Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

My personal essay "Saddles in the Kitchen" has been published by Redivider. Here's the opening paragraph:

In the 1970s, my family lived all over New Brunswick before settling down deep in the Appalachian hills of the Acadian forest. Every summer, we journeyed to Newfoundland to visit Dad’s family. I have snippets of memories from my infancy and early childhood. I recall being a baby on a plane with a smoking section, hoisted up to look over the rails of an icebreaker ferry called the William Carson. It sank by the time I turned six. We drove through a place called Blow Me Down where Dad told me the Tabletop Mountains were flat on account of the fierce wind. I camped in a frigid tent on the Avalon Peninsula and peeked through the tent flap to watch a bull moose swim across a moonlit lake ringed by dark conifers. I saw icebergs float like white mountains off the coast of St. John’s. I witnessed herds of Newfoundland ponies running free, the last of a vanishing breed marking the end of an era. I remember being held in my Inuk grandfather’s arms in the passenger seat of a car while he pointed out a waterfall to me. It’s my only memory of him. He died when I was two.

Read the rest here.

I had a public reading at BookFest in Waterloo Square last weekend. I chose to read my as yet unpublished short story "Sirens Don't Swim Underwater."

Kyle was sweet and recorded it for me.



I've begun some work on my next novella. I originally wanted it to be cosmic horror, but the more research I do, the more I think it might be eco-horror, because the ecological disasters of New Brunswick are way scarier than any Cthulhu-like deity. I guess I'll find out what happens. Perhaps it'll be a hybrid.

The calendar in the kitchen reminds me that it's 2021, not 2020. Sometimes, I need a reminder to maintain temporal equilibrium. Without a calendar, I might be loosed into a world with no time, losing myself somewhere between the seconds and the eons. I once caught myself dating a cheque with 1986. For a moment, I gazed at this mistake, and I was back in a pre-digital world replete with mullets, muscle cars, and the AIDS pandemic. I remembered the Cold War, getting bullied at school, and all those chickens and goats populating my barnyard. I remembered riding my pony through the forest with my collie loping along by my side. And then all those memories were puffed away like dandelion fluff in the wind, because it wasn't 1986. It hadn't been for decades.

And now here I am at the tail end of 2021, and I still haven't finished processing 2020. How am I supposed to believe it's 2022 already? With the help of a new kitchen calendar, I suppose.

I've been meaning to get around to scheduling a sleep schedule for years. I often sleep like ass, and for the past five years or so, I am frequently exhausted during the day. So this past weekend, I finally did get that sleep study done. I had a few folks asking me to do a write-up, so here you go! Of course, your experience may vary, as each place likely has its own protocols in place.

I was sent an email listing the following requirements:
- arrive in my pyjamas, ready for bed. Sleepwear must include tops and bottoms, irrespective of gender.
- bring a list of my medications
- bring my own water to drink
- shower and wash hair beforehand. No lotions should be on skin.
- brush teeth beforehand. It's not permitted onsite due to COVID safety measures
- arrive wearing a mask

When I arrived, one other person in PJs was waiting to be let in. Someone came down to greet us, give us COVID screening questions, and take our temperatures.

Then the COVID screening questions began, and I answered affirmatively to the first one: Have you had any headaches?

Upon seeing the sharp look aimed my way by the attendant, I explained that the headaches are one of the reasons I was having a sleep study done.

Here is where I make an aside about COVID screening questions. If someone has chronic health issues, these screening questions forces them to lie if they want to receive medical attention. As someone with a history of chronic IBS, migraines, post-nasal drip, and asthma who is menopausal, I have to lie for almost every question regarding symptoms. I regularly have hot flashes, nausea, headaches, lightheadedness, a runny nose, exhaustion, or a cough. That's just my life. My life reads like COVID symptoms. I would not misrepresent any sort of exposure I may have had to someone with COVID, though. And considering I am pretty much always inside my house and am not around anyone aside from my chosen family, my chances of contracting the disease are small.

