Monday, October 15, 2007

Labor

In her really weird and often totally pointless diaries, Anais Nin talks a lot about her need to take care of people, particularly boys. When men come to her hungry, she bakes. She's a really self-aggrandizing diarist, so although she "berates" herself for her lapses into anti-feminism, it's clear that she enjoys giving her fucked-up Parisian artist friends money when they run out of it.

I've been thinking about the perversity of this pleasure a lot. I like it too. I just made coffee for my boyfriend and one of my best male friends while they did some shit on the computer. I make dinner for my boyfriend all the time. But there is a difference between the way I like feeding boys and the way my grandmother does: for her, it's totally normal and self-evident. For me, it's always seemed like an indulgence, a novelty, and a gesture at the kind of thing people do when they're grown up. Except that I am grown-up. I live with a twenty-two-year-old boy, and I am twenty-three.

Anais always treats it like a romantic novelty, too. You picture her sitting there in her poorly insulated room in Paris, alone, writing erotica to make ends meet (though she really finds it vulgar, ordinary), and then there's a knock on the door. It's Jacques, her destitute artist friend, and his clothes are full of holes. She sits him down, brews him coffee, and then darns his socks while he sits there. And of course the conversation is scintillating--they're intellectual equals!--but she is definitely the one darning his socks.

My appreciation for history is damaging in this way. You want me to mend that hole in your pants? Sure! I can only imagine how charming I'll look doing it. I will put the glass of wine on the table, pick up the pants, pull through the needle.

2 comments:

Nicole said...

Typo: ordinary, I think you meant "ordinarily"-

Today in English class we discussed the end and the whole of A Lost Lady. Some people called Mrs. Forrester pathetic and scummy, and others felt bad for her.

She wonders at one point, while talking to Niel, if men were beginning to like when women do the same things they do. For example smoke cigars after dinner.

It was nice to see what you had underlined, what phrases you liked.

Unknown said...

I AM COMMENTING.

So, I actually think about this a lot. Both specifically about taking care of other people, and just more generally trying to figure out Why You Do Things. Are you just being manipulated by the system? Or do you really like to do them? And does it change stuff if the people receiving your attention are expecting you to do it? I think about this most often in relation to shaving my legs--for real. Cos that's something so small, almost, that no one really cares, but actually, it's the absolute most hardest thing to convince boys or girls to think about.