Just by losing interest in you, even this guy will become an object of obsession.
The shift of power has a very specific noise. It’s the screech of tables turning. A distant grind at first, then a sharp and swift squuueeeaaaaakkkk! Men are particularly masterful at moving the tables of romantic power. It’s a fairly simple maneuver, admittedly, but it doesn’t work without two things on the opposite side: one, an easily inflamed vanity and two, an open-ness to being wooed. And so, it is with the sad verity of experience that I say that women are the perfect victims. All a man has to do is blow hot…then cold. The woman will instantly forget her original, authentic assessment of the man – eg “not for me” or “not that great/bit spotty/arrogant/dim” – and instead become obsessed with him.
Let’s take the case of my friend Mary, a 30 year old consultant. One night when she was drunk at her favourite bar she decided to go and flirt with the very friendly barman. He was nothing to look at, really, but Mary likes oddballs sometimes. And this was one of those times, largely because she was tipsy, but also because she was seeking distraction from a recent failed romance, and because she felt like it.
Make no mistake: Mary is quite a catch. She’s intelligent, well-dressed, and (often) sensible, the sort who rarely falls over when drunk, doesn’t do stupid things with strangers, and never pulls sickies. She’s pretty, too. There is no reason an intelligent, successful, cultured, good looking man – a catch, like her, in other words – wouldn’t be within her grasp. And yet her flings and romances have tended to be with a crew that could at best be described as motley.
It was the antics of a purposefully unemployed “film-maker” who had almost driven her to medication that she was trying to forget about when she strode up to Barman Pete that night.
Barman Pete is young – about 23. He is chubby – sporting a double chin and a hint of man boob. He has big blubbery lips. His English is extremely ropey – he spoke absolutely none a year and a half ago when he arrived in London off a boat from near Dieppe. Regarded in the light of his attentiveness – he was always smiling at Mary, always paying her cocktails special attention – Pete appeared to Mary that night as a cheeky chappy whose attentiveness she suddenly fancied testing out a bit further. The wine coursing through her body, she suddenly saw a good smile, spiky black hair and nice big blue eyes. Man boobs, double chin and slightly bestial expression – mostly contained in those blubber-lips – remained in the back of her mind, but quite far in the back.
She strode up to him and asked him about himself, leaning over the bar. He could only understand about half of what she said so she had to keep it simple: “where are you from?” and so on. His now ravenous-seeming grin grew ever wider as she teased and questioned him. Her ego gloriously expanded as her sense of power grew. And so, later that night after drinks somewhere else, she rang the bar back and asked to speak to him. They exchanged numbers and next thing she knew, Mary was suggesting a drink.
Clear-headedness kicked in at the last minute. WHAT, she asked herself, AM I DOING??? We were appalled – I told her to steer clear of “junk food love” as there was no way Barman Pete was a potential boyfriend of any description and “just sex” was never “just sex”. Another friend Caroline said: “Mary honey, can’t you go for the clientele instead?”
It all hit home and just in time, she ducked the drink, the next day pleading tiredness in a distinctly cold text, and hoped that would be an end of it. When she’d woken up there had been four texts asking where she was. This both horrified and flattered her. Distaste overpowered flattery this time: even for zany-tasted Mary, texts as devoid of style and punctuation as these – “wher r u” for instance, sent at 3:30AM – were a stark reminder of how unwise any further contact would be.
It was clear: Pete was not some idealized image of an adoring, ardent cheeky chappy barman, he was the flesh embodiment of a worryingly close, very flawed reality. The double chin, the hungry look, the voracious lips, the elementary English, the childish age and demeanour, the background so different a dog and turtle had more in common than they – it all came back to her. A suspicion emerged too that – like most young men bred on a digital diet of porn – he would have embarrassingly unrealistic inclinations and tastes.
A woman, receiving such an excuse and tone of text, would have hung her head in shame and never contacted the man again. Barman Pete, however, didn’t register even a hint of rejection. Morning after morning, afternoon after afternoon, Pete would pop up with texts ranging from the “how are you” type to the “when can I see you”. The longer she held off…well, you know the drill.
It still seemed like a bad idea. But the fact was, Mary felt she’d opened the can of worms herself and now really ought to sup from it. She had a bad feeling about it – his pushiness was worrying – but she was curious, too. And if she was honest, she didn’t exactly what him to stop texting and asking. So one night, she let him come round.