After passing the COVID screening questions, we we admitted into the facility. It's an antiseptic-looking place all in shades of beige lit by fluorescent lighting fixtures. Long, narrow, labyrinthine corridors spiraled their way through the building. Doors lined both sides of the hallway. Most were closed, but through the open ones, I saw unadorned rooms with double beds. I was reminded of the time I applied for a receptionist position at a brothel, years ago. Long halls. Spartan, institutional design. Bad lighting. Bedrooms devoid of personality.

I worried that I might not be able to find the bathroom in the middle of the night. I worried more that I wouldn't be able to find my own bed again afterwards. I dropped my coat and water bottle on the chair by my bed, and decided to use the bathroom ahead of time, just in case. I was disturbed to realize that in spite of all the COVID precautions, and in spite of there being two soap dispensers, there was no soap to be had in the bathroom. I went back to my room and used hand sanitizer.

My room contained one double bed, one chair, a wastepaper basket, a head-height mirror, and a bunch of wires and tubes hanging from the wall. Directly over the bed was a domed camera, to monitor me while I slept (or tried to sleep). Two technicians came into the room. Both were wearing masks. They introduced themselves to me, and that's when I learned that I was going to be a training model. One of the people was a trainee, and I think we were still in their first few days of the job.

I was given some more paperwork to fill out, and they left me alone to fill it out. The questionnaire is flawed. It asks for specifics, like precisely how long you slept the night before, how many times you woke up during the night, what dosages of what medicines you take and at what time, etc. I only brought the names of my meds, not their dosages. I only knew how long I slept the last night because I was lucky enough to have received an Apple Watch as a Christmas present, and it tracks that stuff for me.

I brought a list of all the supplements and non-prescription medications I take, but there was nowhere on the paper where this could be recorded. Although it asked about caffeine and alcohol, and whether or not you've napped, it did not ask about cannabis, or about any controlled substances. I suspect that if someone is coked up to the eyeballs, their sleep is going to be affected by that. Considering medical records are supposed to be private, and since patients would like to know what is wrong with them, I think there should be a place to write any information along those lines.

The technicians came back after a while. I apologized for not knowing the precise times of the medications I had taken that day, and was told the dosages and times didn't matter.

I have questions about why this doesn't matter.

The senior attendant talked his way through how to attach all the various sensors, all for the benefit of his mentee. Thick gobbets of gloppy goo were applied to all the contact points on my head. I felt a little bit like I was being set up for motion capture or something, only with electrodes instead of itty bitty balls. I also felt a bit like Pinhead from Hellraiser, but when I got a chance to see myself in the mirror, I was disappointed to see I did not actually resemble a Cenobite, after all.

Pro tip: If you have long hair, wear it in braids so that it doesn't get tangled in the wires.


Most of the terms used were jargon and not especially comprehensible to a layperson. They were trying to be as symmetrical as possible with the distribution of electrodes, except when it came to my jaw. They only attached them to one side of my jaw, running down to the chin. They also attached sensors to each of my shins. Two more sensors were attached on my chest, about midway between collar bone and nipple.

(The gender essentialist explanation for this was weird. Apparently, women require a different placement than men because of breasts, and obese women may need to have the sensors instead placed on their back. I don't see why this had to be explained in a gendered context. It would make much more sense to treat each body on a case by case basis. There are lots of men with breasts, lots of women without, and plenty of obese people of any gender who would require the sensor to be placed on their backs. But yeah....)

Next came a breathing monitor which rested on my top lip and inside my nostrils. The piece de resistance was a blood oxygen monitor which clipped onto my right forefinger. I was helped to lie down on my back, and told to hold very still. Then they left the room.

Pro tip: You cannot sleep on your belly during a sleep study. You can roll from side to side, but not on your belly or everything will be a tangled mess.

