How to be Single is the first novel of "Sex and the City" writer Liz Tuccillo, and it reads like a season of "Sex and the City". The ladies are slightly older this time, and they include Julie, a bored PR rep for a publishing company; Gloria, an angry recently abandoned mother of two; Serena, a gentle vegetarian chef; Ruby, a depressive mourning her cat; and Alice, a Legal Aid lawyer who has temporarily abandoned her calling to search for a mate, full-time.
All these women, with the exception of ascetic Serena, are desperate for a boyfriend. Desperate. Go out, hit on any man that moves, get drunk, dance topless on a bar desperate. End up in a hospital emergency room desperate. And it is in an emergency room where narrator Julie overhears elegant Frenchwomen slagging them off, en francais, for being typical American women, with no orgueil, pride.
Julie decides soon after to go around the world to find out how other women are Single. The novel flashes back and forth between Julie's round-the-world adventures and her friends' adventures back in New York City. As in "Sex and the City", there is a certain touristy obsession with France and, of course, sex. Because of the sexual content, in a sex club in France, in Julie's one-afternoon-stand with a near-stranger in Rio, and in various hiding places around Serena's ashram, this book is not suitable for unmarried readers and possibly not for married readers either, depending on the readers' disposition. If you're going to be haunted by explicit images of sweaty encounters with Brazilians who speak very little English, stay away. Oh, and given that both Serena and her swami lover have taken vows of celibacy, if you get crushes on priests and seminarians, most definitely you should not read this book.
PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD
For the most part, the women behave in self-defeating and yet jaw-droppingly selfish ways, which seem to be celebrated by the book and indeed the book has no redeeming messages in the first 200 pages, except the (French) idea of not showing your hurt and disappointment when a man loses interest in you. The book is absolutely obsessed with status, glamour and wealth. If the narrator speaks to a man, there is a good chance he owns an awful lot of real estate, has huge sums of money in his bank account, and is ready to lavish much expensive treats on whichever woman temporarily catches his eye.
It is interesting that the narrator (or author) can see the grasping nature of Chinese playgirls, but not her own obsession with the money and status of people she meets. When Julie's adventures take her to India, it should come to no surprise that the woman who picks her up at the airport is of the Brahman caste. The caste system makes Julie extremely uncomfortable despite the fact that she she has been partying with French, Italian, and Australian millionaire playboys, and her reaction to Balinese people trying to make a living through white tourists was, ultimately, to shout at them. The only poor men in the book, the Brazilians and the Balinese, are portrayed as good only for sex and incapable of fidelity.
However, there are glimmers of insight into how to be Single in ways that ordinary Christian women might recognize. Desperate Ruby turns again to the animal shelter for love, and becomes a volunteer, "The Sister Mary Prejean" of animals, being the last loving fact cats and dogs see before they are put down. In Mumbai, Julie tries to assuage her guilt and pangs of a broken heart though joining two British Indian women in giving beggar children one happy day at a fair. Sadly, these volunteer jobs are short-lived. Much more fruitful are encounters with close-knit families.
It is salutary to see that the sins of the women in the first half of the book are well and truly punished by the second half. Horrible Georgia starts to actually care about her children when her husband very justifiably tries to wrest custody from her angry, neglectful self. Adulterous Julie has a humiliating showdown with her French lover's wife. Ruby's seven thousand dollar experiments with self-insemination brings back flashbacks of her mother's misery as a poor single mother. Failed celibate Serena discovers that her swami lover has been sleeping with a whole lot of other women, women who don't mind sharing him. Alice fakes love for months in her attempts to settle and JUST GET MARRIED. Only by hitting absolute bottom do these women seem to get a grip on the fact that sex and/or selfishness and/or designer babies do not in themselves bring happiness.
But what does bring happiness? The narrator concludes, after all the women meet up for a therapeutic cry in the therapeutic hot springs of Iceland, that happiness can be found by LOVING YOURSELF. She more accurately thinks it can be found by letting go of one's failed dreams and being open to a different future. She might also have said that one should stop looking for happiness in the arms of men, and look for it in one's day-to-day activities, in one's friends and, especially, in one's family--either one's own or in a family one serves. Julie's trip to India, and ringside seat to contemporary Indian arranged marriages (of the highly-educated Brahmin caste), shines a light on how impoverished Americans (and other Westerners) have become by their rejection of the wider, multi-generational family, particularly their new assumption that decisions about sex and marriage have nothing to do with their families.
But completely missing from this book is any acknowledgement whatsoever of the God of Abraham. The only official religion portrayed in the book is Hinduism, I suppose because the author sees it as so sex-positive, except in the American branch to which Serena belongs. You would not know, from this book, that the Incarnation ever happened, or that there is a rich Western philosophy behind courtship, marriage, family and, indeed, Single life, from which we have profited for centuries.
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Yulia is Missing
Her name is Yulia Solodyankina, and she was born in Moscow. She was last seen leaving "The Wee Red Bar" in Lauriston Place in Edinburgh on Thursday June 6 after a show, and she was last heard from when she sent a text to a friend on Friday June 7.
Yulia is a physics student. She is also a member of a dance troupe called Anansi. Anansi performs as part of the Beltane Fire Festivals and at other events around Edinburgh. If you have seen her on or since June 6, or have any clue to her whereabouts, please contact Scottish police at 44 ( 0) 131 311 3131.
Yulia's friends have set up a Facebook page to get the word out. Here it is. The Scotsman piece ends with a good description of her.
I have not met Yulia myself, although I see that she is at least a Facebook friend of one of my Edinburgh Uni friends. I have met many foreign students studying at Edinburgh University, and many of them have been involved in dance performances around town. So I find this all very close to home in more ways than one and quite scary and sad.