She expected the worst: wham bam. But it was rather nice in all senses; decent chat, cosy atmosphere, and best of all, Pete was UTTERLY THRILLED TO BE WITH HER.
He couldn’t wait for a repeat and they had three more, always at odd hours, but he regularly texted her in the day, after his shifts…he was smitten.
A bit too smitten, she worried. It seemed for a bit – between sessions two and three (and don’t forget that she’d see him regularly at the bar, too, where they would exchange flirtatious looks and coy asides) – that he might be thinking of her as a GIRLFRIEND. She panicked about the “talking to” she’d have to give him since this was already further than it should have gone.
And then, poof. The day after the third sleepover, he was quiet. That night, she went to the bar, as she’d done previously a mere 10 hours after he’d been in her bed (it was becoming a rather enjoyable scenario), and he spotted her a martini.
But later, no text. Next day, nothing.
What? Where was he? Why had he gone quiet?
Barman Pete had gone cool on her. She knew it.
She knew it was for the best.
But she loathed it. Suddenly, her doubts about him – and his potential over keenness – seemed laughable. She vastly preferred that to this. Well, rationally this was for the best. It really was. The sex was a dead end.
But now, without his texts, his fervent interest, she wanted him and badly.
“Mary,” we told her. “He’s a cocky 23 year old barman. Move on, you can do better.” But she kept obsessing. It was bizarre: when they’d started sleeping together, she’d said to us all that the great thing about it was that there was absolutely no chance of her agonizing over Pete. She had the power, he should be so lucky, and she could do what she wanted, when she wanted. He wasn’t the person to expend subtleties on. And there she was, flummoxed, texting him then hating herself when he either didn’t reply or was busy, worrying about strategy. Rather than the only minimal respect and a flimsy initial attraction she’d felt at first, Mary now felt a tidal wave of emotion. Pete might as well have been Brad Pitt.
If women could woo men (or at least, text them repeatedly at 3AM without being considered repellent psychopaths), we might be able to try the Dance of the Table Turn. But in general, we can’t. And so until further notice, ladies: pack an extra sweater. It gets damned chilly out there – and fast.
The "erotic" book that's taken the English-speaking world by storm, tapping into a deep and unquenchable thirst among women for sappy, repetitive, kinky prose. Anastasia, the heroine, often looks up through her lashes at Christian, who likes to tie her up and thrash her.
Fifty Shades of Grey, first in the trilogy of “mommy porn” that has topped all bestseller lists in the English-speaking world – first as ebook then as paperback – tells the story of Anastasia Steele, a tousled young beauty and Christian Grey, a super-hot millionaire. Their chemistry and his kinks – playing Dominant to her virginal Submissive – is the book’s business.
Everyone is beautiful, sexy and “so freaking hot” in Fifty Shades – probably why Americans love it so much.
Well, here’s my little attempt to capture some of the Fifty Shades sparkle, the sexy prose that launched a million plus books. James Joyce: step back now.
DISCLAIMER: None of the below happened. I have never had sexual relations with Stephen Merchant of any kind.
————–
IT’S been a long day at work, and I am tired. God, you need a break, Zo, my inner shrew Martha barks at me.
I tell her to be quiet, but Martha won’t shut up – she’s gained weight recently and tonight is extra cantankerous. Go home, go home! she badgers. I tell her to go away. Still, maybe she’s right…
I’m about to give into Martha and haul my sorry, tired derriere home when my phone bleeps. I’m such a slave to my phone! Cripes! It’s Miranda, my bad-influence-party-party friend, who I’ve known and loved (well, half the time anyway), since school. She’s gorgeous…and trouble. “Hey u, come to the Groucho Club. Haven’t seen u in ages, mojitos everywhere babes”.
Not a chance. I can’t. I need to rest…plus I’m scared of Martha.
Beep-beep, the phone goes again. Monica. “G club, Zoobeedoo. Get your ass here NOW”. I jump back from the force of her message. Well, maybe just one…Shut up Martha!
When I arrive, Monica and Miranda are sitting in the upstairs bar at one of the prominent tables so they can see and be seen. I shrink inwards slightly: I’m so shy compared to them, and rarely feel attractive enough to hang out on a Friday night in the Groucho, when you have a high chance of seeing a celebrity. I’m all knock-knees and red cheeks and even, when I’m caught off guard, random sweats. You shouldn’t be here anyway! scolds Martha.
