Hot Topics: Breaking News
No eggs, no bunny?
It never ceases to amaze me how much humans can make of the smallest things. This wondrous, vertiginous feeling strikes me again as my eyes catch sight of a hair bobble that clings to a large skull like a barnacle to a ship’s hull. It sits just above the neck on top of the massive back of a man who is blocking the end of the lane I am swimming in. The man is chatting with a woman who is blocking the end of the next lane. He is almost bald, but has decided to don a bobble more than twice the volume of all the hair that he has left. The thing has clearly no function. But then, it does catch my eye and so perhaps serves that function.
The lane gets crowded, the chat continues, turning becomes awkward. Perhaps I would complain if I felt keener to exercise, but today, I have already chosen the medium speed lane, I am almost glad to be inconvenienced, and retreat to the sauna. It’s the day before the bank holiday weekend.
The sauna isn’t full but it also isn’t empty. Looking for a place to sit, I encounter that distribution of unfamiliar bodies typical for liberal societies, where each tries to have enough and perhaps a little more than enough space while keeping others at a distance. Somebody needs to make space for me, but it is reasonable to expect that it will be enough if just one or two people move. No need for everybody to reposition themselves.
One of the guys who shuffle to make space for me scolds a woman while doing so. She is keeping her feet up and isn’t moved by my appearance, which I find fair enough. I hadn’t been headed towards that woman’s position. I end up sitting next to this Homo much adoniensis (not to be confused with H. adonis).
“Happy Easter!” he proclaims in that way only people in the UK can proclaim seemingly innocuous or even polite things aggressively. Meaningful silence, he looks at me.
“Happy Easter,” I oblige, “I suppose. If that’s a thing.”
“Well, is it not for you?”
“No.”
“No eggs, no bunnies?!"
“No,” and since I don’t mean to be that curt I go on to ask: “So, how do you spend your holidays?”
“Eggs and bunnies, of course!”
“Of course. Have you hidden them already?”
“Hidden one. Unless he finds it before.”
I don’t get what “unless” means but the stress is on “he”.
“He, that is your son?”
“Yes.” And then, probing: “My son is a biological man!”
“Oh, does that come as a surprise to you?” Silence. In a different tone: “Did you just find out?”
“No, the supreme court found out this week.”
“Actually, they just clarified what they take a woman to be. A man could still be anything.”
“You have done your homework.” That could be it. “Are you happy with the result?”
I want to say that I am neither happy, nor unhappy, indeed, that public reasoning isn’t about personal happiness, that any winning side should not celebrate their success with such glee that the concomitant Schadenfreude morally flaws their victory. I want to say that there is perhaps something ever so slightly odd about a more-than-half-naked man putting a half-naked woman on the spot to navigate the topic of sex and gender that the best and the brightest of today’s intellectual and cultural scene have not managed very gracefully with all their attire. Most of all, I want to say that I would be truly happy if humans wouldn’t be wasting their time, energy and other resources on such deeply divisive questions that could be easily resolved if they let themselves be inspired by the lives and practical wisdom of other animals.
The male with the bobble enters. Now everybody shuffles.
“I am happy.”
Happy Earth Day, by the way.