"How to Be Single" (Review, Part I)
Single women, feeling like a minority, naturally look for guides to being Single. Catholics are extremely fortunate in that our tradition has always had places of honour for permanently unmarried people. We can read about any number of unmarried martyrs and other saints from every era. Of course, most of the unmarried female saints were nuns. But the earliest female virgin martyrs were not nuns. St. Catherine of Siena was not a nun. St. Edith Stein became a nun comparatively late in life. And, anyway, I don't think we should discount good and holy nuns as guides to the Single Life, anymore than we should discount good and holy priests as guides to the Single Life.
The biggest difference between a Catholic Single woman and a nun is that the Catholic Single woman usually wants to get married. That is where the nun cannot help you. The nun has made a firm decision to take herself off the marriage market and to take a heavenly Spouse instead of an earthly Spouse and to have spiritual children instead of earthly children. So although a nun friend can give you a lot of counsel and comfort--and prove in her own person that women can have a good, fulfilling life without being married--she can't say "Oh me, too" in your suffering over not having a man and children.
So to the secular world you go, and the biggest influence on the lives of Single women in the English-speaking world when I was over 30 and Single was probably the TV show "Sex and the City." And the premise of "Sex and the City"--"From now on, why don't we just have sex like men?"--was a moral disaster for the Single women of the world.
I have a love-hate relationship with SATC because I really enjoyed the interactions between Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. I didn't like the sex stuff--I hit the fast-forward button--but I like the women's interactions, their clubs, their clothes and their amazingly well-paid, fulfilling careers. Every episode of SATC was like a fairy tale, a fairy tale of New York. Freelance writers complained about how unlikely it was that Carrie could afford her apartment, not to mention all those high-priced shoes, but most women swallowed their disbelief and just watched. Many of them watched, I am absolutely sure, for clues about how to be Single, and SATC said the way to be Single was to have friends, buy a lot of stuff and sleep with anything that moved.
SATC told a lot of lies about life. Let's just put it that way. But I didn't feel ashamed for watching it until I found myself watching it with never-married Catholic girls, in particular one who was barely 20. Then I felt ashamed. However, I am not ashamed to say that I loved the first spin-off: a book by two of the show's writers, Greg Behrendt and Liz Truccilo . It is called He's Just Not That Into You, and it is simply the most sensible book about modern men and their courtship habits I have ever read.
In this book, Greg tells his readers how it is, and Liz pipes in and the end of every chapter to say what she thinks. She often says she doesn't like what Greg is saying, which provides a little consensus to the women reading who also don't like what Greg is saying. What Greg is saying is the unvarnished truth, and the unvarnished truth hurts. (NB Greg is not saying the whole truth, however. He does not allow for the high premium many/most religious men place on chastity.)
So fond am I of He's Just Not That Into You that I recently bought Liz Tuccillo's How to be Single (for £1 in a charity shop). I thought it might provide me with useful tips to pass on to you but--alas. After a somewhat promising start--the author has an epiphany when her Single friends hit bottom--it has turned into "Sex and the City". It is a fantasy/romance/sex novel. I cannot recommend it to unmarried readers, and even married readers may want to give it a miss.
This review will be in two parts mostly because I am only at page 218 and have almost another 200 pages of shallow shenanigans to go. The book does not deserve two whole blog posts, for it has very little literary merit, but it certainly gives me a lot to complain about. It also gives me a chance to point out what is wrong with the fantasy world Liz Truccilo has helped create through SATC.
Narrator Julie is a PR agent for a publishing firm in New York. So far so glamourous. Hating her job, she convinces her nasty boss to give her an advance for a book on "How to be Single." She sells all her belongings and buys "the airline version of a Eurail Pass for the entire world." So far she has gone to Paris, Rome, Rio and Sydney, and is now (p 220) on her way to Bali. The idea is that she is going to interview the Single women of the world. It's Eat, Pray, Love with less food and more sex. So far the Pray part is provided by a gal pal back home in New York who becomes a swami.
Julie makes Single friends along the way or is joined by her New York friends who just happen to have the time and the money to fly out from time to time. Divorced Georgia meets her in Rio. About-to-Settle Alice appears in Sydney. It's all so ridiculous. Georgia hires a male prostitute and, feeling lonely, Julie makes a booty call to a guy she met at a club. Paulo provides the same service as Georgia's male prostitute, only he doesn't speak English and doesn't charge $500.
Interestingly, when Julie earlier succumbed to the advances of a married Frenchman (I believe Liz has been reading Nancy Mitford), she doesn't get all explicit about it. But her encounter with the Brazilian is described in pornographic detail. Does Liz think Europeans are for romance and Latin American for sex? Eh? Australians, who apparently can't even see women their own age, are apparently for despising, and Julie never as much as gets hit on in Australia.
The event that set Julie off on her trip in the first place was an encounter with some Frenchwomen in a hospital waiting-room. Julie took crying, divorcing Georgia out for a girls' night with two other Single friends. The object of the girls' night was to meet men. They meet men. Unfortunately, they get really drunk along the way and some of them end up dancing topless in a bar and get into a fight and get thrown out of the club, just as the weakest of their number throws up: alcohol poisoning. The ladies do not look very glam in the hospital, and the snooty Frenchwomen look them up and down and say stuff about them the narrator partly understands.
They looked at each other and spoke in French. It was something like, 'American woman, have no [something]. Where are their mothers? Did they not teach them [something]?'
I understood everything but that one word. Damn that I didn't keep up with my French studies. Oh, **** it.
'Excuse me, what does orgueil mean?' I asked, a little confrontationally.
The one in the long coat looked me straight in the eye and said 'Pride. You American women have no pride.'
Although it hurt to type that, I single it out because the Frenchwoman certainly speaks the truth about these American women. They have no pride. But it's really weird. On the one hand, they are all beautiful (the narrator tells us), talented, extraordinary, but on the other hand they are incontinent and promiscuous and think they are nothing because they cannot get or stay married. (Georgia has children and, 221 page later, I haven't seen them. They are simply not important. They do not seem to provide Georgia with as much meaning or comfort as an hour with a Brazilian male prostitute.)
