I have queried all reasonable candidates but no one will claim responsibility for the gesture. It therefore follows that I must have a stalker, but as it is a good time of year for stalkers, I’ll let it go for now. Who said romance was dead? mardi, le 17 fevrier
By 1992 I had been studying French for six years. I was never much good at it. We never read anything interesting at school. I had a Canadian friend, Francoise, who told me Marguerite Duras is “sexy.” So I bought a copy of the shortest of her books I could find, because my French is rather poor and I had long stopped enjoying translating. The book was L’Amant.
Translations are a lot like pasta. At first, because you don’t know anything, you’ll buy whatever’s on offer. Audiobook of Keith Harris reading Gunter Grass? Sure. Comic-book version of The Iliad? Hit me. But the more of a taste you get for the originals, the more demanding you become. You try your hand at a simple translation, armed with only the basic kitchen essentials, and the result is not bad. Your friends are impressed. To be honest, so are you. You invest a little more time and effort, and the returns are positive. Finally you go all out on the pasta maker-dash-Oxford Classical Grammar and turn into a one-woman translation-dash-noodle machine. You buy the supplementary books, join the appreciation societies, and watch the right programs. Then you realize how time-consuming your interest is and, worse, how much of a bore your friends think you are, going on about 00 graded semolina/Hesse in the original German like it mattered. You let it slide. Those who don’t either end up doing it professionally or soon find themselves the social equivalent of a hand grenade at any party.
But even when you give up on making your own pasta/translating from the original, you have just enough knowledge to ruin the thing you enjoyed in the first place. You’ll never enjoy “just” a bowl of pasta. “Just” a nice book to read. Neither of them tastes very good when it’s bland, cardboardy, off-the-shelf, sanitized-for-Western-Europe rubbish. So I bought L’Amant in French to see if I could read it. Also, it was the only version that did not advertise the film on the book cover. Nothing turns me off a paperback quite as quickly as the dreaded words “Now a Major Motion Picture.”
So I start reading it. I don’t like the book. It is not sexy. For a dozen or more pages, she writes about the heat in Asia, a silk dress, a hat. She is describing a girl who is like me-small for her age, burdened with a heavy mass of hair, delicate and odd. Francoise must have been lying. No one who is like me can be sexy. Perhaps in some passages I can see what is meant, though having to constantly refer to a French grammar to puzzle out the author’s finely crafted lines breaks up the meaning too much.
Then I am surprised. By the end of the book-which I will not give away, because to relate what happens (though the ending itself is not a surprise) will diminish it-I am in tears. Something that did not happen to me broke my heart. That was how I knew I was capable of the feeling.
From time to time I read it again. Often when I am feeling alone. The end, it always comes in such a rush, always the same effect. mercredi, le 18 fevrier
It used to be simple to buy faintly embarrassing items and hide them in the rest of my purchases. Of course, this is not so much a clever ruse as a socially accepted fiction. No shop assistant is fooled by an extra-strength deodorant hiding amongst the oranges-it’s just not nice commenting on a single sore thumb in an otherwise unremarkable cascade of groceries. And we all have biological functions.
On the other hand, put too many of these in at once, and you’re cruising for jokes. A witness to my usual haul of cosmetic goods might suspect I’m buying for a minimum of six postoperative transsexuals. So there is one chemist I go to for normal things and another for everything else. Example:
Typical shopping at Chemist 1: shampoo toothpaste bath salts cucumber gel mask loofah scrubber which might, at worst, be expected to stimulate a solicitous, “Ooh, a facial mask? Treating yourself?” As opposed to
Today’s shopping at Chemist 2: tampons vaginal pessary (for irritation) condoms sugarless breath mints lubricant individual postwaxing wipes self-tanning liquid razor blades potassium citrate granules (for cystitis) which was met with the vaguely disinterested “There are halitosis remedies on the far end of aisle 2, if you’re interested.”
Bitch. jeudi, le 19 fevrier
The builders have moved on to the vexing problem of my freezer. This is a surprise, not simply because I would not have ascribed to them the expertise in complex internal condensers, but because I had no idea there was anything wrong with the freezer at all.
“What’s that noise?” one of them asked yesterday afternoon, distracted from his detailed study of a cracked floor tile (which I hasten to add he was the cause of-an unfortunate incident involving the installation of a new dishwasher while one of my more voluptuous neighbors elected to begin her daily jog).
“I don’t know,” I said, looking up from the paper. “The freezer, most likely.” Its occasional whirry cricket-sound is something I have grown used to and find rather comforting.
He opened the freezer door. “For the love of-when was the last time you defrosted this?”
Defrosted? Don’t they do that themselves if left long enough, as with the decade-old wellies at the back of the closet which I fully expect to have sealed any holes if and when I need them again? “Not sure I ever have done.”
He surveyed the wasteland landscape of icicle-coated bread loaves and mummified bottles of vodka. “Do you realize the buildup in here keeps the vacuum sealing mechanism from working properly?”
Whazzat? “Pardon?”
“The door doesn’t close. That sound is the freezer constantly trying to replace the cold air seeping out.”
It would explain the draft in the kitchen, anyway. “I don’t suppose this means I get a new freezer?”
“It doesn’t.”
“And I don’t suppose defrosting freezers is part of your remit?”
“It isn’t.”
Pity the neglect of household appliances does not warrant getting new ones off the landlady. I really must look over the contract more carefully come time to renew. So while the builder looked on during his break, sipping tea and enjoying the many and varied delights of one of the country’s finer tabloid dailies, I attacked the ice storm with hands swaddled in tea towels, vegetable knife at the ready, like some intrepid polar explorer or demented suburban cannibal-take your (ahem) pick. And the tile still hasn’t been repaired, either. vendredi, le 20 fevrier
A2 of the latex love, so happy in his newfound fetish, is extremely concerned about my romantic well-being. I do my best not to comment that if the alternative to being single is smelling like an explosion in a rubber factory, I’ll pass, thank you.
We met for a cup of coffee and to check out the talent in town. Or rather, he eyed the talent as I did my best to deflect the inevitable matchmaking.
“Over my left shoulder,” A2 hissed, and I looked to see who lay beyond. “No, don’t look straight at him. Just have a quick look.”
What was this, junior school? Do You Want to Kiss Me-Tick Yes or No. “You’re starting to sound like my mother,” I sniffed. “Anyway, too short.”
“How do you know? He’s sitting down.”
“Oh, believe me, I know.” Button-down blue cotton shirt, tucked into too-high trouser waist. “He probably has all the Patrick O’Brian novels too.”
“You have to be kidding.” A2 clearly cannot see the forest for the rubber trees. “You can’t reject someone on taste-no, not even on taste, on your assumption of their taste.”
“Can do, will do, done.”
Some minutes later as we picked at a shared pain au chocolat, he spotted another likely suitor. “On your left. Tall. Reading.”