Two Hands.

I am now going to describe the hands of two females with very different occupations.

The Hand of a Housewife: Short nails, worn down by constant nail biting, carry a perfect semi-circle of black grime which caps short, red fingers. The knuckles resemble crimson bolts. Their soreness and irritation is aggravated by constantly dunking the wearied digits into scalding hot washing up water with soap suds added. These suds send fat bubbles to the surface of the washbasin, shining in iridescence as the colours race over their skins. However, these very same suds that cast a liquid spectrum over a soap bubble can only colour the hands of a housewife a very painful looking red. Over the red surface, small white squares of flaked off skin glitter under the light.

Also glittering is the dull, scratched tube of gold that encircles the third finger. Embedded into the skin which grows up around it, the ring is fixed onto the overworked finger until the blood ceases to throb through it. This ring, a small circle of metal, a mere hoop, symbolises many unappealing tasks that the hand of a housewife must perform. For example, applying the palm forcibly and sharply to the unrepentant bottom of a naughty child, wiping waste products from an incontinent baby or curling into a loose fist to give a never-satisfied husband a strenuous handjob. That's the hand of a housewife.

The Hand of a Writer: Long, slim fingers are punctuated by delicate bones which, over the years have risen from their ordinary positions in order to grasp a pen more comfortably. Each finger resembles an uneven branch in a pure white birch tree of flesh. The pale knuckles are white berries, hard, ripe and unwrinkled. Above the fingers, ten white crescents grow just below the fingertip, filed down neatly and carefully. Their length is long enough to give the impression of pride and care in personal appearance, but short enough not to interfere with holding a pen or typing keys.

The third finger is possibly bare, or if it is ringed, it is encircled by a silver piece of intricate metal work, most likely commemorating a friendship, or even perhaps a romance, but it is certainly not an indication of female slavery in the rigid gaol of social convention.

This hand churns out short stories, writes novels, copies Latin words and turns the leaves of one-thousand-page long novels. Although it has a compulsion to see everything awash with disinfectant, it does not perform any of the daily chores of a wife's enslavement. It will only touch men on the writer's own terms. It will, of course, intertwine the long white fingers with those of a male intellectual, and, when sensuously charged with its own passionate blood, delve under the material divide of clothing and ravenously touch every part of a male intellectual's aroused body. The hand of a writer is governed only by its pen, not by a wedding ring.

The hand of a housewife, or the hand of a writer? I know which one I'd rather possess.