France was a BIG FAT DEAL in "Sex and the City", so I am not surprised Julie decides the French have the answer to the secrets of Single life and jets off to Paris first. Here, very quickly, are the lessons Julie has "learned" so far:
Paris: Frenchmen cheat on their wives, but it's okay and really sophisticated and stuff if the wife said it was okay and has her own affairs. Frenchwomen have so much dignity, they say nothing when abandoned by their lovers. They smile and carry on. Paris is beautiful.
Rome: Italian men are ruled by their passions and may threaten suicide if rejected. Most Italian women slap Italian men because Italian men make them so crazy. Rome is beautiful.
Rio: Brazilian men cheat so much, Brazilian women just assume their husbands go to prostitutes. Brazilian women have great bodies and will do anything to get them and women with cellulite should not bother going to the beach. Such women still have a chance of getting a one-night-stand, though, as Rio is all about sex. And beautiful.
Sydney: There are not a lot of Australian men, and the unmarried ones can't see women who are over 35. They honestly think they don't exist. There isn't much sex in Australia and although rich (all the men Julie meets in her travels are filthy rich) the men aren't that good-looking. Sydney Harbour, however, is beautiful.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a much better and shorter review. Today I had to vent. Incidentally, all the women in this book under the age of grandmother are incredibly beautiful, and all the men not in Rio are incredibly rich. The only piece of common sense in the whole darn thing is the idea that you should not complain, cry and carry on in public or to him when your boyfriend loses interest and chases after some other woman. There really is no point, and part of him will be mad that you gave him up with a murmur of protest. It might bug him for years, as I know for a fact. Ah ha ha ha!
Update: Heroine is amazed that her married lover has rented such an expensive Balinese villa for their love nest. I am beginning to see why men worry so much about women's purported love for money. The biggest aphrodisiac in this book is money. Money, money, money, money. I wonder if all paperback romance novels have this obsession with the money of men?
The biggest difference between a Catholic Single woman and a nun is that the Catholic Single woman usually wants to get married. That is where the nun cannot help you. The nun has made a firm decision to take herself off the marriage market and to take a heavenly Spouse instead of an earthly Spouse and to have spiritual children instead of earthly children. So although a nun friend can give you a lot of counsel and comfort--and prove in her own person that women can have a good, fulfilling life without being married--she can't say "Oh me, too" in your suffering over not having a man and children.
So to the secular world you go, and the biggest influence on the lives of Single women in the English-speaking world when I was over 30 and Single was probably the TV show "Sex and the City." And the premise of "Sex and the City"--"From now on, why don't we just have sex like men?"--was a moral disaster for the Single women of the world.
I have a love-hate relationship with SATC because I really enjoyed the interactions between Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. I didn't like the sex stuff--I hit the fast-forward button--but I like the women's interactions, their clubs, their clothes and their amazingly well-paid, fulfilling careers. Every episode of SATC was like a fairy tale, a fairy tale of New York. Freelance writers complained about how unlikely it was that Carrie could afford her apartment, not to mention all those high-priced shoes, but most women swallowed their disbelief and just watched. Many of them watched, I am absolutely sure, for clues about how to be Single, and SATC said the way to be Single was to have friends, buy a lot of stuff and sleep with anything that moved.
SATC told a lot of lies about life. Let's just put it that way. But I didn't feel ashamed for watching it until I found myself watching it with never-married Catholic girls, in particular one who was barely 20. Then I felt ashamed. However, I am not ashamed to say that I loved the first spin-off: a book by two of the show's writers, Greg Behrendt and Liz Truccilo . It is called He's Just Not That Into You, and it is simply the most sensible book about modern men and their courtship habits I have ever read.
In this book, Greg tells his readers how it is, and Liz pipes in and the end of every chapter to say what she thinks. She often says she doesn't like what Greg is saying, which provides a little consensus to the women reading who also don't like what Greg is saying. What Greg is saying is the unvarnished truth, and the unvarnished truth hurts. (NB Greg is not saying the whole truth, however. He does not allow for the high premium many/most religious men place on chastity.)
So fond am I of He's Just Not That Into You that I recently bought Liz Tuccillo's How to be Single (for £1 in a charity shop). I thought it might provide me with useful tips to pass on to you but--alas. After a somewhat promising start--the author has an epiphany when her Single friends hit bottom--it has turned into "Sex and the City". It is a fantasy/romance/sex novel. I cannot recommend it to unmarried readers, and even married readers may want to give it a miss.
This review will be in two parts mostly because I am only at page 218 and have almost another 200 pages of shallow shenanigans to go. The book does not deserve two whole blog posts, for it has very little literary merit, but it certainly gives me a lot to complain about. It also gives me a chance to point out what is wrong with the fantasy world Liz Truccilo has helped create through SATC.
Narrator Julie is a PR agent for a publishing firm in New York. So far so glamourous. Hating her job, she convinces her nasty boss to give her an advance for a book on "How to be Single." She sells all her belongings and buys "the airline version of a Eurail Pass for the entire world." So far she has gone to Paris, Rome, Rio and Sydney, and is now (p 220) on her way to Bali. The idea is that she is going to interview the Single women of the world. It's Eat, Pray, Love with less food and more sex. So far the Pray part is provided by a gal pal back home in New York who becomes a swami.
Julie makes Single friends along the way or is joined by her New York friends who just happen to have the time and the money to fly out from time to time. Divorced Georgia meets her in Rio. About-to-Settle Alice appears in Sydney. It's all so ridiculous. Georgia hires a male prostitute and, feeling lonely, Julie makes a booty call to a guy she met at a club. Paulo provides the same service as Georgia's male prostitute, only he doesn't speak English and doesn't charge $500.
Interestingly, when Julie earlier succumbed to the advances of a married Frenchman (I believe Liz has been reading Nancy Mitford), she doesn't get all explicit about it. But her encounter with the Brazilian is described in pornographic detail. Does Liz think Europeans are for romance and Latin American for sex? Eh? Australians, who apparently can't even see women their own age, are apparently for despising, and Julie never as much as gets hit on in Australia.
