these days i don't like being asked what i am reading, & i don't like being asked about my tattoos. especially the big piece on my back, which is so obviously a huge piece of text that i wonder, what, do these strangers in t j maxx expect me to recite the whole thing? i've started saying "it's a long story" which was meant to be you know tongue-in-cheek (a long text! get it! a long story!) but now the words just come out exhausted & curt.
i've never liked being asked what i am reading. in general the person doing the asking is a non-reader, for which read non-obsessive-reader, & i always feel that being asked about the book in my hand is this kind of weird exoticism. how does the other half, the reading half, live? there must be something to these objects we are constantly carrying & whose company we constantly prefer to yours.
this does not make sense, this is off the cuff, a bit raw, but still.
tattooed people will get good answers to their tattoo questions provided their own tattoos are not, say, sports mascots or the tasmanian devil. fellow obsessive readers will get good answers to their questions about the book in my hand.
but anyone, at any time, can come up & ask me about vaginas, & then just try to shut me up.
subjects on which i am expansive:
vaginas & vulvaswhy it is okay to end plenty of sentences with prepositions, cf german separable-prefix verbslaw & orderave (who will be two next month) & her amazing grasp of englishhow you, the listener, & i could benefit from being on what not to wear
