Darlings, so good to be back, though you never know with me. Not much has changed since I kicked off this blog in 2006, except the dramatis personae of moments. Old foes have swanned away or waned while others stay in post like stuck turds before strike of prunes - Francis Wheen at Private Eye, Camilla Long and India Knight at The Sunday Times, et al. My ex-permanent fiancee Molly Parkin still reigns in Chelsea but we are no longer an item or even an 'item'. Duncan Fallowell is awaking to the joys of electronic publishing - and where is Roger Lewis? I must get another story out of him, Farah Damji is now on the run in Ireland, eluding an arrest warrant - I had no idea she stalked ex-fucks or rejectionist fucks and am astonished people still fall for her self-laundering campaigning scams. Give yourself up poppet and place yet another burden on the public purse.
The big theme du jour (for five more minutes) is gender fluidity. Naturally, Madame Arcati is ahead of the curve. Back in 2006 and onwards, a number of readerly cocks and cunts asked Madame who she really was, not just the identity behind the living legend, but her sex. It was noted that there was a certain "aggression" in my prose, out of kilter with the scented female stereotype in plaid skirt, which could only jar in the minds of those yet to sample Julie Burchill's work. I seemed butch yet decorous of form and awfully capable on a bicycle. And of course I commune with the dead and the 'dead' - such as Jonathan King who frankly should be knighted. The preoccupations of the playground never really entirely leave us - all too apparent in the media and now social media.
I defy categorisation in the way angels cannot be sexed, even if their names suggest a cock or cunt or both. I belong to your cultural dreams, dear; a figment of someone's imagination, dashing up and down the gender-labelling theremin without touching, posing as this or that depending on intent or whim. Yes, I am a self-identified idea - this is what a self-identified idea looks like. Moi.
Now run along and play boys and girls or b*ys and g*rls in your homes and offices, making a cult of your genitalia, whether cis, trans or cobblers. Fantasy has its place, such as here. But not there for the most part.
2 comments:
Quite so. Madame Arcati is oracular. 'Had I been born crested and not cloven', said Elizabeth R 1 to her advisors, 'you would not dare speak to me thus.' They'd have been daft as brushes not to have been more careful after that. A literary agent suggested I had done a brave (aka potentially commercially foolhardy thing?) writing a novel first person male when I am not of the crested variety. Well, so what, I was communing with my inner male, and as Walt suggested, we all contain multitudes, and it doesn't just mean bacteria.
You are so right to acknowledge the inner multitudes. The outer world strives to turn us all into cliches.
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