The event that set Julie off on her trip in the first place was an encounter with some Frenchwomen in a hospital waiting-room. Julie took crying, divorcing Georgia out for a girls' night with two other Single friends. The object of the girls' night was to meet men. They meet men. Unfortunately, they get really drunk along the way and some of them end up dancing topless in a bar and get into a fight and get thrown out of the club, just as the weakest of their number throws up: alcohol poisoning. The ladies do not look very glam in the hospital, and the snooty Frenchwomen look them up and down and say stuff about them the narrator partly understands.
They looked at each other and spoke in French. It was something like, 'American woman, have no [something]. Where are their mothers? Did they not teach them [something]?'
I understood everything but that one word. Damn that I didn't keep up with my French studies. Oh, **** it.
'Excuse me, what does orgueil mean?' I asked, a little confrontationally.
The one in the long coat looked me straight in the eye and said 'Pride. You American women have no pride.'
Although it hurt to type that, I single it out because the Frenchwoman certainly speaks the truth about these American women. They have no pride. But it's really weird. On the one hand, they are all beautiful (the narrator tells us), talented, extraordinary, but on the other hand they are incontinent and promiscuous and think they are nothing because they cannot get or stay married. (Georgia has children and, 221 page later, I haven't seen them. They are simply not important. They do not seem to provide Georgia with as much meaning or comfort as an hour with a Brazilian male prostitute.)
France was a BIG FAT DEAL in "Sex and the City", so I am not surprised Julie decides the French have the answer to the secrets of Single life and jets off to Paris first. Here, very quickly, are the lessons Julie has "learned" so far:
Paris: Frenchmen cheat on their wives, but it's okay and really sophisticated and stuff if the wife said it was okay and has her own affairs. Frenchwomen have so much dignity, they say nothing when abandoned by their lovers. They smile and carry on. Paris is beautiful.
Rome: Italian men are ruled by their passions and may threaten suicide if rejected. Most Italian women slap Italian men because Italian men make them so crazy. Rome is beautiful.
Rio: Brazilian men cheat so much, Brazilian women just assume their husbands go to prostitutes. Brazilian women have great bodies and will do anything to get them and women with cellulite should not bother going to the beach. Such women still have a chance of getting a one-night-stand, though, as Rio is all about sex. And beautiful.
Sydney: There are not a lot of Australian men, and the unmarried ones can't see women who are over 35. They honestly think they don't exist. There isn't much sex in Australia and although rich (all the men Julie meets in her travels are filthy rich) the men aren't that good-looking. Sydney Harbour, however, is beautiful.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a much better and shorter review. Today I had to vent. Incidentally, all the women in this book under the age of grandmother are incredibly beautiful, and all the men not in Rio are incredibly rich. The only piece of common sense in the whole darn thing is the idea that you should not complain, cry and carry on in public or to him when your boyfriend loses interest and chases after some other woman. There really is no point, and part of him will be mad that you gave him up with a murmur of protest. It might bug him for years, as I know for a fact. Ah ha ha ha!
Update: Heroine is amazed that her married lover has rented such an expensive Balinese villa for their love nest. I am beginning to see why men worry so much about women's purported love for money. The biggest aphrodisiac in this book is money. Money, money, money, money. I wonder if all paperback romance novels have this obsession with the money of men?
Monday, 17 June 2013
Ostatnia Nigella
This morning I woke up to terrible headlines about two British celebrities who actually deserve to be celebrities, an important art collector and a beloved television chef. Charles Saatchi is a successful businessman and patron of the arts and Nigella Lawson is a successful businesswoman and daughter of Lord Lawson. We are not talking the sort of accidental celebrities who are made by appearing on reality shows or taking their clothes off for Page 3.
Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson are married, and the former was photographed appearing to throttle the latter and to tweak her nose as they sat outside a restaurant in London, arguing. Well, he was arguing; she apparently was trying to calm him down. And this being the UK, and they being celebrities, every national paper is running the story. Is Saatchi abusing Nigella? As stories go, that's huge. The photos were released to the world on, ironically, Sunday.*
As Kathy Shaidle (don't click to Kathy if you are not a keen freedom-of-speecher) likes to say, the real story is in the comments, so I clicked to the Daily Mail for the vox populi. The vox populi was divided. Comments ranged from "Maybe he was just checking her glands" to "How dare the photographer take photos instead of step in to save the damsel in distress?" to... Actually, now that I think about it, the comments could be divided into "We should mind our own business" and "Saatchi is a wicked wife abuser."
I gave up on the comments before anyone said "If screaming, yelling and getting physical is their thing, they should save it for the bedroom" which was my second thought. My first thought was "Oh, poor Nigella! She's just putting up with it because she loves him and cares about her marriage." But my second thought was definitely in the realm of Choice C: "How awful for the other people at the restaurant."
As long-term readers know, I don't write much about marriage. I didn't like being married the first time, but I like being married now. However, I've only been married for four years, and that doesn't make me any kind of expert. But I do know that marriage depends on loyalty, and so if I get mad at B.A. for something, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell anyone. Well, I'm going to tell B.A., obviously, because I care enough. I'm here for the long haul and that means confrontation and reconciliation.
But the upshot is that I'm not going to write that much about my marriage because it is not just mine, it is B.A's. Also, I might make him look like an ass, and the worst non-criminal thing a wife can do is make her husband look like an ass in public. Meanwhile, the worst non-criminal thing a husband can do is humiliate his wife in public, which is what I think Charles Saatchi has done. The whole of the UK now thinks he thinks his wife is just property he can slap around.
I am confident B.A. would not mind me saying that physical violence does not play a role in our marriage. He might be a tad shocked to know that it plays a role in other people's marriages, and there are married couples out there who slap each other, grapple and occasionally throw things and laugh about it afterwards. And there are even some married couples would would think life would not be worth living if they didn't scream and yell and slap each other from time to time. It takes all kinds to make a world.
This dynamic is not the same thing as domestic abuse although I can imagine it could quickly turn into domestic abuse, and the minute one spouse says they are sick of scream-yell-slap, that should be an end to it.
