Feminists
Taki
New York One more week to go in the Big Apple and then, I hope, I shall be returning to a country where everyone isn't into Freudian insights. Just last week I managed to corner a sweet young thing at Xenon, and when the cacophony descended a decibel or two, I proclaimed undying love for her. But I'm afraid it didn't work. That connoisseur of cocaine and incest, as well as grandfather of the dog food salesman, had already poisoned her mind against the likes of me. 'Love is only the overestimation of a sex object', she snapped back, and then proceeded to go out on to the dance floor and wiggle in such a fashion that more than one dirty old man began to overestimate her as an object of sex.
In fact, it's getting so bad where Victor Lownes's best friend's grandfather is concerned, that one actually has to read up before going out with what once used to be called the fairer sex, but today can only be referred to as the sex lacking in romance and debased by feminism. American women have beautiful legs and nice figures, but when they open those hard jaws and utter those nasal sounds with that accent it's enough to make a brave man wince. A'nd the things they say. It's all Freud, Freud, and more Freud. If you like a girl who is not middle-aged, you are obviously trying to sleep with your daughter, subconsciously that is. When I assure them that I love my little one too much to ever subject her to such a cruel and traumatising fate, they just shake their empty noggins and come back with more jolts of verbal nitroglycerine from the master jerk of all time.
This is why I'm counting the hours before I return to a country that, despite the fact that it has a woman as a monarch, a female as a Ftihrer, and a wet enough populace to elect Shirley Williams the next PM, prides itself on its sweet young things — girls who are into simple pursuits such as horses and Prince Andrew. While counting, however, I try and make the best of it. I dine out a lot with English people and try to avoid American women as much as possible. Last week I was out with the proverbial uninvited Haden-Guest, who had brought along Anna Wintour, a hackette of sorts. Although I've had my run-ins with Anna before — about her mother contributing to subversive organisations like Amnesty International — I didn't object to her presence in view of the fact that Sakharov had just gone on a hunger strike and I expected she'd keep quiet about how awful the system and government of America are. What I didn't expect was that she has now taken up feminism. It was, I admit, rather stupid of me. Every woman over 30 who lives in America and is on the left of the political spectrum sooner or later embraces feminism. All I did was make a couple of very bad jokes that had nothing to do with women as far as I was concerned, but turned out to be red flags to her. The first was really innocuous. I said that the American Indians were the first to introduce wife swapping and called it passing the buck. The second one was cruder, and Polish.
The dinner, a sleazy little farce, came to an end when I quoted from a film that said that men could fool around because their needs were different. Unlike women's, more baroque. As everyone except for Haden-Guest and me got up to leave — especially timing it to be away before the bill arrived — the very rich American wife of an English hack turned and asked for the oil rights to my hair. Everyone collapsed with laughter at a joke that had made the rounds when Michael Arlen first hit Mayfair. But I am used to a double standard from feminists, communists and Americans, and in that order.
The other thing that's driving me crazy over here is that despite the thousands who died in Pearl Harbour on 7 December 40 years ago, the only person the people are keeping vigil for is John Lennon. Sometimes I think they forgave the Japanese because of that horrible Yoko Ono. Here's what has emerged since his death last year: Lennon, under Yoko's instructions, wrote to a friend not to bother him with all that garbage about war veterans, blacks and Indians. Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, was shocked when soon after his death Ono called her and spoke only about money, and eventually tried to manipulate Julian, Cynthia's son by Lennon. I say it's par for the course. Yoko is over 50, a feminist, leans to the left, and, most important of all, is ugly.
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