I tell Martha to pipe down, square my shoulders, tugging at my shirt so it covers my weirdly bloated belly (too many figs earlier?), and walk over to the girls. Lots of air-kissing ensues, and as soon as I sink into my purple arm-chair, a waiter comes over – a short, somewhat squat but cute French guy. “Some-sing for you, lad-ee?” he trills in a sexy baritone. Oh jolly jam-sticks, what should I have? Martini to get the party started, mojito like the girls or just wine? Suddenly I’m inspired. “Aperol spritzer please, Ben,” I say to the waiter, who had introduced himself when I first started coming, like they all do here.
The drink arrives, I take a big fat greedy gulp and whoosh, I feel better. The girls are talking about a colleague of Monica’s – a solicitor – who was found having sex with the office cleaner in the boardroom before work one day. She was sacked. A court case is pending and Monica’s been asked to help get some of the files ready. I marvel at the audacity of some women – I couldn’t imagine sleeping with someone at work, let alone kissing them…let alone the cleaner!!! I like my men geeky, thin bordering on skeletal, good at maths and over-educated. Acne is a plus, as is an awkward, gangly gait. I never have the guts to approach them, but on the rare occasions a man of this description has been in the same room as me, I usually feel faint. Nobody else piques my interest much, and my friends are always on at me about it – especially as I’m looking 30 squarely in the face.
Ben – who Monica is flirting with, with increasing obviousness – is here again since I seem to have drained my glass with some rapidity. My tiredness is fading, thank God, and Martha is lying down flat now somewhere in my brain, numbed by the ethanol I’m gulping.
Suddenly a group walks in, with the shadowy, intimate air of somebodies. I look at them and – in unison but much, much louder than Miranda and Monica because I’m severely shocked and totally stunned – gasp. It’s Stephen Merchant! Stephen, my love, my private obsession, with a guy in a wheelchair, two other guys and two girls who seem to be there soleley so that he can say to the world: “Now that I’m famous, my looks don’t hold me back. I too can get laid!” I hate them with passion.
Stephen Merchant is here. Oh my CHRIST! In the same bar as me. I feel as though a siren has just gone off in my head, as though three thunder claps and lightning bolts have simultaneously exploded in the space above my head, right here in the Groucho Club.
Suddenly Monica’s grabbing at me: “Zoobie! It’s Stephen Merchant! And I swear he just looked over here…at YOU!” I go the colour of cranberry juice and feel faint. My legs feel like steak tartare.
Monica and Miranda have got up and have gone over to him – I think I dimly hear Monica say she knows a friend of his, or one of the guys with him, or something. I’m still in shock, and am unable to move. Holy Crapolino!!!!
Ben’s back, seeing me slumped alone in my chair. “Anozer dreenk ladee? I sink you need it”. Why is he so damned attentive? The last thing I need is another drink, but I want him to go away so I can continue quietly dying inside, so I nod and he goes off. I’m going to be drunk. Or maybe just sick, if Stephen Merchant looks over here one more time…
For indeed: Stephen Merchant has been looking over. There are lots of heads bobbing away before him – he is 7 foot 3 after all (so gangly! So Luscious!) – but he keeps peering over them and, unless I’ve already passed out in a delirium, directing his eyes at me.
Suddenly I gasp and jump. I realise why he’s looking over. Who am I kidding???? It’s not because he fancies me. It’s got to be because something awful has happened to my outfit. Has my boob popped out of my blouse despite it being a neck-high button up? Have I dribbled on myself, forming a wet patch in a sensitive area? Is my fly down and a bit of shirt sticking out, or perhaps revealing a swathe of the granny pant I’m wearing?
From my awkward hunched position, I peer down at myself, wriggling to see if anything less obvious has gone awry. Nothing that I can see. So why is he looking at me???
In the microseconds I can bear to look back at him, I detect something that makes my heart literally- well, almost literally- stop. He is smiling. Smiling at me. His long canoe-shaped mouth, lips drawn back to reveal those sexy cube-like teeth…the blood is pounding through my body and I’m fairly sure I’m going to explode into a heap of blood and guts, right there on the Groucho floor, for Ben to clean up. Holy crikesville! Stephen Merchant is looking at me!!!!