I am not myself comfortable with violence-as-vehicle-of-sexual-expression, in part because I associate hitting with boxing and boxing with a code of honour. An honourable boxer hits people in the ring, never out of it, unless in self-defense, and you never, ever hita girl a member of the opposite sex. Also, I know it is a supremely bad idea ever to hit someone whose first impulse is to hit back, e.g. a boxer in training, particularly when they are stronger and heavier than you, and men are usually stronger and heavier than you.
However, as I said, some married couples are okay with slapping, grappling and throwing things, and therefore [Update: if that is true], the rest of us should usually butt out---as long as they keep it behind closed doors. [Update: When it is public, then the public may certainly voice its displeasure, as the British public has certainly done today.] Because that kind of consensual violence, cherubs, lurks in the murky shadows of the sexual realm, and not only should the public not see it, neither should the couple's children. [Update: B.A. is throwing all kinds of fits about this paragraph, just so you know.]
I notice that the British newspaper-reading public is always telling female celebrities to divorce their male celebrity husbands. Speaking as a Catholic and a former divorcee, I object to this. I think female celebrities should fight for their marriages and not give David or Wayne a chance to abandon them and their children for whatever brainless hussy managed to so fatally distract them for half an hour. Not only would such a capitulation be bad for the wives and their children, it would be certainly bad for David and Wayne, et alia, who would be eaten alive by brainless hussies until the money was gone and they were just pathetic and rather creepy old men in constant danger of hell. (Oh yeah. Hell.)
Meanwhile, it's up to Nigella to decide what she wants to do. If for whatever reason the shadowy corners of her sexual psyche enjoy the rough stuff meted out by her husband, then she is well in her legal rights to stick with him. If she's sick of it, then it's up to her to lay down the law or start divorce proceedings. But whichever she decides, I hope this couple calls an end to fighting in public. It's not dignified, and it puts other people off their lunch.
*Irony explained: Nigella is almost the Polish word for Sunday, niedziela.
Update: I am much more disturbed by reports that he says he doesn't like her food. The woman is a renowned chef, and spouses can hurt each other very much by belittling each other's proven accomplishments. I cannot see what he would gain from doing so. Surely he is a big enough man without having to diminish the woman in his life to feel even bigger? I mean, he's Charles Saatchi. Hello.
Update 2: Fellow Catholic Cristina Odone weighs in. Normally I don't pay attention to celebrity gossip, but this is sort of the British equivalent of Guggenheim throttling Julia Child.
Update 3: After much vigorous debate, my husband B.A. weighs in here: "I think my major concern is that – prima facie – violence is bad. Even if we can do “play” violence that genuinely causes no harm – because it is implicitly consensual and non-injurious – the default position should still be that violence is dangerous. I can’t imagine any kind of violence in the New Jerusalem: I conclude that violence as such is a post-lapsarian phenomenon. So, when I hear that a man has been publicly violent to his wife and that she subsequently leaves in tears, my instinct is that something bad has happened – something which I might have been inclined to interrupt if I witnessed it. Of course I could be wrong and find myself making a fool of myself by so concluding about any particular case. But I think the default assumption in such a case is that harm is being done. What, if any, mitigating assumptions might be justified – such as that the couple may find this kind of stuff fun in private – should take a back seat. And this is precisely because that we have to have really good reasons to think that any particular case of violence is “alright”. That this was a man being publicly violent to his visibly distressed wife very strongly suggests to me that something was probably wrong."
Update 4: I used to box. For almost a year, I was the only woman who trained at my gym. Men hit me (but usually pulled their punches). I hit them. It was not such a big deal. Therefore, I have a very nuanced philosophy about when physical force is okay and when it is not. I do not have as strong a sense as B.A. that "prima facie--violence is bad." But I agree that it is dangerous.
Update 5: Guardian columnist who thought Saatchi-Lawson event might not have been a case of domestic abuse eats words. I am not a Guardian columnist, so I don't have to worry about angry Guardian readers. I am, however, a Catholic Register columnist and have written a denunciation of Fifty Shades of Grey, of which over 70 million copies have been sold, mostly to women.
Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson are married, and the former was photographed appearing to throttle the latter and to tweak her nose as they sat outside a restaurant in London, arguing. Well, he was arguing; she apparently was trying to calm him down. And this being the UK, and they being celebrities, every national paper is running the story. Is Saatchi abusing Nigella? As stories go, that's huge. The photos were released to the world on, ironically, Sunday.*
As Kathy Shaidle (don't click to Kathy if you are not a keen freedom-of-speecher) likes to say, the real story is in the comments, so I clicked to the Daily Mail for the vox populi. The vox populi was divided. Comments ranged from "Maybe he was just checking her glands" to "How dare the photographer take photos instead of step in to save the damsel in distress?" to... Actually, now that I think about it, the comments could be divided into "We should mind our own business" and "Saatchi is a wicked wife abuser."
I gave up on the comments before anyone said "If screaming, yelling and getting physical is their thing, they should save it for the bedroom" which was my second thought. My first thought was "Oh, poor Nigella! She's just putting up with it because she loves him and cares about her marriage." But my second thought was definitely in the realm of Choice C: "How awful for the other people at the restaurant."
As long-term readers know, I don't write much about marriage. I didn't like being married the first time, but I like being married now. However, I've only been married for four years, and that doesn't make me any kind of expert. But I do know that marriage depends on loyalty, and so if I get mad at B.A. for something, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell anyone. Well, I'm going to tell B.A., obviously, because I care enough. I'm here for the long haul and that means confrontation and reconciliation.
But the upshot is that I'm not going to write that much about my marriage because it is not just mine, it is B.A's. Also, I might make him look like an ass, and the worst non-criminal thing a wife can do is make her husband look like an ass in public. Meanwhile, the worst non-criminal thing a husband can do is humiliate his wife in public, which is what I think Charles Saatchi has done. The whole of the UK now thinks he thinks his wife is just property he can slap around.
