be a first for me, Gentle Reader, and I cannot say I am not excited.

I am going out by myself, by myself, to watch a live music show at the Seahorse Tavern.

The Seahorse Tavern.

By myself.

Can girls go out to restaurants and bar and places alone, like the menz do? This is a question which has haunted me as I sat through a series of -well, not unpleasant exactly, but tedious? unnecessary? why-do-I-have-to-speak-to-these-people? evenings and events over the past couple of years, where I was only with other people for the sake of not being by myself, not because I had any true sense of friendship or camaraderie with my companions. I remember at one of these evenings, I was at Casino Nova Scotia watching a live music act, and my companion was texting or tweeting. I looked around, and saw a young lady sitting by herself, a young lady in glasses and long flowery skirt. I almost screamed with relief- “Look! women can go out by themselves too!” My companion shrugged, “I don’t see why not, if you’re comfortable with it.”

I look at the younger generation of bright spunky females, who seem to have no problem hitting bars and cafes and concerts by themselves. Is my mental inhibition against going out by myself merely a generational thing? I remember the last time I went to see this particular band, my companion got drunk, tried to punch someone, and we had to run away. How could I be less safe if I had been by myself?

On that note, and as brainwashed as we are by Stranger Danger, which is after all the main reason why we seek companions to Go Out with in first place, it is fairly well-established that we are more at risk of harm and danger from people we know, rather than strangers. My own experience bears this out. The people closest to me have made me weep, have made me bleed, have made me tremble with misery and hate and rage. Strangers have been polite, courteous, helpful, friendly, complimentary. I honestly can say that I have been fortunate enough never to have a really bad experience with strangers – with loved ones? Not so much.

All these horrible, horrible things which happen to women, constantly, all the time, everywhere. Many of them, if not most of them, are committed by people they knew- their classmates, their friend’s dad, their doctor, their lovers. On the general scale of things, and barring freak accidents, I cannot see that any harm can come to me from the random strangers who will be at the Seahorse Tavern tonight. We will be united by our love of classic rock music. If someone talks unnecessarily to me, I can simply get up and move away. I could not do that with a “friend”, I would have to listen with a tight polite smile.

So, until a time when I can actually find friends and companions who enjoy the same music as I do, and whose company is mutually agreeable, I have decided to go it my way. Alone.

Having said that, you know where to send the police if you don’t hear from me

We traveled there in the summer of 2002, when I was four or five months pregnant with the Princess, still barely showing, my arms and chest still perfectly slim. I got home one afternoon from work, and screamed that I wanted to leave Tehran and travel somewhere cool, that I was dying from heat, and I refuse to set foot in shomal, the Caspian coastline which my family reveres as the only acceptable vacationing spot.

So we went to the train station downtown Tehran, got into a private “coupe” (remember the Murder on the Orient Express? Those trains are still running in Iran) bound for Tabriz, a place we knew from our geography classes would be cool and refreshing.

A night later, we stepped out, nowhere to go, no plans, in a city where we did not know the language. A taxi-driver picked us up, and explained to us kindly that we needed to go to Uroumieh, and that Tabriz had nothing for us. He drove into the ferry crossing the Salt Lake which divides Tabriz from Uroumieh, and set us down by a small motel right on the edge of the lake.

The lake was white and crusty with salted. We floated, the Princess and I, on the strange water.  We had cut cucumber in the boat, for our eyes when the salt got in them.

The motel opened on a concrete parking lot. We sighed over the lack of a swimming pool, saying ten thousand times, if this had been in Antalya…

Another taxi-driver told us the lake had a unique species of an amazing shrimp, but the Germans had harvested all of them.

More taxi-drivers took us to a green village up by a rushing river, Ban? Bon? where we had the most amazing kebabs in the whole wide world. We saw some archaeological sites, but we didn’t know enough to be impressed.

We visited Tabriz, which was as hot and crowded as the first taxi-driver had told us it would, and bought ultra-sharp knives in the bazaar, and marveled at the carpets, and ate lots more fantastic kebabs, and returned to Uroumieh.

On the last day, we received a phone call from our neighbour, who told us we had received a package from the Embassy of Canada. We shrieked with delight, we knew our immigration papers were coming through, though we were worried about medical exams and the Princess still inside me.

We took the train back to Tehran, barely able to contain our excitement. As usual after a sojourn in the provinces, the sharp smoky air of Tehran delighted me.

I’ve never been to Uroumieh or Tabriz since,

Perhaps the Gentle Reader, not having spent their childhood in the company of Pooh Bear and his motley crew, is not familiar with this meal?  Regardless, it is, I have discovered , the most important meal of the day, the one which makes or breaks the rest of your day.

