A Delicate Proposition

Miss Dimity recently spoke with an old friend who advised her of a rather clumsy attempt at a seduction which had recently been directed at her person.  This friend had been attending an out-of-town conference devoted to a particular sector of the arts-and-crafts trade when she was approached by a woman she had only known through electronic correspondence.  (Miss Dimity understands that electronic correspondence has become very highly regarded in this modern age, even as she laments the dying art of letter-writing.)  Miss Friend duly introduced herself and, to her utter shock and horror, the woman in question replied that she wished to immediately go back to Miss Friend’s lodgings and engage in sexual activity—except the offer was couched in the language of the gutter.

Miss Friend was absolutely shocked, as any thinking person would be and demurred with some small talk, thinking that the woman had uttered such out of mere nervousness.  But no!  Throughout the day, the woman continued her seduction efforts unabated, even after Miss Friend advised her—forcefully and in no uncertain terms—that she was spoken for, and was thus not interested in a liaison dangereuse.

Still this woman persisted, following Miss Friend simply everywhere and making a dreadful nuisance of herself.   She told Miss Friend that it was her “right” as a Lesbian to behave in an overtly sexual manner and in public yet, and in front of witnesses, and that Miss Friend’s repeated requests to moderate her behaviour were an attempt to crush her “personhood.”

What utter twaddle.  Whether one is Lesbian or otherwise, whether one is male or female, intersexed or non-gender-specific, behaving like a pig is behaving like a pig, regardless of the political label.  Miss Dimity understands, as do many of her friends, that drowning rude behaviour in quasi-political rhetoric does not make that behaviour any more correct.  A pig is still a pig.  And the woman who made such overtures ought to have first of all not made them in such a—frankly, repulsive—manner, and ought to have ceased forthwith when Miss Friend indicated that such attentions were not welcome.

Miss Dimity wonders what would have been the outcome had a man walked up to Miss Friend and, upon meeting her for the first time, invited himself back to her lodgings so they could engage in intercourse.  If he had escaped with merely a slapped face he might consider himself lucky, because a slapped face is de rigeur when one has been subjected to such a filthy and demeaning suggestion!  Miss Dimity wonders if a woman’s efforts to elude a masher hell-bent on sexual domination is indeed the same thing as crushing his personhood—or if the thinking woman ought to raise one stilletto heel and ‘crush’ some other part of his anatomy.  Because Miss Dimity doesn’t believe that chauvanism is merely a man’s failing, nor is piggishness merely a male pursuit: to request—nay, insist—on sexual congress when one’s putative other has firmly declined is not simply bad manners.  It is sexual violence.

And sexual violence is never, ever acceptable to Miss Dimity, no matter the gender of the perpetrator.

Here endeth the lesson.

In An Interesting Condition.

Miss Dimity was just the other day treated to an unsettling anecdote by an acquaintance.  It seems this lady, who is in the early-to-middle stages of her first pregnancy, was attending a business luncheon with some other ladies, where sandwiches and soup were served.  As the lady in question is pregnant, she therefore is experiencing a greater-than-average metabolic load and must eat well—and often—to keep up her strength. She had consumed two of the little sandwiches and was reaching for a third when a woman at her elbow abruptly advised her, “You had better slow down or by the time you give birth, you’ll need to join Weight Watchers!”

 Miss Dimity’s acquaintance was shocked; so was Miss Dimity upon hearing about such an outré piece of unasked-for commentary on another’s eating habits!  What business is it of another how many tiny sandwiches one consumes? Was the woman at her elbow her personal dietician? No? Then it was her business to keep her mouth shut! Miss Dimity abhors the sorts of women who go about commenting on other people’s behaviour, other people’s eating, and other people’s things.  Such comments do nothing to foster goodwill among women, and all but destroy any feeling of sisterhood that one might have otherwise enjoyed.

Miss Dimity’s advice is this: if you think someone is eating too much, keep it to yourself. If the object of your disapproval is a lady “in an interesting condition” (as the French say), staple your own lips closed before you blurt one unkind word! Unless you are currently with child, and enjoying the backache, sore feet, fluid retention and other, less salutary aspects of the condition, you have no business offering commentary.

Indeed, unless specifically asked (i.e., “Do you think I ought to have another sandwich, Penelope? Or are seventeen quite sufficient?”) what another woman is eating is none of your business.  Miss Dimity cannot stress this enough: in this day and age, unsolicited commentary and overt familiarity with those to whom we have not been introduced is a faux pas of the highest order, committed only by those without the slightest notion of etiquette or appropriate behaviour. A real lady makes it her business to set all in her presence at ease; that is the essence of manners!

As Miss Dimity advised her friend, there is only one correct response to such an ignorant piece of commentary: “Why yes, my dear! Perhaps you and I can join together.”

Periodic Beatings Required.

Miss Dimity today journeyed to the local Temple of Mercantile Delights and purchased a decorative coconut mat for the back entrance of her domicile. (Please, no ‘rear entry’ jokes; Miss Dimity spank!)

 Miss Dimity’s gentleman companion, upon seeing the mat asked, “What is it?” To which Miss Dimity replied, “It is a coconut mat.  Like the presiding member of the male anatomy, it needs to be taken out every so often and beaten off.”

 The resulting silence was most edifying.