I held very still and meditated with my eyes closed, because they left the lights on. I have a lot of practice with meditation, which is an extremely useful skill to have when it comes to medical procedures and testing. I recommend learning to meditate to everyone. It's a very useful skill at keeping yourself calm and relaxed. With these skills, I was able to ignore the discomfort of all the equipment attached to me.

I don't know how long I remained in that position. I didn't know if they'd forgotten about me, or if this is just the way my night was going to go. After what might have been an hour or so, I dozed off in that position.

BZZZZZLAAAATT went the intercom on the wall, and I yelped and damned near leapt out of my skin. An apologetic voice came through. Yes, they had forgotten about me.

They came back, asked me a few more questions about my usual sleep, then finally let me get to sleep for real. Kinda.

After a while, I could hear people talking loudly somewhere else in the building. It kept going. And going. And going. Finally I said, in my normal speaking voice, "You're not going to get any sleep data out of me if I can't sleep because of all the noise."

They apologized again through the intercom and said it would be over soon, and it was.

I managed to sleep through the night, being woken up once by the senior technician to correct the breathing monitor which had come out of my nose.

I was woken up around 5:30 am, and was out the door before 6. Kyle was nice enough to scrub all the glop off my head for me when we got home, and then I went back to bed and slept in until after 11.

I won't be getting any results from the test for a few weeks.

Pro tip: If you have an Only Fans account, maybe you can make some extra money with photos of yourself covered in the gloppy stuff. I called it Gluekakke. It rather looks like that, too. HA!

I entered a writing group Zoom call tonight. I signed up for it last night on a whim. It is a women's space, and although it seemed far more more femme than I am, I figured I'd give it a go. I've signed up for other sessions before which didn't sound right up my alley, and I ended up pleasantly surprised. So I spun that wheel and ended up in the VulvaVerse (not its real name).

The hostess greeted all new arrivals warmly and with a timbre to her voice which immediately raised my hackles. The more she spoke, the more my Spidey senses tingled. Something about the careful, practiced words she spoke seemed calculating. I've heard that diction before, from the lips of elders at the Kingdom Hall. I've heard them from the brothers and sisters at the Kingdom Hall when they were in God mode and speaking The Truth. I've heard that trained tone coming from my own lips, when I went from door to door as an ingenuous Jehovah's Witness kid trying to share salvation, but instead being a tool of religious colonization. I know that tone well, and I don't trust it for one minute.

And I don't know if you would trust it, either, unless you are part of the target demographic. If this were a scene in a folk horror movie, you would know that this sweet-voiced femme, with her emphasis upon the Divine Feminine, was gathering priestesses to worship the holy genitalia of mother earth. Either that, or it's an MLM selling stuff from Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop line.

I was in a chat room with a clutch of born-again vagina worshippers, and none of them knew I am not a gender essentialist.

Every time someone introduced themselves, we were instructed to hold our palms together, fingers facing upward. The symbolism of prayer position was not coincidental in this context. This is the sign of that Holiest of Holes, the ever blessed vagina.

I could feel my jaw tightening, my muscles tensing, and those moments before I would be expected to introduce myself drew ever closer. I was paralyzed by social expectations. Was I overreacting? Was it all in my head? Should I trust my instincts? I couldn't leave. It would be rude. I couldn't leave. It would be rude. I couldn't leave. It would be rude. I couldn't....

Fuck it.

Abort! Abort! Abort!

And I exited the chat room.

I feel much better now.

"Why Ancient Greece Was Awful": This was the title of a lecture I recently attended, hosted by a historical association. As a classics civilization major in university, the topic intrigued me. The lecturer introduced himself and announced that the topics he'd be covering included coarse language and sexual themes. A mother and child excused themselves. Another woman followed shortly afterward. The lecturer looked crestfallen. I attempted to assuage him. "I'm not afraid of a few swears," I said, "and I'm a classics graduate." He didn't look soothed.

