"What's in a name?

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." W. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

I've lost count of how many times I've been asked how to pronounce my name. The question is usually asked by well-meaning Brits, or Americans, who realise that being Spanish, I probably wouldn't pronounce Helena the way they do. And I never know how to answer.

Partly, it's because no matter how hard they try most English-speaking people will never pronounce my name quite right the way it's meant to be pronounced in Spanish. Partly, it's because I know that even if they did, they would sooner or late revert to calling me either he-LAY-na or (my preferred) HE-lena. It's easier. I even call myself HE-lena when I say my name in English. It's easier for me than to switch to Spanish vowels for a single word. 

But mostly it's because the way that English-speakers pronounce my name are also the right way to say my name. I learnt English when I was three, and have been using it regularly since I was 7. People have been pronouncing my name in a non-Spanish way pretty much my whole life. It's my name too. Do I love it whena Spanish person calls me Helena (I am not transcribing the Spanish pronunciation here, but for anyone who would like to know, the H is silent and the vowels are all open, what I would call flat vowels: e-LE-na. The first e and the second e are pronounced exactly the same)? Yes. It makes me feel at home. But I do not feel any less identified with my name when someone calls me HE-lena or when one of my uni friends calls me he-LAY-na (yeah guys, I fucking hate how you pronounce my name, even if it's familiar and all). It would be downright weird if some people I know started calling me Helena the Spanish way.

And then there's the other, funny part. I identify a lot more with the spelling of my name than I do with the sound. This is partly because I was named after Helen of Troy (Helena de Troya in Spanish), and the H is significant but silent in Spanish. The typical spelling of "my" name in Spanish is Elena (but almost no Spanish classicist would call Helen of Troy Elena de Troya in an essay). Elena is not my name. And whenever I go to the doctor, or make a reservation, or do anything that requires someone who doesn't know me to write my name in Spain, they write it wrong. They miss the H. And honestly, this bothers me so much more than the pronunciation. It's like you're taking part of my identity when you take away that H. And in English, I don't have that problem. Sure, in e-mails people will (surprisingly often) refer to me as Helen (at least in one occasion the person concerned thought I'd made a mistake when signing my e-mail!), but the H is never missing, and for that I'm grateful.

I wonder how universal this feeling of identifying with the written version of your name rather than the sound is. I suspect not particularly, and I suspect that a lot of people who suffer from this often don't get their name mispronounced (or not in a significant enough way that they mind). What is fascinating to see is that with the rise of people asking to have their names correctly pronounced (and what a great development this is) I'm getting asked more and more how to pronounce my name right. And honestly? I am grateful. It's wonderful that people are more aware that they may be getting names wrong, and trying to make sure they're pronouncing their friends and colleagues names right. But it's fucking annoying when I say it's fine and people insist. Listen to the person you're talking to. When I say I don't mind I usually explain why I don't care. Believe me. Believe people when they tell you things. It makes everyone's lives so much easier.

Sex Education (Season 2)

Before we start, a quick note that although there are no major spoilers below for Season 2 of Sex Education (except for the first episode), I would recommend not reading this post until you've watched the show.











Sex Education season 2 starts with an extended montage of Otis jerking off everywhere. In the shower. At school. In bed. The montage ends when his mum catches him as he cums in the front seat of her car, which leads to a rather awkward conversation about boundaries. It sets the tone for season 2.

In season 1 of Sex Education Otis, the son of a successful sex therapist (played extraordinarily by Gillian Anderson), was a teenager who knew a lot about sex (despite being extremely inexperienced) and about communication, and monetized his knowledge by getting his peers to pay him for advice. The second season of the show has the courage to move away from this recipe and admit that Otis, while still a smart, sex-positive kid who wants to help his peers, is still no more than a teenager himself, not an expert, and that he does not always have all the answers (even when he does his research). In a different show, this change of pace might have spelled trouble, turning the show into a run of the mill teenage comedy/drama. Instead, this becomes one of the strengths of season 2.

The role played by Otis in the first season (giving good advice about sex and open communication in relationships) is now played by... well, by everyone. Sometimes Otis does give some good advice (although more often than not he is an entitled teenager who thinks only of himself). Sometimes his mum, who spends a lot of this season in the school, is the one to solve an issue. And sometimes, when this show is at its strongest, a couple (or more) of the characters band together and help each other out. It is in these scenarios when the show really shines, when the teenagers figure things out together, in ways that are more or less healthy, and learn (as we all do) that they are more alike than different.