I am confident B.A. would not mind me saying that physical violence does not play a role in our marriage. He might be a tad shocked to know that it plays a role in other people's marriages, and there are married couples out there who slap each other, grapple and occasionally throw things and laugh about it afterwards. And there are even some married couples would would think life would not be worth living if they didn't scream and yell and slap each other from time to time. It takes all kinds to make a world.
This dynamic is not the same thing as domestic abuse although I can imagine it could quickly turn into domestic abuse, and the minute one spouse says they are sick of scream-yell-slap, that should be an end to it.
I am not myself comfortable with violence-as-vehicle-of-sexual-expression, in part because I associate hitting with boxing and boxing with a code of honour. An honourable boxer hits people in the ring, never out of it, unless in self-defense, and you never, ever hit
However, as I said, some married couples are okay with slapping, grappling and throwing things, and therefore [Update: if that is true], the rest of us should usually butt out---as long as they keep it behind closed doors. [Update: When it is public, then the public may certainly voice its displeasure, as the British public has certainly done today.] Because that kind of consensual violence, cherubs, lurks in the murky shadows of the sexual realm, and not only should the public not see it, neither should the couple's children. [Update: B.A. is throwing all kinds of fits about this paragraph, just so you know.]
I notice that the British newspaper-reading public is always telling female celebrities to divorce their male celebrity husbands. Speaking as a Catholic and a former divorcee, I object to this. I think female celebrities should fight for their marriages and not give David or Wayne a chance to abandon them and their children for whatever brainless hussy managed to so fatally distract them for half an hour. Not only would such a capitulation be bad for the wives and their children, it would be certainly bad for David and Wayne, et alia, who would be eaten alive by brainless hussies until the money was gone and they were just pathetic and rather creepy old men in constant danger of hell. (Oh yeah. Hell.)
Meanwhile, it's up to Nigella to decide what she wants to do. If for whatever reason the shadowy corners of her sexual psyche enjoy the rough stuff meted out by her husband, then she is well in her legal rights to stick with him. If she's sick of it, then it's up to her to lay down the law or start divorce proceedings. But whichever she decides, I hope this couple calls an end to fighting in public. It's not dignified, and it puts other people off their lunch.
*Irony explained: Nigella is almost the Polish word for Sunday, niedziela.
Update: I am much more disturbed by reports that he says he doesn't like her food. The woman is a renowned chef, and spouses can hurt each other very much by belittling each other's proven accomplishments. I cannot see what he would gain from doing so. Surely he is a big enough man without having to diminish the woman in his life to feel even bigger? I mean, he's Charles Saatchi. Hello.
Update 2: Fellow Catholic Cristina Odone weighs in. Normally I don't pay attention to celebrity gossip, but this is sort of the British equivalent of Guggenheim throttling Julia Child.
Update 3: After much vigorous debate, my husband B.A. weighs in here: "I think my major concern is that – prima facie – violence is bad. Even if we can do “play” violence that genuinely causes no harm – because it is implicitly consensual and non-injurious – the default position should still be that violence is dangerous. I can’t imagine any kind of violence in the New Jerusalem: I conclude that violence as such is a post-lapsarian phenomenon. So, when I hear that a man has been publicly violent to his wife and that she subsequently leaves in tears, my instinct is that something bad has happened – something which I might have been inclined to interrupt if I witnessed it. Of course I could be wrong and find myself making a fool of myself by so concluding about any particular case. But I think the default assumption in such a case is that harm is being done. What, if any, mitigating assumptions might be justified – such as that the couple may find this kind of stuff fun in private – should take a back seat. And this is precisely because that we have to have really good reasons to think that any particular case of violence is “alright”. That this was a man being publicly violent to his visibly distressed wife very strongly suggests to me that something was probably wrong."
Update 4: I used to box. For almost a year, I was the only woman who trained at my gym. Men hit me (but usually pulled their punches). I hit them. It was not such a big deal. Therefore, I have a very nuanced philosophy about when physical force is okay and when it is not. I do not have as strong a sense as B.A. that "prima facie--violence is bad." But I agree that it is dangerous.
Update 5: Guardian columnist who thought Saatchi-Lawson event might not have been a case of domestic abuse eats words. I am not a Guardian columnist, so I don't have to worry about angry Guardian readers. I am, however, a Catholic Register columnist and have written a denunciation of Fifty Shades of Grey, of which over 70 million copies have been sold, mostly to women.
Saturday, 15 June 2013
Went to a Bar on a Friday Night
I so rarely go out on Friday nights, I'm excited that I went out last night. One of my Polish readers is in town, and I suggested we meet after she saw some sights. (Edinburgh Castle is amazing, but there are only so many times a permanent resident of Edinburgh wants to wander around the Castle.) My proposed venue was the Polish vodka bar, as she has been living outwith Poland for years.
When I was single, especially when I was young and single, I thought it was utterly horrible not to go out on Friday night. And I could not understand why my parents did not go out on Friday nights. From what I saw on television, adults were supposed to be at nightclubs. And even in books adults were at nightclubs. Why did my weird parents not take advantage of their freedom, money and escape from the tyranny of their own parents to go to nightclubs?
It was because they didn't actually LIKE nightclubs. At least, my father didn't like them, and my mother hated what happened to pop music after the Beatles, except for the Swedish Beatles, aka ABBA. And no doubt they were too tired from a week of working and parenting to want to do much more than watch television and--in my mother's case--crochet.
I should really learn to crochet because on Friday night B.A. does not really want to do much more than watch television and I have learned from experience that the Goth scene in Edinburgh is pretty pathetic, and most of the Goths look sixteen years old, and I no longer get a buzz simply from being in a club that plays Goth stuff.