Elevenses are of particular importance for those who are slaves to the 9-5 routine. No matter what I have for breakfast in the early hours, by 11 o’clock, my stomach feels as if a gaping chasm has opened inside, populated by monsters growling so loudly that I am sure anybody standing within 10 metres of me can hear. The kind of hunger I feel at 11 o’clock, I simply do not have at later hours, no matter how late I have dinner. I may feel nauseous, or simply irritable and upset if my other  meals are delayed, but that sheer pulsating hunger is something I only get at 11 o’clock, on the dot.

Hence the importance of elevenses. For the easy and indeed the first reaction is to toss in something sweet and starchy to those growling monsters. But who can deal with the accompanying guilt?  We cannot simply swap one set of monsters for another. My health! My figure! Fat! Belly! Sugar! As soon as the last bite of whatever delicious stuff has gone down, these ugly thoughts rear their ugly heads, effectively destroying the pleasure I had from guzzling.

Healthy snacks, then, are indicated. It requires dedicated, ferocious shopping skills to ensure you have healthy snacks at hand, for yourself and your children, but it can be done. But what healthy snacks? Nuts, fruit, yogurt? Nuts on an empty growling stomach gives me a belly-ache, fruit doesn’t really appease the hunger-pangs, indeed, may make it worse, ditto yogurt. Last week I had a bowl of stale popcorn, and was writhing in pain by 1 pm.

It is a conundrum, one I trust you share, Gentle Reader. Often enough, I persuade myself to have nothing, and wait for lunch, thus spending the hour between 11 to 12 obsessing over being hungry and food. I am waiting for ingenious entrepreneurs to find and market the perfect food for elevenses, and until then, I will suffer in silence.

He walked a couple of metres away from the wigwam, but he did not want to go too far from the panties. They were delicate, lacy and transparent and he could not imagine they belonged to the squaw. He finally found a stop between two Canadian girls and set to work” (Houllebecq, Atomised, p. 116-17).

Fans may claim that M. Houellebecq is actually criticizing Bruno’s worldview, adequately displayed in the couple of paragraphs above; I give him more credit and consider the the writing a tad too heartfelt and genuine, failing to see any authorial disapproval of the blatant racism, sexism, and all-round general disgusting awfulness. Prose which has been hailed as, hmm, just a choose a few: “Sheer brilliance… totally mesmerising, energising, infuriating and moving…” Wrong on all counts, I would say, except the infuriating part- infuriating because why should such yucky claptrap earn these accolades? The whole book is generally about how corrupt and evil society has become, because modernisation, because women are having a lot of sex, but with whom they choose, and privileged, arrogant, unpleasant, selfish, useless men like Bruno are left out.

I am no prude, I delight in the funny, self-aware sex scenes of Philip Roth (who is routinely, and in my opinion, unfairly called a misogynist), who can forget the poor piece of liver upon which the young Portnoy unleashed his adolescent masturbatory fury? Or the sad, desperately poetic and desperately humorous sex in John Updike’s books? or Milan Kundera’s political, strategic sex? or the liberating sex of Marilyn French’s characters? But Atomised simply does not make the bar- and it isn’t even as full of sex as promised- a few scattered cocks and tits, gentle author, do not a sex scene make.

Earlier in the book, Bruno is getting off watching a bunch of young girls showering together in an outdoor shower at a campsite. The sheer coldness he shows towards the objects of his desire is chilling indeed, as is his obsession with the “pussy hair”. Contrast this with a similar scene in Iris Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil. The same scene- a group of young girls showering by the outdoor baths of Enniston, but with what love and tenderness does the incomparable Iris draw us in! The girls come alive, laughing and chattering, each a beautiful Aphrodite in her own right. There is sexualisation, to be sure, but it is a warm, joyful, glad sexualisation, not beheld in the eye of a swinish brute, but a glorious delight in the female body for it’s own sake.

You can find Atomised, also translated as The Elementary Particle  in various “top 100 books to read”, which is a sad state of affairs indeed. Gentle Reader, do not be fooled. Seek out Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, the  goddesses of contemporary British literature, or Joseph Heller, John Updike, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and their ilk to explore the ills of contemporary society in a way which will make you gasp with pleasure and sadness, without making you hate everybody-especially women- especially women who have pussies. Leave this pretentious oafish hateful prick to his own worthless musings.

At 5:45, The Transporter is trying to park outside the Taek Won Do class. Despite the consummate driving skills, she never quite picked up the art of parking, and she rear-bumps gently the car behind her, thankfully empty. A flush of humiliation and annoyance floods her face as another car- a taxi-driver- honks at her parking skills.

