Dr. Metablog

Cishet

We watched a Netflix series called Feel Good. I suppose that the series title must be taken ironically, because throughout the first two seasons, not one character seemed to feel even slightly positive or healthy. Just about everyone was miserable -- their unhappiness usually linked to romantic or more specifically sexual dissatisfaction. The program introduced many more eccentric varieties of coupling and frustration than I, a vanilla heterosexual, would have imagined. The main character, Mae Martin, played by Mae Martin, is a boyish lesbian; her on-again, off again affair with a womanly young lady is the focus of the story. Lots of obstacles both personal and social stand between the two women and the achievement of genuine happiness. Let's hope that they can figure it all out and find love at long last -- or at least by the end of Season 3. 

There was one scene that I found to be particularly curious and troublesome. A group of teachers assemble for a meeting, but before taking up business, every one of the participants reveals or defines his or her own sexuality. One young woman, surely the least glamorous of the set, refers to herself as "cishet." I didn't catch the word as spoken but fortunately we had the subtitles engaged and I was able to read the word, although in reading I pronounced it to myself as if the sh were a digraph for the lingual palatal fricative as in shut or shun. But I investigated the new word "cishet" -- and sure enough it exists and has become a feature of our contemporary culture. It's "cis" as opposed to "trans" which means not "across" but "this side" -- as the Romans referred to Gaul as either cisalpine and transalpine. In this coinage, "cis" refer to a person who accepts the gender designation assigned at birth by the appearance of one's genitals. "Het" is simply a truncation of heterosexual." "Cishet" therefore means someone who is unambiguously either male or female and is attracted to persons of the opposite sex.

Wow, that's me. After all these years of just thinking I was an ordinary guy, I now discover that I have a designation. I have a community, at tribe, perhaps even an interest group. Hey, I belong,

But I think that it's mighty odd and even oppressive that members of a school community, or any community, would feel that it is necessary or advisable to announce their gender classification before getting down to the business of the day. Shouldn't such information be allowed to remain private. If I want to be cishet, it's nobody's business but my own. But perhaps such formal revelations don't happen in real life -- only in satirical TV series. I sure hope so. 

Not so for Mae Martin, the first paragraph of whose biography reads "Mae Martin is a Canadian-born comedian, actor, and writer based in England. They wrote and starred in the Netflix comedy series Feel Good." So it appears that "she" is a "they" which in current modish jargon doesn't mean that she's plural but signifies that she feels inadequately represented by the simple and specific feminine pronoun. I can understand her motive, but frankly "they" confuses me and sticks in my ear. I appreciate its value as a statement of resistance to the "hetoro-normative" -- but by golly "they" sure throws a spanner into the grammatico-normative works. It would be good if English had a set of singular pronouns that are as gender indistinct as "they," but it doesn't, and to hijack the plural "they" and turn it into a singular is an awkward and I hope ephemeral innovation.  

Sometimes I receive communications from people who are much more up to date than dear old dad -- letters that are signed in the traditional way but to which is subjoined, "My pronouns -- "he his," or "she her hers" (or "they them their"). This habit, I suppose, clears the air and perhaps forestalls some embarrassing or awkward moments, but again, seems unnecessarily revelatory. It's limiting and partial. It seems to me to declare that such guys and gals were acting in the parochial interest of their own tribe or constituency -- much as if everyone appended to his or her name his own religion or nationality. I'm not happy with this innovation. Although it might seem progressive, it is in my opinion ultimately dangerously reactionary.

Therefore I am not so current that I would include my pronouns on any letters that I write. But I would like to append my adjectives,

Yours very sincerely,

Vivian de St. Vrain

(My adjectives:  "wise, upstanding, formerly debonair.")

Certified Dialogue Transcribed Verbatim from Real Life

Telephone conversation with an eighty-two year old cousin. 