Not just looking. Moving. Over. Here. He has cut short the two women he was with – the booby hateful ones – who were blabbing about something. He’s pushed one of them out of the way, the one draped over him, her lacy breasts in his face, and has started gliding towards me. Well, not quite gliding, sort of limping, a giant skinny man with too-long limbs moving through a small, crowded room…to me.
Suddenly I’m being gently shaken and I seem to be lying with my head on a man’s lap, legs on the floor in front of me. Where am I? What have I done? Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no….I passed out. When I saw Stephen coming through the crowd towards me, the two and a half Aperol spritzers combined with the maelstrom of hormones and emotion and embarrassment must have overpowered me. How embarrassing – especially as my top has ridden up again, and a bit of belly bloat is on show. I could just die.
On the other hand, the man whose lap I appear to be burying my head in – my saviour – is Stephen himself. How did this evening become so utterly insane? I can’t believe I am lying on the floor of the upstairs bar of the Groucho Club with the man I have privately held to be the single sexiest creature on earth ever since I first watched the Office. To think I was going to go home.
Stephen’s holding my face, fondling it in his deliciously long, spidery fingers. Are you ok? he is asking, over and over, since I seem to have forgotten how to speak. Now, pulling myself together a bit as the blood returns to my brain, but feeling the very distracting stirrings of intense physical desire (how is this possible, when I was unconscious only minutes ago?), I gaze up at him through my annoyingly short lashes, all gooey post faint, my cheap mascara having gummed them together further.
“Yes thanks, wow. I’m Zoobie, by the way,” I say. “I know – I asked your friend Monica when she came over. Listen, Zoobie, I can’t take my eyes – or fingers – off you. There’s something about you….” He trails off, wipes away a strange tear that has pooled in that little duct in the inner corner of the eye, then continues. “Will you come with me to my flat, right now? I’d like nothing more than to make sweet and gentle love to you.” My eyes widen. Oh my Christ God times a million!!!
Wordlessly, my mouth agape, I nod and follow him out, my hair in a sweaty halo, sticking out at all sorts of jaunty angles, my shirt now hopelessly ridden up, my trousers sunken down. Everyone’s staring. I don’t care – it’s like I’m in some kind of trance: my sole job is to Follow The Legs. After all, I’m going home with Stephen Merchant. They aren’t. Miranda and Jemma are in a state of arch agitation by the bar, staring, whispering, openly pointing, squealing. Ben, I happen to notice, is scowling as he prepares 49 espresso martinis – a big order for Merchant’s party, I assume.
He gestures to the receptionist and within a minute, a black Mercedes is waiting for me. My eyes widen still further and I follow Stephen out, my face burning. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I am getting into a Mercedes – a MERCEDES – with Stephen Merchant.
We jump in and he stretches forward, mumbling something apologetically to the driver, then leans back like a transformer shrinking back to its machine body. He turns to me, a large grin denoting an enormous appetite. Sexual, I bet.
He hovers closer as my erratic breathing gets noisier – I am literally panting with desire – and then suddenly his tongue is in my mouth, probing, doing the washing machine, checking out a wisdom tooth. In my head is the part of his comedy show where he mimics the ridiculous sex positions of a super tall person, his ungainly attempts at satisfaction - o, Stephen’s youth of unfairly thwarted desire – and then I’m swooning as his spider hand clasps my boob. Boobs, actually. Oh Zoobee, you taste gooood, he’s murmering, giggling a bit.
When we arrive at a smart Georgian house somewhere in West London, I am in complete disarray – my shirt’s half undone, my hair looks like a zoo has just been opened there, and what mascara had remained on my eyelashes is now in dribbles down my cheeks.
In we go, Stephen leading the way. He’s so freaking thin. So freaking long-limbed. So freaking dorky. So freaking hot.
Then, taking me by the hand, we reach a door. I look at him, wide-eyed, peering up and up and up through my gooey lashes. Again.
I don’t remember the rest, because I pass out. Again.
And when I wake up, I’m in my own bed, half undressed, no Stephen in sight. As I come to, a sickening realisation comes to me: it was all a dream. That would never happen in reality! shrieks Martha, who is back with a vengeance, full of beans after a night off. I’m about to crawl deep into my duvet, never to resurface, when my phone rings. I look at it. Stephen.
Now here's a woman the public can get on board with: modest.
