Today I had just one thing to buy: a birthday gift for Taylor, our babysitter. She’d said her parents were buying her a record player (!) and I knew she liked old British mod bands so I thought I’d swing by Loaded 45, Truvy’s hip record store, in the hope of getting lucky.
Coming towards me in the street – although thankfully looking down at her phone – was Tiffany.
What. The. Hell. How was this even possible? Back at the school I’d been in the car and she’d been on foot. Did she have a teleporter?
I swerved into the nearest shop, without even looking to see what it was. Once inside I recognised that cold, dead atmosphere where joy came to die.
“Oh, hello again,” said a shop assistant.
Arrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! I was in Chapter and Voice! The right-on bookstore that I’d bitched about at the dinner party. How did I keep ending up in here? (Just for the record, there were three reasons I kept ending up in there:
1) My preferred bookstore, Pageturner Books, was having a refurb.
2) I naively kept thinking that it must have some normal books and that I’d just not found them yet.
3) I kept seeing people in the street that I wanted to avoid (yes, incredibly this was the third time this had happened)).
“Oh, hello,” I said. “Again.”
I was surrounded by themed tables: Amazing Women (which was different from Strong Women). Sri Lankan History Month. Celebrating IBS. Menstruation Matters. Unheard Voices. Thriving With Neurodiversity. Celebrating Celery. Celebrating Paranoid Schizophrenia. A huge sign suspended from the ceiling said: “Well-behaved women seldom make history”, a saying I must see at least three times a week on Facebook.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” asked the assistant.
“Do you have any light romance?” I asked, because I was in the mood for mischief.
“I’m sorry?” she said, in a tone of naked disbelief. It was like I’d walked into a funeral director’s and asked for a sex toy.
“You know, something about men and women falling in love?” Yes, this was fun.
“Falling in love?” Her eyes were deader than a shark’s, and a shark that was dead.
“Yeah, like a romance section. Or a Hot Sex table, do your little themed tables have one of those?”
She pointed to the table nearest me. I glimpsed a woman with her hand held up in a “no” gesture, plus wheelchairs.
“These look a bit worthy for my taste. Have you got anything with less wokery?”
“I think the word is ‘wokeness’.”
Game on. I haven’t told you this yet – although you probably guessed it from the dinner party incident – but a) I sometimes say things I shouldn’t and b) when I get the bit between my teeth you’d better not try to take it out unless you feel you’ve got a couple fingers too many.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I shot back. “Is it wokeness? I don’t want to get it wrong, it being such a real word and all.”
Another assistant appeared. She looked very similar to the first one. They both had a streak of pink in their hair, which peeked out from under their little woollen bobble hats, and they wore glasses that may or may not have had a corrective purpose.
“I tell you what,” I said, because I had the devil in me now, “why don’t you show me your specials? What’s cooking?”
She stood back to proudly reveal a floor-to-ceiling shelf labelled “Through A Different Lens.”
“Is a lens the same as a voice?” I asked.
The sales girls laughed, then pulled straight faces when they realised it wasn’t meant as a joke. “Oh no, they’re very different.”
I picked up a book called 300 Poems by Refugees About Rain. And then Why I Am No Longer Talking To White People About The Best Way To Season Halibut. The young black woman with short hair on the cover had a bit of tape over her mouth. There was a lot of tape over mouths on the books, which seemed ironic as they appeared to be the only people with book deals.
“Do you have an Amazing Men table?” I asked, loving this now.
“No,” she said. “But the Sexual Violence section is upstairs.”
“Ouch,” I said, “Good to know, I suppose. It’s my dad’s birthday next week and he does love a nice book. No, I was thinking of sex more as a pleasurable activity than a public health risk. Do you have anything about hot sex? You know: ‘Oh my God, I’m so close,’ ‘Wait, are you thinking about my sister again?’ ‘Don’t start that, it was just the one time.’ That kind of thing?”
“And Sam over there is setting up the Everyday Sexism table,” she said, ignoring me.
“Ah, I see. I don’t mind a bit of everyday sexism myself. It’s that ‘special occasion’ sexism that gets my goat. Wow, did you say you have three members of staff? Well, I guess you never know when you might get a rush on.”
“Sometimes there are only two of us on the floor, if the other person is in the safe space. Anyway, is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Yes, I’ve got a sudden craving for a Nora Roberts.”
She wrinkled her nose and its several rings chimed softly. “Oh, is she that queer economist I keep hearing about?”
Jessica Harper Uncanceled 
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