giovedì, gennaio 09, 2014

Brazilian city girl

So Melbourne is such an improvement on L____ that it's hard to believe we managed to stay in L_____ as long as we did. This was driven home this week by a quick visit from an old Melbourne friend of the F-word's, who now lives in L____, and in fact is the reason that we went to try L____.

In retrospect there were so many clues that we didn't belong in L_____. I guess what should have been my a-ha moment was just a month or so in - I don't know if we'd even moved into our first house yet - when a three or four of us couples were sitting around talking about women removing their body hair.

I have fairly strong feelings about the issue, many involving wankerish and overinvolved notions of pseudopedophilia, female subjection and objectification, ingrown hair aversion, the conviction that no one can really handle my hirstuteness unless they're from the Indian subcontinent, and any number of things. So when bashing the idea of feminine hair removal literally went around in a circle until everybody was looking at me, I decided to keep things succint instead and say "a change is as good as a rest."

Silence descended until one of the men cleared their throat and changed the subject. I felt a little uncomfortable swimming upcurrent when I could have just grunted something not-a-lie about how awful I think it is that women feel pressure to do painful things to alter their bodies. But at the time I was actually rocking a beetle bonnet, which I do from time to time because, verily, a change is as good as a rest, so it would have been a little ridiculous to lie, especially given the F-word was sitting right there supressing his laughter.

Anyways, I should have known then. We're not the type to live in a place like that. The ensuing months - years - in L____ were useful, not least by demonstrating to me the incredibly huge differences between actual left-wing convictions and people who do yoga and don't vaccinate, but we probably could have saved ourselves a bit of trouble if I just extrapolated from that awkward silence.

That little trip down memory lane came about because the visitor was the fellow who cleared his throat and changed the subject. Looked unhappy there and looked unhappy here. Poor guy.