He had a nervous tic where he slapped the sides of his legs simultaneously. This he did so regularly that he looked like he was trying to fly away. He put me to mind of Bubo from the original Clash of the Titans movie. It was distracting and annoying, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.

He opened by asking us to name some of the things that were great about ancient Greece.

"Olive oil," I said. Other people chimed in. "Democracy." "The Olympics." "Theatre." "Acoustics." "Art." "Marble."

He looked startled. "Yes," he said. "All of those things are great. You are doing much better than I would."

This perplexed me. How could someone lecturing on the ancient Greeks not be able to list a few positive traits about ancient Greece? Then he told us his area of expertise wasn't ancient Greece at all, but early modern English theatre (ie. Shakespeare and his contemporaries). He said he didn't actually know much about the time period aside from what he'd learned in a seminar on Athens. Now I was thoroughly boggled. Why would he be talking about something he admitted to knowing little about? This was especially bizarre considering there was a decent chance that at least half of the people in his audience had a solid education in ancient Greek history. We were at a historical conference, after all.

He told us he'd read some plays by Euripedes, who had written extensively on the disenfranchised people of ancient Greece. Now, if he'd stuck to the points of views of these characters from the plays of Euripedes, he may have had a thesis. But instead, we were subjected to what would essentially be an unplotted, unthought-out rant like you might expect to read in YouTube comments.

He said that the ancient Greeks didn't refer to their country as Greece at all, but he didn't bother telling his audience what they did refer to themselves as: Hellenes. He posited that it was acceptable to judge this culture by our current culture's standards. He then made many objectionable, if not outright incorrect, points:

• People who study ancient Greece are unusual in that they all consider ancient Greece to be the pinnacle of human existence, and they all believe the ancient Greeks could do no wrong. As a classics graduate, I honestly have never come across anyone who believes everything in ancient Greece was sunshine and roses. I mean, c'mon! They poisoned poor Socrates!
  
  
• The ancient Greeks had no sense of morality. I think it's pretty safe to presume the speaker has never heard of arete. And there are all sorts of moral virtues which crop up again and again in Greek writings: hospitality, loyalty, honour, glory, justice, wisdom, revenge on the battlefield, the importance of family, and temperance are some classic (heh) examples.
  
  
• The only ideal for men was to be a hyperaggressive, violent, rapist (such as Herakles or Zeus). This notwithstanding the high esteem with which the Greek philosophers, orators, and Homer were held. To be able to recite The Iliad and The Odyssey by heart was proof of great standing.
  
  
• The ancient Greeks were into slavery more than other cultures. Uhh....
  
  
• Slavery no longer exists in western culture. Several indignant people called him on this. He backed down somewhat, amending his statement by saying, "Ok, there are no legal forms of slavery in Western culture now." I immediately said, "Prison labour." He flapped his hands on his legs a few times, then pretended I'd said nothing at all.
  
  
• The ancient Greeks were all child molesters. While pederasty was widely accepted, in Athens, consent was more important than age. That being said, the Athenians did believe there was such a thing as too young, and too young to give consent. (More here).
  
  
• The advent of Christianity stopped pedophilia. There was a widespread "Uhhhhh...." emitted by the audience at this point. His arms flapped and flapped and he flew away to his next point without elucidation.
  
  
• The way women were treated in ancient Greece had no counterpart. Although the ancient Greeks were pretty darned misogynistic, they were certainly not alone in this regard.
  
  
• No Greek women were allowed to have jobs. At least in Rome, women could be prostitutes Roman women could do a lot more than that, but that's beside the point. But if we use that as a baseline, well, there were plenty of female sex workers in ancient Greece, including pornai and hetairai. It has been posited that the hetairai, along with being independent workers who could potentially save up enough to own property, were also intellectual elites. Highly-educated, they held their own in symposia alongside foremost Greek philosophers.
  