"Evreryone down here, all they ever talk about is their pains, their doctors, their diets, their diseases.  Now I have something to talk about.  For years I went to this doctor, maybe forty years, he's almost as old as I am  Every time I go into see him, with a sore knee or pains in the chest or whatever, he'd look at it, and he'd say, 'what can you expect at your age?  You're lucky to be alive.'  I'd go in with a sore throat.  He'd say, 'Can you swallow. So what it hurts. You're too old to worry.' If I had a headache, he'd say, 'whatever happens, happens.  You're old, enjoy the day.' Finally he retired. He took a job as a dance instructor on a cruise ship. I'm not kidding. He leads exercises or something. So I went to a younger doctor. He listens to me breathe, pokes around a bit, puts me in the hospital, and now I have three stents." 

Nineteenth-Century Vehicles Yet One More Time

In order to illustrate the precarious social standing of Mr. Smouch, who takes Pickwick into custody for debt, Dickens described his carriage as neither one thing or another.   

"The vehicle was not exactly a gig, neither was it a stanhope.  It was not what is currently denominated a dog-cart, neither was it a taxed-cart, nor a chaise-cart, nor a guillotined cabriolet;  and yet it had something of the character of each and every of these machines.  It was painted a bright yellow, with the shafts and wheels picked out in black, and the driver sat, in the orthodox sporting style, on cushions piled about two feet above the rail.  The horse was a bay, a well-looking animal enough;  but with something of the flash and dog-fighting air about him, nevertheless, which accorded both the vehicle and his master."

The original readers of Pickwick Papers would have known exactly what is meant by a "guillotined cabriolet."  I suspect that there's a joke there, but the joke has perished.  I certainly don't get it.  

Is there also joke in "bright yellow?"  What is the usual color of a gig or stanhope?

There might be all kinds of jokes in the following list of socially-crepuscular horsedrawn vehicles, none of which precipitate hilarity, but of which the sum amuses me greatly:  barouche, basket carriage, berlin, britchka, brougham, buckboard, buggy, cabriolet, caleche, cariole, carryall, chaise, chariot, clarence, concord wagon, coupe, croydon, curricle, cutter, daumont, dearborn, dennet, diligence, dog-cart, fiacre, fly, fourgon, four-wheeler, gig, go-cart, governess cart, hansom, herdic, jaunty car, jersey-wagon, kibitka, landau, patache, phaeton, pill-box, post-chaise, rockaway, shandrydan, shay, sociable, spider-phaeton, spring-van, stanhope, sulky, surrey, T-cart, telyezhka, tilbury, tarantass, trap, troika, victoria, vis-a-vis, wagonette, and wurt. 

My New Career

Ever since I retired a few years ago, friends and relations have been asking what I intend to do with the rest of my life. It's time to start on a new career, and after much deliberation, I've decided to fulfill a lifelong dream. I've always had the soul of a power forward;  now I'm going to make it happen. With this blague entry, I declare my eligibility for the NBA draft.

Let me confess:  I don't expect to be a lottery pick. There's too much college talent and too many 7-foot Lithuanian teenagers. High second round is what I aspire too.  I might even have to play a year or two in a European league to sharpen my game -- no problem. 

I figure that to play in the NBA, a guy needs three things: the game, which I have; the attitude, which I certainly have; and the body, which I am working on. 

Let me point out that at 5' 10 1/4"  (formerly 5' 10 3/4") I am a full five inches taller than Earl Boykins. Plus I can get into the air higher than Yao Ming; I'm a better three point-shooter than Shaquille O'Neal; and I'm a more consistent at the charity stripe than Ben Wallace. Those are some big names there. Not only that, I'm a better interview than anyone in the league past or present--even better than Sir Charles himself. I'm a team player. I don't need to play 48 minutes;  I don't need to take the game-winning shot. On defense, there's not a player in the league whose flopping will be more authentic. 

Because I've lived a more-or-less bookish life, my body is still in tiptop shape. No gimpy knees or repaired Achilles tendons or fused vertebrae. True, the A-fib could be a problem down the road, but I don't imagine that the apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, of which I have the merest tad, will hold me back in the slightest. 

