Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (Myths) Read Online Free PDF Page B

or a homosexual or whatever. It is totally okay in this day and age.)
    (Gay people are just the same as heterosexual people, except for the being gay, of course.)
    (They were holding hands at the front door.)
    (I should have known. She always was weird. She always was different. She always was contrary. She always did what she knew she shouldn’t.)
    (It is the fault of the Spice Girls.)
    (She chose the video of Spiceworld with Sporty Spice on the limited edition tin.)
    (She was always a bit too feminist.)
    (She was always playing that George Michael cd.)
    (She always votes for the girls on Big Brother and she voted for that transsexual the year he was on, or she, or whatever it is you’re supposed to say.)
    (She liked the Eurovision Song Contest.)
    (She still likes the Eurovision Song Contest.)
    (She liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
    (But so did I. I liked it too. And it had those girls in it who were both female homosexuals and they were portrayed as very sweet, and it was okay because it was Willow, and she was clever, and we knew to like her and everything, and her friend Tara was very sweet, and I remember one episode where they kissed and their feet came off the ground and they levitated because of the kiss, and I remember that the thing to do when we talked about it at school the next day was to make sick noises.)
    Four texts on my phone. Dominic.
    WOT U UP 2?
    COMIN 2 PUB?
    GET HERE NOW.
    U R REQD HERE.
    (I hate text language. It is so demeaning.)
    (I will text him when I get back from my run. I will say I left my mobile at home and didn’t get the message till later.)
    I am down to just over seven stone.
    I am doing well.
    We are really revolutionising the bottled water market in Scotland.
    Eau Caledonia. They love it as a tag. I got a raise.
    I get paid thirty-five thousand before tax.
    I can’t believe I’m earning that much money. Me!
    I am clearly doing the right thing. There is good money in water.
    (She is still insisting on calling them shaveys or whatever, and it is unfair of her to lump them all together. It is just fashion. Boys are worse followers of fashion than girls. I mean, men than women. She is wrong to do that. She is wrong)
    (they were holding hands at the front door, where any neighbour could see, and then I saw Robin Goodman lean my sister gently into the hedge, back against the branches of it, she was so gentle, and)
    (and kiss her.)
    (I should have known when she always liked songs that had I and you in them, instead of he and I, or he and she, we always knew, we used to say at college that that was the giveaway, when people preferred those songs that had the word you instead of a man or a woman, like that classic old Tracy Chapman album our mother left behind her that she was always playing before she went.)
    (I will never leave my children when I have fallen in love and am married and have had them. I will have them young, not when I am old, like the selfish generation. I would rather give up any career than not have them. I would rather give myself up. I would rather give up everything including any stupid political principle than leave children that belonged to me. Look how it ends. Thank God that feministy time of selfishness is over and we now have everything we will ever need, including a much more responsible set of values.)
    It is a lovely day to go for a run. It is not raining. It doesn’t even look like it will rain later.
    (My sister is a gay.)
    (I am not upset.) (I am fine.)
    (It’d be okay, I mean I wouldn’t mind so much, if it was someone else’s sister.)
    (It is okay. Lots of people are it. Just none that I have known personally, that’s all.)
    I am running along the riverside. I am so lucky to live here at this time in history, in the Capital of the Highlands, which is exceptionally buoyant right now, the fastest-developing city in the whole of the UK at the moment thanks to tourism and retirement, and soon also thanks to the growing water economy, of which I am a