  
• Women were never portrayed as dominant or equal to men. Medea kicked Jason's ass, and the Amazons were a force to contend with.
  
  
  
  
• Aside from in Sparta, no women had property. The hetaira Phryne was said to be so rich that she offered to fund the rebuilding of the walls of Thebes.
  
  
• Women were completely uneducated, and there were no women writers. I immediately burst out with "Lesbos. Sappho." He flapped his hands on his pants a couple of times and just soldiered on.
  
  
• No Greek women had positions of authority. The words of the Delphic Oracle could make or break a powerful man. And despite ruling in Egypt, Cleopatra was Greek.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Greek women held no power in the home. "What about Penelope in The Odyssey?" I asked. She wouldn't have been able to hold off her suitors if she'd had absolutely no power. He slapped his legs again. "I've never read The Odyssey," he said.
  
  
• The ancient Greeks were more racist than any other culture. They definitely didn't hold a monopoly on xenophobia.
  
  
• That the ancient Greeks had no real religion. The Hellenes had religions out their wazoos. I don't even know where to begin, so here's an encyclopaedia entry on the topic: Ancient History Encylopedia: Greek Religion.
  
  
• The world became a much better place thanks to Christianity. This is a whole kettle of fish I didn't bother jumping into. There was a religious history graduate in the audience who tore him a new one in this regard, plus another audience member who called him on his obvious biases.
  
  
• That if Christianity hadn't replaced the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, Norse religions would have certainly become the religion of western civilization. Considering the inroads made by Mongols throughout Europe, I think they stood a decent chance of disseminating their religious beliefs. Not to mention there were plenty of other religions amongst indigenous peoples which could have become more influential.
  
  
• The culture of the ancient Greeks has absolutely no bearing on current religion/culture/etc. in the western world. Even Jesus Christ's name is Greek. Aside from that, we still have the Olympics, the Hippocratic oath, feta cheese and souvlaki, a rather lot of words, tragedy, comedy, iambic pentameter, and the concept of history. And on the negative side of influences, well, misogyny is a Greek word, and it sure does still exist.
  

I graduated with my classics degree way back in 1994. I could have given a better talk on the downsides of Greek history without even brushing up. Heck, I'll betcha almost everyone in that classroom could have. So why on earth didn't he talk about early English theatre instead? Then again, English drama was my other major. I just might have caught him talking another steaming pile of shit there, too.

Part two of my application for the Canada 150 ocean expedition. The topic is my vision for Canada's future. How the heck do I do this in less than 250 words without sounding like a beauty pageant contestant? Feedback is appreciated.

My vision of Canada’s future is one in which people live together in harmony with the environment. Although Canada is rich with natural resources, they are being squandered and mistreated. The old growth forests of Quebec are turned into toilet paper. Our drinking water supplies are given to bottled water companies at a pittance and sold back to us with exorbitant markups. Our waterways are being poisoned with acids so powerful that waterfowl die upon contact. Rich farmland is parcelled up into subdivisions with shoddily-constructed houses. Oil pipelines and tankers have disastrous leaks, causing irreparable harm to the soil, to the water, to the wildlife, and to us.

It is irrational that a country as rich as this one has people living with insufficient food and without potable water. It is inexcusable that indigenous people were deliberately deprived of both by the first Prime Minister and that this has still not been rectified.

We must work toward sustainability, decreasing our reliance on non-renewable resources while at the same time safeguarding and replenishing the renewable ones. We’ve shown it can be done. When the coal-powered electrical generating stations were closed in favour of alternative power sources, we removed the smog which blanketed the most populous parts of the country. We must act as custodians to the earth, and not rely upon other people to fix things we are capable of fixing. We are other people.

I worked at a crappity retail location selling knock-off Tommy Hilfiger sweaters, tiny Hong Kong women's fashions, and cheap bongs years ago. The store was in a mall, and I frequently worked the opening shift. My boss frequently set up little tests of my loyalty and competence. He hired what he called "mysterious shoppers" to check out my customer service skills. He was a strange and suspicious man.