To the club owners and general managers who are reading this blague entry -- let me point out that I appeal to an entirely different demographic than players now in the league. Until now, there was no one to be a "spokesman" for Beltone hearing aids or Avodart or AARP. Untold, untapped commercial opportunities waiting to be seized!!

I've been running this idea by my friends and family for the last few weeks, and I'm sorry to say that there's a lot of ageism and size-ism and negativity out there.  Let's leave that skepticism behind us! I'm ready to roll! I just have to decide on the appropriate tats.   

(For an update on this subject, read more here.)   

An Overheard Anecdote

We were flying Frontier from DC back to Colorado. Two old guys (old, but younger than I) were swapping stories. Here's one. "Rosie and I were at a hotel in Vegas, in bed.  About one in the morning, we hear a hooker knock on the door across the hall.  'Anyone want a little action.' No answer. Then, sure enough, she knocks on our door. 'Want some action?'  Rosie says, 'Move on, honey, I'm working this room.'" 

Good dialogue. 

I assume that Rosie is the wife.  But the story, at least to my tired old ears, has a slightly different valance if she's a date, a business associate, or a mistress.

Quintessence of Motherhood

A friend, a retired nurse, was keeping watch when her ninety-plus-year-old mother was about to breath her last. The mother, who had not been coherent for some days, was either unconscious or sleeping deeply when she suddenly roused herself, looked closely at the daughter, uttered the words "you need rouge," and died. 

This story is self-explanatory but nevertheless I feel compelled to embark on a course of no doubt supererogatory explications. The mother expresses a variety of emotions: some positive, some not so good.  Primarily she is affectionate and protective. She wants her daughter to take care of herself and be her best, so she proposes a practical cosmetic enhancement. But at the same time, she is intrusively judgmental, because the statement "you need rouge" clearly finds the daughter deficient and in need of cosmetic enhancement.

 The mother is also impolite -- but only in the way that people who know each other intimately can sometimes be unmannerly. This particular mother wouldn't speak nearly so frankly to anyone in the world but her own daughter. In addition, she's competitive. "You need rouge" means not only "you're pallid, you need help," but also hints at "I never needed rouge."

It's a humorous anecdote, because it's about the eternal continuity of mothering.  Even at the moment of death, the mother remains entirely and unequivocally maternal. The phrase "you need rouge" also makes us smile because it displaces other last words  -- words of wisdom or serenity or love -- that we might anticipate or for which we might hope.

And what about the daughter?  Was she, or should she be, pleased, resigned, offended, amused?   

An Overheard Conversation

I was at Peet's Coffee in Alameda, California this morning, drinking hot chocolate and reading Lord of the Flies. There were three retired guys a couple of tables away, chatting. I overheard the following story:

"He was a lawyer for an intellectual property firm--a big-time litigator. He met this woman and fell in love with her. She wasn't at all interested. She owned a window-washing company. He quit his job and went to work as a window washer so that he could be close to her."

That's as much as I heard, but I would have liked to know what happened next. It's possible that the lawyer's perseverance was rewarded. The window-washer lady came to understand that he loved her so much that he was willing to give up his career to follow her. Eventually, she relented, married him, and together they developed the biggest window-washing company in San Francisco. But then again, perhaps she realized that he wasn't really in love -- in fact, he was one of those obsessive stalkers that regularly appear in horror movies. So she was forced to escape by selling her company, taking a new name, and moving to Pocatello. He continued to wash windows, and started to specialize in eighty-story buildings. One day, he failed to hook his belt properly and fell. No one ever knew if it was an accident or suicide. Meanwhile she was happy in Idaho, where she married a mild-mannered lawyer.

Or --another thought -- he forgot all about her but found that he liked washing windows more than corporate law. But one day, he was hooked outside a skyscraper window, and looked inside and there she was at a meeting. And he fell in love all over again. 

February 13:  I now think it most likely that he forgot all about the lady, moved to rural Connecticut, changed his name to Seymour Glass, and became a recluse who lived a house with very clean windows.