From a meeting-people point of view, going to any club is a stupid idea, for dancing at clubs (especially Goth clubs) is a solipsistic activity, and the music is too loud for anyone to say much, and the drinks are usually terrible. Now that I am 39++, I do not want alchopop, I want an excellent cocktail or vodka, and now that I know more about vodka, I do not want Smirnoff, I want Chopin.*
No, for meeting members of the opposite sex, I recommend that you all take up partner dancing, especially the tango, and join a local partner dancing society. Partner dancing is a community activity, and you are expected to chat between breaks, and the drinks are besides the point. Drunkenness is definitely discouraged, and men are there primarily to dance, not to drink or pick up chicks. Men and women are prized by each other as people to dance with, and the rules of dancing offer is a return to old-fashioned gender roles and courtesy.
I am not particularly interested in meeting members of the opposite sex, so I am unlikely to develop an interest in partner dancing for my own sake. But I do like meeting up with women around my own age for delicious drinks, and I also like Polish stuff, including vodka so good one sips it like wine. Thus, I have been longing to have a good excuse to go to the Polish vodka bar, and my Polish reader provided it. Yay!
Although Top 40 dance hits blared from a speaker, it was a comfortable place to have a three-hour girl-chat and drink a lot of really good vodka. From now on, readers who want to see me in Edinburgh after six will be taken to the Polish vodka bar, so be warned. Polish, incidentally, is now the second language of the United Kingdom, except perhaps in Wales, so for a real taste of Modern Britain, you ought to do or eat or drink something Polish.
Meanwhile, the Polish vodka bar was interesting in that the men lined up along the actual bar were not all Polish. They were a mix of Poles and Scots, and I saw one South Asian man who might have been what is called a New Scot. Women did not stand there with them, but sat at tables with their friends. And although the men at the bar occasionally turned around and looked at the women at the tables, they kept to themselves. The servers--Polish girls all--were very nice and chatted with my reader and me in Polish and English.
At about ten my reader and I went out into the gloaming--at this time of year it does not get dark until about 10:15 PM--and went for a walk in the light rain before getting our bus. And I was reminded of why I really don't mind staying at home on a Friday night when I heard drunk young men baying at the top of their lungs. Fortunately, we were on our bus by 11 PM, which was still relatively early. What makes Edinburgh--and, indeed, many British cities--so unpleasant on Friday and Saturday nights are noisy crowds of drunken, shouting men and shrieking, stumbling women.
*As most North American readers will know, the screwdriver is a cocktail consisting of vodka and orange juice. For years I hated the taste of vodka without orange juice, and now I know that this is because the kind of vodka you mix with orange juice is disgusting and there is no excuse for it.
UPDATE: My friend lives in Pittsburgh, and that reminds me that it might be time to have Seraphic Singles evenings without me. I know there's a reader in Washington DC who wants to meet up with other readers, and there are multiple readers in many American cities. I am pondering how to make it easier for readers who want to meet each other to meet each other. Possibly I need team captains. More on this anon.
When I was single, especially when I was young and single, I thought it was utterly horrible not to go out on Friday night. And I could not understand why my parents did not go out on Friday nights. From what I saw on television, adults were supposed to be at nightclubs. And even in books adults were at nightclubs. Why did my weird parents not take advantage of their freedom, money and escape from the tyranny of their own parents to go to nightclubs?
It was because they didn't actually LIKE nightclubs. At least, my father didn't like them, and my mother hated what happened to pop music after the Beatles, except for the Swedish Beatles, aka ABBA. And no doubt they were too tired from a week of working and parenting to want to do much more than watch television and--in my mother's case--crochet.
I should really learn to crochet because on Friday night B.A. does not really want to do much more than watch television and I have learned from experience that the Goth scene in Edinburgh is pretty pathetic, and most of the Goths look sixteen years old, and I no longer get a buzz simply from being in a club that plays Goth stuff.
From a meeting-people point of view, going to any club is a stupid idea, for dancing at clubs (especially Goth clubs) is a solipsistic activity, and the music is too loud for anyone to say much, and the drinks are usually terrible. Now that I am 39++, I do not want alchopop, I want an excellent cocktail or vodka, and now that I know more about vodka, I do not want Smirnoff, I want Chopin.*
No, for meeting members of the opposite sex, I recommend that you all take up partner dancing, especially the tango, and join a local partner dancing society. Partner dancing is a community activity, and you are expected to chat between breaks, and the drinks are besides the point. Drunkenness is definitely discouraged, and men are there primarily to dance, not to drink or pick up chicks. Men and women are prized by each other as people to dance with, and the rules of dancing offer is a return to old-fashioned gender roles and courtesy.
I am not particularly interested in meeting members of the opposite sex, so I am unlikely to develop an interest in partner dancing for my own sake. But I do like meeting up with women around my own age for delicious drinks, and I also like Polish stuff, including vodka so good one sips it like wine. Thus, I have been longing to have a good excuse to go to the Polish vodka bar, and my Polish reader provided it. Yay!
Although Top 40 dance hits blared from a speaker, it was a comfortable place to have a three-hour girl-chat and drink a lot of really good vodka. From now on, readers who want to see me in Edinburgh after six will be taken to the Polish vodka bar, so be warned. Polish, incidentally, is now the second language of the United Kingdom, except perhaps in Wales, so for a real taste of Modern Britain, you ought to do or eat or drink something Polish.
Meanwhile, the Polish vodka bar was interesting in that the men lined up along the actual bar were not all Polish. They were a mix of Poles and Scots, and I saw one South Asian man who might have been what is called a New Scot. Women did not stand there with them, but sat at tables with their friends. And although the men at the bar occasionally turned around and looked at the women at the tables, they kept to themselves. The servers--Polish girls all--were very nice and chatted with my reader and me in Polish and English.
At about ten my reader and I went out into the gloaming--at this time of year it does not get dark until about 10:15 PM--and went for a walk in the light rain before getting our bus. And I was reminded of why I really don't mind staying at home on a Friday night when I heard drunk young men baying at the top of their lungs. Fortunately, we were on our bus by 11 PM, which was still relatively early. What makes Edinburgh--and, indeed, many British cities--so unpleasant on Friday and Saturday nights are noisy crowds of drunken, shouting men and shrieking, stumbling women.