One day, I showed up, opened the folding security doors, and was met by a scene of chaos. Pretty much the entirety of the floor was covered by heaps of plastic coat hangers--I'm talking at least a couple of hundred coat hangers. They were in tangled heaps, and there was no way the shop could be open to the public in this condition.

I hastened to tidy up the mess wondering why my boss thought it necessary to test me so. I'd pick up one hanger, and a bunch would come attached like Bizzaroland Barrel of Monkeys. I eventually got them all picked up and stashed in two giant garbage bags. The store didn't have any storage space, so I eventually stashed them in the change room. I figured that if someone wanted to try something on, I could just haul the bags out of the way.

A few hours later, my boss strolled in. He looked around the store, nodding contentedly, then said, "Good" before leaving again.

When I was in junior high, I was flat-chested. Other girls were wearing bras. Occasionally, other kids would come over to pretend they were going to snap my bra, and then they'd feign surprise that there was no bra to snap. I was mocked for my lack of a bra, and my lack of breasts.

I dreaded gym class, and getting changed. I wouldn't change in the changing area but in a bathroom stall, instead. Kids would pound on the stall doors, laughing at me. I didn't see the humour.

Eventually, my mother decided it was time I should get a bra. I was old enough. We went to a discount clothing shop somewhere and picked up a couple. One was white lace with a silly pink and green flower where my cleavage would be if I had any. The other was beige and unadorned. I was told I would need to wear these now, since I was getting grown up.

Obediently, I wore the accursed things. They were nothing but nuisances. I didn't see what purpose they served. Back in those days, I was horrified by breasts and bras. If a strap was showing at all, that was slovenly. If a blouse was sheer enough to show a hint of bra outline, that was trashy. And if a bra was textured and the texture pressed through a sweater, well, that was just gross. It was nothing more than an invitation for everyone and anyone to stare at that person's tits. And as for tailored tops which had darting for breasts? In my mind, that was obviously something only worn by harlots.

None of my shirts were sheer. I was already so ashamed of my body that I didn't wear anything like that. I had t-shirts and button-up shirts and a few thick acrylic sweaters. And now I had these horrible over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders to wear.

They didn't stay in place, of course. There was nothing to hold them in place. And so my days were spent surreptitiously hauling the elasticized torture garments out of my armpits and back down to my sternum.

The kids continued to mock me for not wearing a bra yet, and one day, one girl hauled my shirt up revealing the despicable garment. She laughed uproariously. "She's wearing a bra!" she said incredulously. She looked back at me. "Why are you wearing a bra when you don't even have tits?"

A new hell had been unleashed. On top of my regular abuse was this new one of having my shirt pulled up. The beige bra was the worst. It was given the name "pigskin" by the girls in my class.

When I finished junior high, and when I'd escaped the worst of the bullying girls, I ditched wearing bras full time. I still couldn't see the point of them. They did nothing but cause discomfort. I didn't tell Mom I wasn't wearing them, and she didn't ask. I still didn't have boobs, so they still wouldn't stay in place.

When I graduated high school, I was still as flat as a board, but I started wearing bras out of modesty. I'd taken a job as an activities counsellor at a park, and wore white t-shirts which would occasionally get soaked. I think that was the last time I wore bras on a regular basis.

I'm not exactly buxom now, but I only wear bras a couple of times a year. I still don't see the point in them, aside from making certain dressy blouses/dresses fit better. When I see articles on training bras for girls, I still can't help but wonder what exactly the training is for. Bras are not a necessary garment. Men with moobs don't wear 'em, and plenty of women around the world do without just fine (even the ones with big boobs). I don't think people should make their kids wear bras. Let it be their own choice.