- Samantha Brick is everything Kate Middleton isn’t.
As the anniversary of the Royal Wedding sweeps towards us, I can’t help but reflect on two very different Daily Mail bonanzas. The sickly sweet stink of Hallmark soppiness that oozed off the pages of that newspaper last year, egged on by its readers, and joined by the world’s media, had at its core the woman that every reader – any “decent person”in the UK – loved. Kate Middleton.
A year later, Kate Middleton’s perfect antithesis has emerged in the form of Samantha Brick (5,725 mostly-evil comments on her Daily Mail article). People hate Brick possibly even more than they loved Middleton.
Why?
Certainly, the foremost feature of both women are their looks: Middleton’s are self-evident, not to mention necessary (an ugly future-queen? That would really be maddening). Brick’s are obvious too, in their way, but as a standalone feature that would not have been noted in public had she not written the piece, not as a natural part of a fairtytale. Sure, Kate is more beautiful than Samantha. But unlike the thousands of ranting comment-leavers and tweeters (most of them probably either ugly, stupid, or with severely bad sex lives), I don’t buy for one second that the difference in the calibre of their looks is the issue. Or, to put it in the words of the mob, that “I am sorry, but this woman is not even remotely attractive, at least by the standards of New York CIty”. On the surface, it appears the rage lies with her misjudgement- fine to boast if she WAS super-pretty, but she’s not. Another US reader (Americans are inevitably the most tense about matters of looks) explains: “People would not ‘attack’ Angelina Jolie if she were to declare that she is beautiful, because it goes without saying that she IS beautiful. She has amazing hair, big beautiful lips, large cat-like eyes, and tall slim figure that is totally kick-ass. If Charlize Theron, Beyonce, and Jessica Alba were in the same room as me, I would squeal and ask for their autographs!! Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for you, Samantha.” That clears that one up!
But really, it’s the “arrogance” that kills them. How DARE a woman be so arrogant – and about something so precious, so central, so God-given and celebrity-endorsed as LOOKS? Rants TLC from Hampshire: “The arrogance and self absorbtion of this woman is staggering.” Anonymous from Birmingham opines: “For your age you are quite pretty, but arrogance. But have you thought that actually the reason why women don’t like you is because of your personality rather than your good looks?” And H-UK from London decrees: “There is nothing more unattractive than a boastfully high opinion of yourself. I suspect this woman lacks friends because of this rather than her appearance.” And so the mob wants to put this Scarlett Letter-style harlot, this Salem Witch, or – in the contemporary argot, this BITCH- in her place. Leigh from Huddersfield volunteers, telling her: “Honestly – I would actually not see you if I passed in the street – you are beige – forgettable,” (probably just as well for Brick – or any woman). And it’s not just weirdo trolls unable to control their rage at Brick’s so-called arrogance – the intelligentsia and media elite can’t either: magician Derren Brown, columnist India Knight, Barbara Walters and Ann Curry on the Today Show are among the bullies (NB: I’d rather look like Brick than any of them). Poor old Brick even says a Swedish crime writer’s had a go at her.
The new HBO series Girls is a far cry from Sex and the City (clearly- look at those clothes). But it's also about the death of sex as love: a lesson in how for many people, the act has become little more than a form of physically demanding coldness; a distancing tool.
“A brilliant gem for HBO”! crows the Hollywood Reporter.
Frank Bruni, food and TV writer for the New York Times, is less sure about Girls, the soon-to-launch American programme about four 20 something women living and shagging in New York. An excerpt from his review:
“You watch these scenes and other examples of the zeitgeisty, early 20s heroines of “Girls”
engaging in, recoiling from, mulling and mourning sex, and you think: Gloria Steinem went
to the barricades for this?”
Not having access to Girls since it won’t be aired in the UK in the near future, I will pick sides based on reviews. And in this case, I’m inclined to side with Bruni.
Girls- crucially- is no Sex and the City. Oh no. “Any comparison to the older HBO series Sex and the City is wide of the mark in numerous ways,” warns the Reporter. “Where that series had a high sheen to it [YUCK!] and was all about finding men and shoes and happiness (about in that order), and the four variations on a feminine theme came together all-too-neatly for lunch and chat sessions, Girls is a much more lo-fi, rooted-in-realism affair.”