5:48, she is safely sitting rinkside, listening to the Taek Won Do shrieks again. 5:51, she espies the young boy walking towards the parents’ seat, his face full of fear and confusion, about to burst in tears, for he cannot see The Transporter. Her heart pounds with rage at the universe for so filling her child with misery as she calls out to him and draws him to her arms.

Now the dilemma- drive straight to Dalplex to wait for the young girl? Or go home -located half way between the Taek Won Do and Dalplex, hang about for twenty minutes, and then drive to pick up the young girl? The Transporter ponders for a few seconds, but her bursting bladder makes up her mind- she needs to pee. So she drives home.

The young boy, having divested himself of his shoes and pants, is reluctant to put them on after 15 minutes to get back in the car. But the struggle is short-lived. 6:35, back on the street, the rush hour subsided. 6:45, outside Dalplex. 7:00 pm, back home, safely with the two children. The Transporter grimaces grimly, and sets to prepare supper.

Fortunately, Gentle Reader, I do not suffer much temptation for buying these nauseating lying products, for I really cannot see the point of them – they are not useful, you can’t show them off, you can’t eat them- you can only, what, smell them? And even that lasts only as long as your bath does, or not even as long as. So while I struggle on a daily basis against buying clothes! makeup! food! treats! drinks! and so on, I have been able to walk indifferently  past the smelly aisle of bathroom products, my ears plugged against their siren song, no consumer lust boiling in my heart.  I do believe the last time I added anything (except salt, after some strenuous exercise session) to my bathwater was when I was seven or eight, and “bubble baths” where the fun item of the day.

But yet, but yet. Capitalism is stronger than you or I, and the great merchants of bathing products, upset at seeing one potential consumer roaming the aisles of her local supermarket apparently free and impervious to the lure of the bathing section, were working feverishly, night and day, to come up with something to entice me.

And they succeeded. Gentle Reader, I give you Goat’s Milk Bathing powder:

Excuse the blur- I hope you can still make out the picture of the goat?

Yes, the goat got me. Where the extracts of hyacinths from Mars and pearls from the Dead Sea failed to persuade me to reach for my poor abused wallet, this stupid goat caught me. Partly because I thought the children would have such a good laugh at the goat. Ah- the mothering instinct- such a traitor when it comes to shopping. (and careers, and relationships, and going out with friends, and inviting people over, and doing yoga, and having a good night’s sleep, and going for a walk).

Anyway, they did not find the goat funny. The goat merely freaked them out.

“So- does this change the bathwater to goat milk? Like rich people?” asked the Princess. For indeed, the label claims that it is made out of pure goat milk protein, which is, like, the best thing ever for your skin.

The powder, I can report with confidence, did nothing to my bathwater. It didn’t smell of anything much, didn’t turn it to milk, didn’t give me “a relaxing spa experience”. I might as well have shaken a capful of nothing in the bathtub.

And so. I might have slipped with The Goat, but return to my previous resolution, stronger than ever. Not a cent shall I ever, ever spend on bathing products. I will be the winner of the not-buying-bathing-products-contest.

Basically, Julia is chastising her sisters for not participating fully and properly  in the events she has organized for their student society. Now I can see exactly where Julia’s rage and anger is coming come, trivial as it may seem, since I have also joined a student society (not a “sorority”, but whatevs), and I have also come to realise, like Julia, that there is only one thing which characterizes the student body at large: apathy. Until you “LITERALLY FUCKING” scream at them, they will not do anything, they will not show up where they are supposed to, or they will show up late and then not do what they were told to do, or they will lose the way, and text five days later, or not at all.  In fact, the president of my society had sent out an e-mail EXACTLY LIKE Julia’s out only last week, basically screaming at the student reps to just FUCKING SHOW UP and do what they had signed up for. Only this being Canada, she did not say “FUCKING” like Julia, instead, using pompous phrases like “The Board is exceedingly disappointed at the low student turn out and would like to remind you that funding for these activities is contingent on the budget blah blah blah”. Personally, I prefer Julia’s, because even I fell asleep half-way through reading our president’s disappointed missive. Whereas Julia’s e-mail was such fun to read that I actually went back the next day and reread it just to smirk and snicker a bit.

I am not actually critiquing student politics here -my point is that even though I personally do not know anybody as crazy as Julia, (I think), and  indeed, if I ever come across anybody displaying a tenth of her mad rage irl, I will give them such a wide berth that it will be as if I have put on an invisibility cloak, yet these people are immensely fun to read about. As Milton found out when creating the character of Satan. Sane people=boring, people insane with rage over trivial things like Julia=fun. To read about, not to be with. The distinction is important, Gentle Reader. I  would be happy to read a Julia e-mail everyday, I would not be so happy to actually know her or exchange two words with her.