on a second self

There’s a lot of hubbub on the femmy internets about “women writing”…queue jezzie and salon and so forth…and before you crease your brow in bewilderment about who would call a woman writer a woman writer in 2008, recall that this is all in response to SATC:TM bursting onto our small town screens in clouds of urbane fairy dust, not to mention it’s premiere in the glacially cold epicenter of it’s production: New York, New York. The debate is more along the lines of whether the syrupy narration by C Bradshaw is as intolerable as the sound of someone biting their acrylic nails than whether “women writing” is of greater quantity or quality than evah.

I’ve never been to NY. My fair lady M-L-T went in April and came back with skinny jeans and some killer lines from Legally Blonde: The Musical. My naughty peer Kittentits went in March and came back with plunging necklines in proletariat jersey and a sneering critique of The Hipster Party. I am afraid to go not because of sexual crime rates and racial divides and grimy rat-infested subway lines, but because if I go to Manhattan I promise you I won’t ever leave.

Used to be I blew every red cent I earned in my idyllic job as a low-level bioethics ponderer to fly myself and the mini poodle home every long weekend, drink the local beer and get doused with the testosteronic sputum of the townie lads. My romanticization of the local wolf/woodsman chimera long ago dissolved in the wet blankets they’re doubly swaddled by…so I’ve taken to monthly trips back to a most accessible metropolis for the health-sector-swarmers like myself. TORONTO.

It is the phallic architecture. It is the dapper metro strangers and the once-overs. And yeah, it’s the latest and greatest medicine from the grandest grand dames of the white coat. But mostly it’s that I can go a minute and a half without being identified and forced into small talk. Or I can shop until my heels break off. And then I can meet someone who is bright as infrared and get knocked about by their wit over gin in the sunshine.

For all Dr S and I nostalgically dreamed of the lazy hours and maritime sea breezes and long taking of liquored-up coffee, there was a lot more pleasure in the cosmo life. It was so incredibly self-centred. My knickers weren’t all knotted up about local sexual health access disparities and I worked with winking wrinkle-less brainiacs, sneered at professional wear that wasn’t low-cut and sealed every workday with happy hour. I never, ever wore a bicycle helmet. Scandal.

What perplexes me now is why New Yorkers need to blog so much. What’s with all the narcissistic semi-anonymous “women writing” in New York City? Isn’t the pleasure of a city that disowns you enough? Your displaced reflection in the shiny skyscraper? Do you really need a second self, a wordy identity, when you are blessed with an environment that is equal parts threatening political boxing ring and anonymous sexual play pen?

I kid!
I write!
I book a ticket…YYZ