When you're a kid, you know it's time to go home when the streetlights come on. I know this because of multiple self-congratulatory memes from people who think they've been brought up right, unlike kids nowadays. Well, I have a hard time relating to these sorts of memes. The streetlights didn't pull me home. Streetlights weren't exactly ubiquitous to my childhood.

When I was growing up, I didn't always have bedrooms, electricity, or plumbing. My family lived in campers and travel trailers, strangers in strange lands where the people viewed us, the aberrant interlopers, with fear and distrust. People broke into our homemade camper looking for loot we did not have, peppered our livestock with pellet guns, stole our bony old gander, and destroyed an old dory my dad was fixing up. We had to drive to a neighbouring town for potable water because the livestock wouldn't drink from nearby streams. The water was poison, and we couldn't drink from the town well. The locals polluted it with used maxi pads and other filth. We grew our own food in frigid fields. I spent hours picking and planting potatoes. I was allowed to pick out a packet of seeds for a garden row--so long as it was for food and not for wasteful things like flowers. I picked out rape seed because I thought it sounded exciting and dangerous. I was nine.

I've seen people discussing how only rich, spoiled people can afford to have horses, and I'm boggled by such a one-sided view. People who say such things must presume horses are just four-legged toys that you wear fancy clothes to ride. Perhaps they don't think Mennonites, Amish, cowboys, or seaweed harvesters are real people. Maybe they don't know that people like me have relied on horses and ponies instead of cars for transportation, or that we used pony teams to bring back wood necessary for our survival. Several of the places where I've lived were heated by wood stove. I cooked on a wood stove, too. I know soft wood doesn't burn as hot as hard wood, and if you burn wood from apple trees, it'll burn so hot the cast iron stove will glow a bright cherry red. Don't burn too much of that. It's scary.

I didn't live in a place with streetlights until I was ten, and that wasn't for very long. I lived in a campground/trailer park. We lived in a camper, all six of us: Mom, Dad, my sister, my dog, and my sister's cat. The livestock had been sold or given away. We couldn't bring the animals across the country with us. I was allowed to bring three books and two toys. There was no room for anything more.

There's no such thing as privacy when you live in a camper. There are no bedrooms. The only possible escape is a bathroom big enough for a tiny camp toilet.

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of people posting links about people living in tiny little homes: places about the size of the camper where I was squashed together with my family. People romanticize this. They say how nice it must be to not have many things, to not be materialistic, to have only what you need. Life would be so much richer. It looks so cozy.

Maybe, just maybe, if you've grown up in suburbia, or in places with large public spaces like libraries and community centres and malls where you can escape when the weather is bad, maybe then, you could fantasize about living in such a tiny space for a while. Maybe the cabin fever won't seize you harder than it did me. The closeness of space packs you in tighter and tighter, and a band of stress wraps and pulls around your chest until breathing is strenuous, your heart pounds like war drums in your ears, and all you want to do is run and run, gasps of burning air stabbing down your trachea into your lungs. Just run until there are no people for miles. But you can't do that if you live in a little camper in a little campground. There's nowhere to go but the little laundromat, and you'll be kicked out for loitering. Or maybe, like I did in other times, you'll live in a travel trailer in the wilderness. Then there is no other building where you can take shelter. If you run, you've got to come back. Unless it's the right time of year, you will succumb to the elements. You have to come back. And so you return to a one-roomed squat that smells of portapotty, damp boots, hot food, and wet dog. You do your homework in your shared bunk with your sister who has the flu. You hear your parents having sex a foot or two away and be too young to understand, but know just enough to realize it's supposed to be private. You sleep with your fingers in your ears a lot, pillow pulled uselessly over your head. You fantasize about someday having your very own room.

Do you really think that little house is so wonderful?

So I got thinking about the arbitrariness of modesty. As a generalization, women have boobs. In western culture, at least, so-called modest women's clothing allows for this, and doesn't try to hide the fact that the women have breasts. ( And so we see images like this: )