Sap

Isn’t it difficult to register on these dating websites with only one name?

So asks the wonderful Mr Eugenides, with what I feel ought to count as a Classic Sentence from the Guardian. He’s responding to this,

After this long, dark, pointlessly bitter winter, my sap is rising at an exponential rate.

And this,

Usually, I only act when I see something completely and utterly spectacular, the ultimate best thing ever, a sole Prada piece in a sea of Primark.

And this,

What if “true love” is a pathetic, filthy, perfidious gigolo who will open its pants for anyone who shows it a little bit of attention? That is to say, it’s a deceitful and damaging fantasy.

All of which alerts us to the mating urges of Bidisha, the rising of whose sap raises issues of great intrigue. Who, after all, could hope to meet the exacting standards of a “non-white angry political female” who can detect misogyny and racism in the movements of atoms? And who describes those who don’t share her dogmatic suppositions as “lazy,” “complacent” and “apolitical.” And surely an official partnership is out of the question?

Wedlock. It’s the kind of word that ought to send chills down a modern woman’s spine. It describes with deadly aptness the prison-like qualities of that institution and evokes a cold sense of confinement and consignment... The hermetic seal of wedlock provides the perfect cover, the immaculate veneer which conceals at worst domestic violence and emotional abuse and, as a norm, a vast well-documented housework and childcare disparity between the sexes... I have no deep desire to get involved in the legalised prostitution trap cum labour exploitation racket that is wedded bliss.

There was, I seem to recall, a brief enthusiasm for the “kinkiness” of celibacy. Followed by much pining over the actress Sandra Bullock:    

I love Bullock’s tawny tallness... I also want to buff her all over and comb her russet hair for hours like a keen stablehand at a pony parlour.

I’d assumed Bidisha dealt with any residual mating urges by less orthodox means, thus signalling her status as a counter-cultural force. Say, by releasing spores into a strong crosswind.