feminish

I’m back in England at the moment, catching up on some rain and wind.

My first stop was for a Gaby’s falafel - the best cheap vegetarian eat in central London and the one thing I can’t make in France. The owner spoke about How Things Have Changed. If I’ve got a fax, he said, he’ll send me some falafels next time I get homesick. I giggled. The world’s changing, he sighed, with genuine sorrow and mild panic, All this Terror! He thwacked the paper with the back of his hand.

Gaby’s was fuel and moral support for my British Library mission to track down the word feminist’s first appearance in print. (feminish » Feministe, feminista, feminist: origin of the word feminist ) It’s fun to strip my material self down in the locker room, a reduction to pencil, laptop and brain. I’m sure I work better coat-less, bag-less and clutter-less. I wonder whether all the rules are nothing to do with protecting books and everything to do with a secret plot to make us work harder.

My research brought no joy.

I endured a pained conversation with the librariannes, whose slow and lengthy ruminating proffered the remarkable advice: “Right, well… Hmmmm… Erm… Have you tried using The Search Called Google?” The laboured interaction coated my brain with a dull inch of dust and I began to lose the will to live, let alone the will to bang my head against the brick wall that is the British Library Readers’ Services Humanities 1 Reading Room Reference Support Desk.

Reluctant as I am to believe it, it seems the U.K. has no copies, in any format (print, digital, microfiche or photocopy) of La Citoyenne No.64 in which the word feministe apparently first appeared. Bummer.

Bibliotheque Nationale de France it is.

As I went to leave I made a faintly ridiculous criss-cross through the entrance hall of the Library, following the stone paving and steering clear of the bumpy brick floor, to avoid making too much noise with my wheely-case.

My nonchalant wheely dance was, it seems, the most alluring thing I’ve done all week. I was stopped in my elaborate tracks by a young man:

Erm, excuse me, can I just ask you a technical question?

Well, I wondered, does he want to know the specification of my wheels? Or perhaps he thinks I’m autistic and wonders why I can’t walk in a straight line? Maybe there’s a Wheeled Bag speed limit - or perhaps even a Library Emergency Terror Bye-Law prohibiting them altogether?

Can you tell me, do you actually need your glasses…?

Oh. Another Natural Vision obsessive, I thought, and began to explain how I need them to see long distances, but yes I do try to wear them less…

…Or are you just wearing them to go for the incredibly foxy, academic vixen look?

I see.

The poor soul didn’t have a follow-up line and wondered what to do with my direct, firm gaze of patient sympathy.

Some guys are flummoxed so easily.

Last Thursday…

He asked if I wouldn’t mind if he took the seat next to me. I smiled and said Of course, you’re very welcome.

With a smile like that of course I feel very welcome, thank you. Smiles like yours are rare jewels. And with a sigh, You know I’ll have to be old and dying before people stop asking me to give up my seat.

Sixty-five years old (he soon said) and tiny beads of sweat filmed his face. The train seats were quite close so I could really see the glistening sweat and really smell the coffee on his breath.

His eyes twinkled as he asked whether I lived in France and how I enjoyed learning French, lurching a little as he leaned over the arm-rest into what I’d have thought was generally recognised as My Space. I noticed the slightly-puckered texture of his nose-skin, the shiny grey hairs at his temple and the dulled, bittered sadness of his eyes, as he began to do what old men sometimes think it’s a good idea to do: flirt with a woman (he was kind to point out) young enough to be his granddaughter.

He was quite determined to teach me. About the Renaissance stone choir in Limoges, the Dark Prince, the importance of ‘vous-voyez-ing’, about oddities of English law. Did I know there was still a statute in my country allowing witches to be burned? ‘Yes’, I shocked him, ‘and there’s another compelling all men to practice at the butts every Saturday, and there’s another…’ I was interrupted and the subject was changed: it wasn’t part of the plan for his ornamented chatter to be equalled. Limoges is a Dead Town, he’s only here to see his dying mother. He’ll sell the house the very next day after she dies.

I fell into following my breath and took stock of the situation. He began to tell me he was a photographer. There’s another four hours before we’ll alight at Gare d’Austerlitz. I capture beauty. I see but I don’t touch - just like sitting next to you, a beautiful woman, on this train. He closes his eyes as he drools out his words, and his shoulder brushes mine as he points me out to myself. I don’t want to touch you, to possess. Here is a fairly inoffensive man, with a fairly unpleasant manner. He gesticulates intensely with every word, expressing himself through his upper body like a cat, stretching languidly - or like a water-bed, writhing within its sack, never still.

But his unpleasantness doesn’t make me angry, or outraged - just interested…

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