I have said this before. Well, I have said many things before. But I have said that when you're a woman living with a woman and you used to live with a man -- a man that you love (and all of this complicated by the fact that he died) -- you will be judged. And I mean judged in a way that's apparent. Gay women will shun you or keep a healthy distance because you're not truly one of them. Straight women will be friendly, but not as inclusive as they were when you were wholly straight. (This also applies to women who are bisexual, whether they know they're bisexual or not.) And gay men who used to adore you because, when you were straight, they saw you as someone who could bolster them the way their mothers and other straight girlfriends did, now shun you because you have fallen to the back of the Can't-help-me? No thanks, I'm not-interested file.
Now I can think of a hundred people I know to whom none of this applies, and you know who you are: affectionate, consistent, easy going, compassionate, tender, fun-loving, serious, perceptive, couldn't care less about anyone's sexuality (past present or future). I am not, and I am never, talking about you. And in fact, today, I am not talking about anyone in the first paragraph either...which is kind of my point.
First of all, let me say (and who's trying to stop me?) that in general I love Toronto. There isn't enough space on the page for me to elucidate, except to repeat that this is one of the friendliest cities in which I have lived.
But today I want to talk about a Torontonian trait that drives me mad.
Despite all of the people who couldn't give a rat's rump if a person is gay or straight or somewhere in the middle, there are too many intellectual snobs in this city: Too many people for whom warm and genuine praise is anathema: Too many people who, if you tell them how lovely they look, think you're a vulnerable or inauthentic flake: Too many people who need to let you know where they've been, what they've seen, where they've travelled and who they can name -- and who will shudder if you ask what they do to make their living. (Apparently decent people don't ask questions like that, even if by telling someone where you work you are opening up the relationship to a thousand new and exciting conversations.)
As I said, I mean that nice people are behaving this way. People who would never see you hungry or in serious trouble or left out in the cold. People who respect all manner of religions, ethnicities, backgrounds, and colours. People who work hard, raise children, volunteer, give money to charities. People who would be horrified to hear the word snob and their names uttered in the same sentence. People who would shoot themselves in the foot, in fact, if they thought that they were being unkind.
I'm not sure what it is.
Perhaps the city's too big for people to feel emotionally safe and secure. Maybe five million inhabitants make an individual feel as it there is no point in telling anyone anything personal because who really cares? Perhaps in a city this size everyone feels -- or becomes -- entirely dispensable, so that if Person A doesn't measure up in all things desirable, Person B is living right around the corner and available to apply.
I hate to sound flip. It's one of the things I least like in a person. Flip is so easy. But some days I can't help myself, especially when I have gone out into the world in a warm and friendly way and come home feeling gut-punched by well-intended people because I have used the wrong word or didn't know what President Obama said or can't understand the structure of taxes (or even how to talk about taxes) or haven't gone anywhere 'special' in the last forty years or don't have a solidified career and don't care if I make a great deal of money and can't sky dive or golf or para sail or snowshoe or read a Japanese menu or dissect great art or decipher a bar of music or make extra dry martinis with my eyes closed.
And God forbid I should actually answer someone who asks, "Your mother died when she was how old? And in what way, did you say?" No, you have to keep things tidy. And intellectually stimulating. But not too emotional, and always aware that by almost every other standard you have already come in well past fourth place.
It makes me feel rotten, inside and out, as if a thousand termites lived on my tongue and bumble bees had gouged out my eyes. It makes me want to run and hide away in the countryside with quiet neighbours who bake pies for a living and do all of their laundry by hand. And it makes me feel glad that I can't answer their questions or satisfy their notions about why I might care what kind of day they have had -- which has little or nothing to do with their stock market portfolios or the superior quality of the hybrid vegetables they have growing in their illustrious backyards.
Speaking of rank, I'm with Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