But Only Animals Growl.

Miss Dimity constantly wonders why certain gentlemen deem it appropriate behaviour to come home to the familial domicile at the end of a hard day’s work, and growl at their lady companion in a manner conducive to their being hit with something hard, and possibly more than once.

 Consider, also, if said lady companion has herself been working all day long, doing this and that about the house, tidying things and washing his clothing and, during a small altercation with one of the dogs over supper, why he sees fit to roar at her.  To roar at her, Gentle Reader, and to assume that his actions are so entirely correct that there is no need for him to apologise, or to seem even a little sorry that he did it.

 Miss Dimity wonders if said gentleman companion might perhaps need his ears boxed, for good measure because, fear not: Miss Dimity is up for that sort of thing. Oh yes, Miss Dimity is indeed.

Edit: Flowers, however, accompanied by a sincere apology, do much to soothe Miss Dimity’s frayed nerves. Clever gentlemen know the healing power of flora, and abide by it.

Argumentatus.

I often wonder what possesses certain Persons, members of Modern Society, to launch impassionated, heated arguments with others in public.

 I’m not talking about a simple disagreement with the waiter over how well done one’s dinner is, or pointing out to the dry cleaner that they missed that spot on the collar—again.

 Perhaps an illustration drawn from Real Life: the other day I was in the supermarket when I noticed a young woman, her gentleman companion (I couldn’t honestly tell if they were married or not, although his baseball-cap-worn-backwards and his oversized trousers clearly marked him out as the shiftless type) and their small child, appeared in the main foyer of the store.  The young woman immediately launched into a violent argument with the young man while simultaneously talking on her cellular telephone to person or persons unknown.  I saw them coming towards me and, not wishing to be rude, ducked down another aisle in order to allow them some (relative) privacy  in which to complete their disagreement.

I might have saved myself the bother.  Rather than attempting to tie up their argument or, as good manners might dictate, to save it until they were in the privacy of their own domicile, they increased both the volume and the violence of their argument until practically everyone in the store was effectively apprised of the most intimate details of their disagreement.

Miss Dimity wonders: what happened to manners? What happened to holding one’s tongue in public, with keeping a civil tongue in one’s head? What happened to not airing one’s dirty laundry in public? And for the record, when did telephones cease to become stationary objects affixed to a hole in the wall and become, instead, something by which the insecure and desperately attention-seeking among us place an audio spotlight intractably upon themselves?

One does not argue in public. One does not pick fights with one’s spouse (or, in this case, one’s baggy trouser wearing ne’er-do-well) in a place where other persons are attempting to complete their shopping in a quiet and peaceful manner.  Indeed, by ducking down another aisle I had hoped to not only give them privacy but also to avoid them: I did not care to hear the young woman’s (I won’t call her a young lady; she was anything but a lady) repeated imprecations of “Excuse you? Excuse YOU? I’ll excuse you!” while I attempted to differentiate between a seeded domestic cucumber and a seedless English one.  More to the point, I should not have to endure such ridiculous spectacle in a public place.  If one wishes to conduct heated arguments, one may do so in the privacy of one’s own home.

And until one can learn to behave appropriately outside of one’s own home, one should perhaps stay there.

A Series of Unfortunate Rhetorical Questions.

One wonders how one would know if a so-called “midlife crisis” were about to rear up on its metaphorical hind legs and make towards one, with every intention of eviscerating her.  Are there trumpets which sound to herald this event? Or is it, as one suspects, a slow, creeping malaise, stealing over one like a sickly sunrise, that signals the beginning of The End?

 Various pundits like to twitter amongst themselves about how “life begins at forty” but what if one has spent the ante-forty years fending off one set of disasters to come while attempting to recover from those already gone?  What if one is waiting for Life, but Life does not deign to keep the appointment? What then?

What if one, having passed her fortieth birthday, begins to suspect (with a sick certainty born of disappointment and frustration) that Life has passed her by—that there is no more; that all goodness one could get has already been got; that the things of which she dreams are mere phantasms of the imagination?  

And what if this same one, having worked for nigh on twenty years to perfect some skill of which she is an aficianada (she, being modest or perhaps slightly self-destructive, would not dream of claiming mastery) of a certain art form and has set loose upon the world some evidence of this—and this evidence is then blown back upon her like dead seeds before a desert wind?

What if a certain someone, being of “a certain age” (as the French say) is finally nerving herself to face the awful truth that, despite what early successes may have led her to expect, she is nothing special? 

 Does she then knuckle under and accept her less-than-stellar fate? Does she, as popular pseudo-psychology would insist, drop the rock?

Perhaps she is standing on a high place, listening to the wind and in this wind are a thousand fell voices moaning, “Give up, give up, you’ll never get there.”

What then? Two roads diverge, Gentle Reader. Which one? Continuance, with its promise of almost certain, heartbreaking disappointment—or Cessation, which will not entirely still the yearning heart, but which seems now to be the only option.

Of course Miss Dimity speaks only in hyperbole and metaphor, but still…at 41, one had hoped for something more than this…

Miss Dimity Swick

Miss Dimity Swick, a lifelong artist in the vanishing cult of Curmudgeon,  is regularly unhappy about everything including the outcome of this thing she calls her life…

Boo. Hoo.