A Dyke A Broad #11
Laundry, Covid, Rugby, and Broads, and a little Good News because it's the holidays and I feel obligated.
Happy Day After Solstice and Everything Else!
There’s so much I want to write about, but I feel like crap. So I’ll keep it shortish. The Girl and I both got sick as dogs over the weekend, and thought it was the beginning of Covid because I’d gotten stuck in the laundry a couple of days earlier with a bunch of maskless idiots.
Thankfully, the pharmacy a couple of blocks away does tests even on Sundays, so we got them and were negative. It took just 10 minutes and was free. My only quibble is that the young woman in her orange space gear stuck that gizmo so far up my nose I was convinced she scraped the bottom of my eyeballs, but who can complain when there’s a gorgeous sunset and your certificate from the majestic French Ministry of Solidarity and Health reads NÉGATIF?
I’ve recovered enough to make a few notes, and to climb on the ladder and hang a few lights in our apartment where they stayed in the shape of a Christmas tree for about an hour, before the tape fell off and it became decidedly more Caspar like. Use your imagination.
Laundry, Covid, Rugby, and Broads
Because I hold my grudges, and I’m still pissed about the sniffles and scratchy throat (and fear), a few more words about the laundry episode. After all, I used to kind of like going there. Largely for the humans. Who now ruin everything.
A few months B.C. (Before Covid) I chatted with a woman from Turkey washing a lot of bedding because her in-laws were coming in for a wedding. She told me all about the feast she was making. When we lived briefly near the Place des Fêtes, a Middle Eastern guy, from Syria I think, gave me his take on the problems there, along with a movie review, and some laundry tips (that I didn’t need). I met my friend Al Baltrop at the First Ave laundry at the corner of East 2nd Street in New York where I used to get article ideas by eavesdropping on the neighborhood regulars.
Now, though, I’m the heavy, the hyper-vigilant, very un-French, un-discrete bitch asking everyone to put their masks on. I have to grit my teeth to do it, but I do, because I’m more afraid of Covid than the men I’m usually talking to, “You insist?” they sneer. “Oui, s’il vous plait.” I’m very polite though I want to scream, “Yes, I fucking well insist, you fucking fuck.”
Except for last Thursday. It was empty when I put my stuff in the wash, but when I came back to move it to the dryers, there were two men maskless and drinking. That’s one over my limit in a city where people occasionally get punched for asking others to mask-up, so I tried to hold my breath while I transferred my stuff from machine to machine, and waited outside during the forty minutes it took for the clothes to dry. I especially didn’t say anything when a third joined them, then a fourth.
When I went back in for the last time, the four guys were still there, drinking, and talking, filling the air with cigarette smoke. Because I could smell it, I was inhaling whatever was in their dirty, disgusting lungs while I dumped my dry clothes in my laundry bag. One smiled at me a little sheepishly, knowing they were breaking a ton of rules. But it still freaked me out. Not just that I was afraid of Covid. But of them. Those four, pathetic marginal men.
Times like that, I wish I were immense and invulnerable. Or at least felt that way, instead of extremely conscious of how small and female and foreign I am. Like I’m wearing a giant kick-me sign.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so intrigued by women’s sports, rugby especially. The first time I saw it was in an empty sports bar on rue Mouffetard. I just sat there in front of a midday pint with my mouth hanging open. It was a sleepy August in 2014 and the Women’s World Cup of Rugby was going on. We’d persuaded them to put it on a couple of their TVs because the place was empty and France was hosting it (not that you’d know from the news). And I remember this one moment when a woman just picked up another—twice as big as her— and tossed her to the ground.
Up until then, I had no idea at all that women could be that strong. Really fit, yes. Quick, absolutely. Female endurance is legendary. But that sheer display of strength and ferocity? Nope. I was screaming to the Girl, “Did you see that?! Did you see that?! Oh my fucking God.”
I hadn’t known what female bodies were capable of. Both of doing and enduring. The one girl tossed to the ground picked herself up off the grass like it was nothing. Ready to do it all again if it got her team across the line. It was magnificent. She was magnificent. They all were. Though I don’t like to think about what their knees will be like at fifty.
That’s one marker of change anyway. How women’s sports now get covered in the French news. There’s a cable chain that’s actually figured out they can make money showing women’s soccer. Even network TV broadcasts games sometimes when French women are playing in a tournament. Sunday, they showed the final of a European women’s handball thing. (Sadly, France lost ). But it was like, for at least an hour or so, my half of the population actually existed.
Pro tip? We exist all the time.
And because it’s The Holidays, after all, here’s some more…
Good News
Pakistani women managed to keep Kanwal Ahmed’s taboo-busting Oprah-like show on the air, in which she shares advice on sex, violence… and cooking.
A social media star has been dubbed Pakistan’s Kickstarter Oprah after her groundbreaking digital talk show in which women talk about taboo issues such as marital rape, cyberbullying and femicide was saved by fans.
Filming started this week on the new series of Conversations With Kanwal, in which presenter Kanwal Ahmed, 31, sheds light on issues that are rarely talked about within families, let alone in the public arena, after fans raised more than five million rupees (around £23,000) in less than a week using the online crowdfunding platform.
It was a remarkable achievement as the majority of fans were women living in Pakistan, where fewer than 30% are employed, so are often financially dependent on their spouses and don’t have their own bank accounts.
Also, the inimitable Angela Merkel is still out there taking names and kicking ass.
And… the radio show, La Clé des Ondes, in Bordeaux, did a nice broadcast proclaiming “Se dire lesbienne c'est une déclaration politique” “Calling yourself a lesbian is a political act.” Good for them.
Merry Everything to Everybody!
Snifflingly yours,
Need a 3 Kings present? Consider Eating Fire.