yourself and no-one’s offended, there’s no-one to mind, no-one
cares. How modern to love living alone for that. For no-one to care.
Maybe I should get a cat, become one of those cat people.
‘‘The politics worries me. You really like living alone?’’ Helen asked
me; she was really asking, too; she was about to try it for the first
time, pushing 40. My reply would have been the New Spinster’s
orthodoxy: your own space, the freedom blah, blah. ‘‘It sounds
unnatural’’ she confessed ‘‘not’’ she added hastily, for she had
postmodern orthodoxies of her own ‘‘not that there’s any such
thing as ‘natural’ of course.’’
Some time after, we talked again about living alone. She doesn’t like
it. I was trying to explain why, after all (loneliness etc
notwithstanding) I still prefer it. Saying things about the demands of
writing, the jealous guarding of privacy (‘‘not that I have any
secrets’’) and the commune’s demand for the priority of the
communal good, whereas my priority is myself. All the roundabout
and complicated ways I was really saying ‘‘I am obsessive, moody,
self-indulgent. I do not wish to change nor to see anyone put up with
that.’’
Living alone is about not living with men. People tell me:
—We were talking about you. We can’t understand why you’re
alone.
Usually they say, the trouble with you.The trouble with you, they say:
—You haven’t met your match in a man yet.
—You want something that doesn’t exist. You want too much. You
have to make allowances.
—You appear so remote and unapproachable.
—You obviously don’t want a relationship.
—You want a good relationship but there are far too many other
women like you.
—You meet a good man then you act like a smart-arse, a real pain.
I’ve seen you. It makes me sick.
My greatest secret is that I’m really happy, doing just what I want to.
This is a secret from myself just about all the time.Well, I get gloomy
and it’s like all the time. Other times my thoughts delight me
dreadfully. Most of the time what I’m thinking is how things could be
better.
The invert, the cross-dresser, the fictocritic 197