*As most North American readers will know, the screwdriver is a cocktail consisting of vodka and orange juice. For years I hated the taste of vodka without orange juice, and now I know that this is because the kind of vodka you mix with orange juice is disgusting and there is no excuse for it.
UPDATE: My friend lives in Pittsburgh, and that reminds me that it might be time to have Seraphic Singles evenings without me. I know there's a reader in Washington DC who wants to meet up with other readers, and there are multiple readers in many American cities. I am pondering how to make it easier for readers who want to meet each other to meet each other. Possibly I need team captains. More on this anon.
Friday, 14 June 2013
Distinguishing Loving from Fancying
People learning North American English must be so confused by our poverty of words concerning matters of the heart. When I was a school child, we expressed other-focused longings with the word "like", as in "So do you like him?" or "You like Aaron! You like Aaron!" or, cynically, "So who do YOU like?" as if every ten year old girl must by definition have a crush on someone.
This could be confusing, for of course we like many things, which means to say, we associate many things with goodness or pleasure. I like Georgian architecture, for example. I like the Scottish Poetry Library. I like the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert. I like cats. I like our nearest neighbours.
Fortunately, the British, who invented English, have a more specific word for other-focused longings and it is "fancy," as in "So do you fancy him?"
This is a terribly useful word for it always has the connotation of want. You can also say "I fancy a cup of tea" and it means the same thing. You want something. You fancy the cup of tea because it will relax or warm you, and you fancy the new cashier in the supermarket because he is just so tasty-looking.
Back my good theology school, which I discovered after the fact is considered rather "liberal", my ethics prof used to talk very solemnly and positively about "eros" and tell us concupiscence doesn't mean what we think it means. He was a very good man, and I can imagine him discoursing for half an hour on the holiness of our erotic feelings for the new cashier in the supermarket. However, I think the holiness of our erotic feelings for the new cashier in the supermarket has the shelf-life of a cheesecake. To be honest, if we spend too long concentrating on the thrill we get from the new cashier, we are lusting after the new cashier.
Lust is the least of the Seven Deadly Sins, but it is still a deadly sin because, even at its mildest, it can utterly cloud your reason. It can lead you to do all kinds of stupid things, including stick with a man who is really rotten to you, or who bores you senseless, because you love kissing him so much. Physical expression of affection, even if sincere affection is largely absent, can chemically/ psychologically glue a woman to someone. Sexual desire is like a freight train, and the only person who can stop it is the driver, through a massive and heroic act of will, plus Grace.
For the sake of happiness, fancying should not be confused with loving, and love of some sort should come before fancying. Definitely there should at least be liking, as in "I like him. He is kind to people and makes me laugh." I know many people who are kind to people and make me laugh, so I like many people. I want to be around them because being around them simply makes me feel comfortable and happy, and I hope God will reward them for their kindness in this world and the next.
Hoping God will reward someone in this world and the next can be defined as "desiring the good of the other" which is the Thomist definition of love. And I think it a measure of love when your desire for the greater good of the other is greater than your desire for any of your goods less than your eternal salvation. For example, many a spouse would lay down his life for his spouse, and many a parent her life for her children. (N.B.: The good of the other is never something forbidden by God.)
Family and friends make all kinds of sacrifices on behalf of those they love. A loving parent says "No" to her 12 year old daughter going to an unsupervised boy-girl party even if the daughter will shout "I hate you! I hate you!" and mean it. A loving 24 year old teacher says "No" to his 18 year old pupil who has a crush on him, not because he could get in trouble if he didn't, but because he does not want his 18 year old pupil to suffer psychological harm.*
This is true even if the 24 year old teacher secretly fancies his 18 year old pupil and feels pretty wretched. Because, obviously, you can fancy someone and love them at the same time. When I met B.A., I already liked him because he was funny, and then I liked him because he was so kind to everyone, and then I fancied him, but didn't do anything about it, first, because he was A REGULAR READER, and second, because life has taught me it is infinitely better to be the recipient of the First Real Move myself than to make the First Real Move and third, I had just met him and relied upon prudence to safeguard my own good and his.
The fancying part was not as important as the liking part and the loving part, and I love my regular readers just for being regular readers. Fancying B.A. only became important when I knew B.A. fancied me, and super-important when I knew B.A. loved me in a marry-me way because, really, you shouldn't marry anyone you don't fancy.
However, our poor hypothetical 24 year old teacher is not in a position to marry his 18 year old pupil because, first of all, she is his pupil, second, she's only 18, and third, he's married already.
Maybe I should have said that first. At any rate, our hypothetical 24 year old teacher is a good man, and loves both his pupil and his wife, and therefore desires their good. (And if he is a Christian, he desires the good of his salvation above all else.) The good of the pupil is not to get mixed up with him, and the good of his wife is to have a loyal husband. For the teacher to act on his feelings of fancy would be contrary to love. But as he loves, he doesn't.
To recap some distinctions to help us all sort out how we feel and what is real:
LIKING: Admiration and wanting to be around something/someone just because it/he/she makes you smile and feel happy.
FANCYING: Wanting someone, or their image, for the erotic thrill even just thinking about them gives you.
LOVING: Desiring the other's good so sincerely that you would forgo many goods, including their company, in order to protect it.
Obviously, when fancying is divorced from love, what we have--very quickly--is lust. And many people fancy those they don't even like, which is dangerous to reason. We do that all the time when we have a crush on someone we don't even know, like a film star, and just create a fantasy around him.
It is actually quite terrible to be fancied by someone who doesn't know you or doesn't really want to know you as you really are, and wouldn't like you as you really are, but just creates a fantasy based on your image. Knowing that, I suppose we should all strive not to do that to others ourselves.
The worst case scenario is marrying someone who thinks you are the fantasy image of you he has in his head because, believe me, a few months of marriage will defeat his every attempt to keep that fantasy alive. And then he will blame you, you fantasy-girl murderess!
It's lovely to be married to someone who likes you. And it is horrible to be married to someone who doesn't like you. So let there be liking before fancying! And let us put love--love as Thomas defined it--before everything else.
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