Misanthropy is the new black,

Valerie dearest. Kindly bid adieu to your meek and mild Penelope. She is gone forever. I am proud to announce that I have embraced my inner black.

What happened, you ask? You will recall, darling, that I work for the most exclusive milliner in town; also, that a certain horsey event of national importance occurred a few weeks ago. Need I say more? Suffice it to say, I have often suspected the horses of running not in deference to the whips of their riders, but as a mad attempt to escape the tipsy hoards of watchers tottering around the racecourse. A good quarter of whom, you may be sure, passed through the doors of our little boutique in the preceding months. I have been out of sorts ever since.

Matters came to a head – if you will pardon the pun – last Wednesday. I was attempting to enter a building at precisely the same moment that a young man – of, it must be said, rather a surly disposition – was attempting to exit it. We did a little door-dance – you know the one, Valerie, where you both dive out of each other’s way but in the same direction, and then you both duck back the other way, and then you try to do the opposite of what you think they’re about to do but then they’ve gone and done the same to you, and the only way out of the whole damned debacle short of adhering yourself to the wall is to stand still, but then they stand still, and you’re back where you began – well, we did that for a little while, and I said a very demure little sorry, and do you know what he said to me? He said “outta my way, bitch!” – fancy, bitch! – and I am now, officially, utterly through with the everyday charities of being nice to people.

By misanthropy, of course, I mean misanthropy-that-doesn’t-bury-its-head-in-the-sand-pretending-to-be-something-far-prettier. Because you know what I think, darling? There’s a little bit of misanthrope in all of us. I mean, don’t we all just love to hate someone, but in the sneakiest little ways? Like customers, for instance. Or rather more nebulous entities like “the bureaucrats”, “the youth of today”, “politicians”, “the tax department”. All those petty little scapegoats for everything and anything that goes wrong. Or the things people say about celebrities, the poor creatures. Or even: “don’t you just loathe the hatinator!?” which somehow confers upon us the right to mock anyone we ever see wearing one (and let me tell you, darling, they were all the rage last Cup). It’s despicable.

Do you know what Aristotle thought of misanthropes, darling? He said that because they were such solitary creatures, they couldn’t be men (or women). Therefore, they must be either beast or god (dess). Those of the Renaissance defined misanthropy as a “beast-like state”. It’s quite peculiar, isn’t it, because most of the beasts I’ve met, like each other. Just take a look at our collective nouns: a herd of cattle, a pod of whales, a swarm of insects, a bed of oysters, an unkindness of ravens, an implausibility of gnus. A crowd of people!

But let’s not niggle, darling. Let us suppose that Aristotle and the Renaissants were referring to the true solitaries: the tiger, the lion, the werewolf howling at the moon. What tickles your fancy the most, dear: a fish, or the silhouette of a coyote against a skyful of stars? A hungry cat, or a panther prowling the prairies for prey? A cow being a cow surrounded by other cows, or a lion being lionish on its own?

See? We revere the solitaries. They send chills down your spine, to be sure, but they’re delicious chills. So I am embracing the hatred, darling. I have immense respect for those who openly loathe their fellow human beings, and what’s more, you’re never left wondering if you’ve done something wrong, or if they’re about to pull out a weapon and massacre the entire street, because you just know that the only thing you’ve done to upset them is exist, and seeing as they aren’t troubling to hide it they’re hardly about to surprise you with a little machete, now are they?

So, I say, it’s time we let our inner misanthrope out! Wear it proud! Flaunt it, even! Of course, I don’t think we should go overboard, darling. I’m hardly advocating a mass-recall of the repressed Freudian unconscious. I’m just asking for a little more honesty in the world. A little less patience with preposterous people. A few more timely hangings-up and shutting-of-doors. A little more me and a little less them.

And next time I meet that great ape in a doorway, he’ll be getting a hatinator down the gullet.

Love Penelope.