I had on a couple of occasions indulged you in conversations about
your art but today you were talking about your toil, your commute
and the all-too-needy students who had been overly-mothered. They
sit in your time like shiny pebbles damming the sea, you are the
unwilling seaweed flung against their face. You think of them as the
elves and you Father Christmas, but they are the kiddies desperate to
sit on your lap and prove they’ve been good. Then you said it and I
didn’t know if I’d heard it, but you had. You wondered whether you
had a case for pay discrimination, you were in the union. You thought
it was a good sound case actually. Most men in your position with
your experience get offered the senior post straight away and you
wondered why you were stuck at the top of one scale, unable to make
it over the stile. There was no helping hand to help heave you over
and now you knew how it felt to be one of those women. Then you
said, look at this video. I didn’t know it would be you stroking your
nipples. I realised then that you too were a kid sat on the lap of an
older guy who is dressed up and muffling, pretending to know you
and pretending to care. Was it more socially awkward to watch you
tease your nipples to the sound of bad music or, to stand next to one
another both heads turned down both muffling? Hoping to be the
good kiddies. You didn’t know how to audibly exhale through flared
nostrils either. I looked at you then, sat in half hero, half lotus pose
and I thought what a fragile little Barbie eunuch you are.