Bruni is less swooning over the low-fi “honesty” of Girls: “The gloss of Manhattan is traded for the mild grit of Brooklyn’s more affordable neighborhoods. The anxieties are as much economic as erotic. The colors are duller, the mood is dourer and the clothes aren’t much. It’s “Sex and the City” in a charcoal gray Salvation Army overcoat.”
Dull and shabby, then, but fun to watch, I’ll bet. Less fun is the kind of sex Girls depicts. That’s dull and shabby; also a terrible, toilsome grind that has – vilely – become the norm. Indeed, what the Hollywood Reporter sees as honest and funny and sooo zeitgeist, is a sorry reflection of what sensuality has become in a sexscape increasingly polluted by porn addictions and porn reliance. More and more men can’t orgasm with actual women because their triggers are all screen-based (A New York Magazine article published last year, by a 36 year old man called Davy Rothbart, was called He’s Just Not That Into Anyone). To match what they know they’re up against, women are spending more and more of their sexual attention and efforts on “performing” right in the sack. How a woman can avoid being self-conscious in the New York beds that Girls seems to accurately describe is a total mystery.
And so to the opening scene of Girls, so distasteful to Bruni (who, born in 1964, came of sexual age in at the peak of feminist stridency). In it, the lead character Hannah, played by Lena Dunham (also the producer and writer, at just 25), is only visible from behind. She is being screwed by her “loser” boyfriend. Pleasure seems about as present for her as a herd of unicorns wielding dildos. As for so many women these days, logistics and good service as the primary concerns. “So I can just stay like this for a little while?” she asks. “Do you need me to move more?” He wants her to get it right, but in silence: “Let’s play the quiet game,” he replies.
I am reminded of an article about the effect of porn by American journalist Natasha Vargas Cooper, printed last year in the Atlantic Monthly. Retelling a sexual encounter with a well-heeled chap in an Upper East Side apartment:
“He couldn’t stay aroused. Over the course of the tryst, I trotted out every parlor trick and sexual persona I knew. I was coquettish then submissive, vocal then silent, aggressive then downright commandeering; in a moment of exasperation, he asked if we could have anal sex. I asked why, seeing as how any straight man who has had experience with anal sex knows that it’s a big production and usually has a lot of false starts and abrupt stops. He answered, almost without thought, “Because that’s the only thing that will make you uncomfortable.””
As Vargas-Cooper’s piece makes clear, we’ve arrived at a point where sex is about discomfort and porn-brokered kink. It’s a grind to get it right, and – so long as you’re real flesh and blood, being experienced in real time – for many men, you may never satisfy. So with its quirky humour and cool shades of Brooklyn grey, Girls seems to glamourise something very dark and very deep running wild in the bedrooms of the internet-accessing, choice-glutted daters of today.
What’s really bad about “the tsunami of porn” (Davy Rothbart’s words) is not only perpetuation of a seriously shady industry, rife with abuse, but the poisoning of the modern female’s sexual experience. Two-thirds of porn is watched by men. “Every guy watches porn,” shrieks sex podcaster Dan Savage in his weekly podcast – it’s one of his signature points. Porn, often violent, is how they want to get off because it’s how they get off easily. Women not only have a different relationship with porn and arousal narratives, they often have a different way of experiencing “good” sex. But for some reason, it’s the male way, ie the porn standard, that wins and so women are left trying to be as “good” in bed as Jemma Jameson. This kind of sex is not fun, and it’s not honest. Sadly, that doesn’t make it unreal.
Fairly often, studies inauspicious to single people float to the top of the media bucket: “single people are more depressed/ more likely to kill themselves/ more likely to wet the bed” — that sort of thing.
Two happen to be out right now. One, from a set of Finnish researchers, saying that people who live alone are 80 per cent more likely to be depressed than their family or commune-dwelling counterparts. The other takes the form of the most-read piece on the New York Times website, which explains results showing that the intimate bonds of love are SO life-changingly strong and vital that they have the power to rewire the brain. Apparently, when a person not in a good/secure romantic relationship was given an electric shock, they felt less pain than the person who was not in a relationship. For those out of love: it’s ow, ow, ow, all the way.
So it looks gloomy for those moving through the world unprotected by soulmates. Still, ever-fewer people in the West are hitching up, and those who are are doing so later, so we’re going to have to find other forms of replacement for mother love. Giant stuffed platipus, anyone?
