Are newspaper columnists real people?
I sometimes wonder what this column would look like if it was written somewhere else, not on a small, Mediterranean island where everybody knows everybody and the word incognito has never had any real sway. Since I am still travelling I have read some of its equivalents in the Irish and British press, and wow, what a deep range of subjects. It is quite interesting to observe the trend of role swapping between female and male columnists in almost every possible aspect. While women focus on subjects of sexual freedom and regular changes of partners, men like writing on a domestic bliss and having more and more children. The women’s columns are called Sleeping Around or Not a Bridget Jones’ Diary. The men’s titles I don’t even remember. The raunchiest image described in one of them was of a friend of the author, naked, totally drunk and with a Swedish blonde babe on each of his knees. But if you think that the columnist said he approved or envied you are completely mistaken. He placed the Swedes versus a pram filled with his twins and wrote how much more content he felt pushing it around a supermarket while shopping with his other half.
Hello, am I dreaming? Or maybe since I live on a small, traditional still macho-oriented Mediterranean island I didn’t see it coming? Yes and no, I guess, are both the correct answer. In Dublin I stayed with a couple of young successful academics; PhDs from Oxford, good jobs, two small children. But the wife’s job is more high-powered. So if one of the kids is sick it is the father who stays at home, takes care and cooks and cleans.
“Is he an exception or are all the men in Ireland like this nowadays?” I asked the woman. She shrugged her shoulders. “Frankly,” she said, “as far as I know all our friends have similar arrangements. Having children is so exhausting I don’t think the women would stay if their husbands didn’t help them. We don’t need them so much any more so they have to work harder on keeping us with them.”
The day after I left for London, where I stayed with a single woman friend. Again successful, well-educated, attractive. But if my friends in Ireland somehow at least fit the bill she didn’t. I asked her about her sex life and she admitted she hadn’t any. Going out? Not really. Flirting? There is nobody to flirt with. “Most of my friends are married,” she said finally. “Have children. Are busy. We have different interests, unfortunately.”
Next morning I woke up in her sitting room and looked at the paintings on its walls. On the left of the fireplace was a study of a sleeping pig, on the right a portrait of my friend’s French grandmother. I sat in bed and wondered why she doesn’t follow the newspapers’ example and make her life more in accord with the columns of sexually liberated London IT girls. And then I remembered that the IT girls usually write about having sex with some sort of Pete Doherty equivalent or avant-garde jobless poets for whom they have to pay bills. Nothing the size of Bill Clinton, Profumo, emperor Hirohito. And definitely nobody real.
“I have always thought one day I will get married, have children and will be well-taken care of,” was another of my friend’s confessions. “Scary,” I thought. The woman can support herself hundred per cent, has good profession, just moved to a more expensive house. And she still wants somebody to take care of her as well?
I jumped out of bed and started making phone calls to people I haven’t seen for years.
“Hi darling, yes it is me, yes I am in London, listen, do you know anybody who sleeps around, please? No, no, I don’t want Paris Hilton, and Donald Trump is not a good idea either. Somebody normal. Somebody you know, your neighbour, for example. But not a student. A woman in her middle thirties. With experience. Who does it because she likes it. Because she is emancipated. Because she doesn’t need anything else from a man.”
Well, it is 24 hours later and the search is still on. So if you know anybody suitable, please let me know. The paper will forward any information. I am simply looking for a woman who likes sleeping around and doesn’t want anything from a man.