The first season of Sex Education was about us getting to know the characters and understand them. The second season is about the characters growing up and learning some hard lessons. One theme in this season of the show is learning to love and accept yourself. It runs through the arcs of two of the main characters (and it's also part of the plot of one of the sex issues in one of the episodes). But a lot of the season is about learning to love others, and knowing what you will and will not accept in your relationships. It is about forgiveness and how far forgiveness goes. It is about telling others who you are, yes, and teaching them to accept you, but also about learning that sometimes that acceptance is not possible. There is a lot of boundary-setting in this season, and a lot of working hard to accept others' boundaries. But for me, a lot of this season is about hurt. About hurting others and being hurt, and living with it. About learning that not every problem can be resolved, and that sometimes things just don't work out. About getting over being hurt, and accepting that sometimes hurt changes people. And about the relationships that come out of being hurt together, forgiving each other for being hurt and helping others survive.

In some ways, the subjects addressed in this season are similar to the previous installment of the show: STDs, communication issues, confidence issues, sexuality issues. But there is a lot more. This time around the show tackles so much more than sex (the first season did too, but not as obviously). This reflects how the show has become more messy, how the characters are growing out of being archetypes and becoming people, flawed people who make mistakes and have victories. The second season also deals a lot more with the adults in the show, demonstrating what I've always suspected: that deep down we're all just overgrown teenagers.

I was worried that the second season of Sex Education would not live up to the first. In fact, I think, as a show, it's not as consistently good. But it's trying something different, and it's making it work. I'm hoping for a third season, and maybe, if I'm lucky, a fourth.

A sunny day in Miami

Part I

We'd just killed a man. I don't know who 'we' was, just that there were several of us in the room. The flat, I should say, or maybe the apartment. Perhaps we hadn't killed him, but the body was there, and he had definitely been the victim of foul play. The flat, or maybe the apartment, was small and dark. The only room I was ever in was the living room, with a kitchenette. I knew the kitchenette was there, even though I never saw it. All I knew was that we had to get rid of the body. At the far end of the living room, there was a balcony, you might even call it a small terrace. It was a bright day, the sort of sunny brightness that permeates crime shows set in Miami. The balcony overlooked a swimming pool, a gigantic swimming pool. Or maybe it wasn't even a swimming pool to start with, just the sea, or a huge lake, because the decision was made to get rid of the body by crucifying it and throwing it off the balcony into the water. The dead man was white, bald and large. I couldn't have told you his weight, I've always been shit at estimating that sort of thing, but he was definitely heavy: it took the three or four of us in the room to lift him. I don't know who suggested crucifixion, but the idea to throw him in the water was definitely mine.


Part II

Did we call the police? Did they just knock on the door? They were there, talking to us. Had the body been found? Maybe? They needed us for something, but it wasn't for the body. For some reason, I was to go diving with them. I can't remember not wanting to go, just wanting to help.

We were diving into the pool (it was definitely a pool now), and once we were underwater I noticed that the bottom of the pool was divided into sections. Someone on the surface was talking to us, through headsets that were set up in the diving equipment, and telling us to go to J7. And then they told us, in no uncertain terms, not to look at J8. We swam to J7, a small square at the bottom of the pool, and there, sitting in the square, just in the centre, as though they'd been carefully placed there, were my keys. My actual keys, the ones I use to unlock my house and my bike every day. I picked them up. And then, I couldn't resist looking at J8.

All I know is that there were three things in J8, and that one of them was a small toy penguin, the sort of tiny figure you might put on a keychain. Come to think of it, it wasn't actually a penguin, not if you looked closely, but it represented a penguin. I grabbed it (the police with me tried to stop me), realising with sudden horror that these were the keepsakes of a serial killer who'd been taking little girls. The police knew about them.

We made it back to the surface, but for some reason I wasn't questioned about my keys or made to hand in the penguin. In fact, the police seemed unaware that I'd taken the penguin, and did not seem to find it suspicious that my keys had been found in the pool. Had I been awake, I would have made the immediate connection between dropping the body in the pool and finding my keys there (they must have fallen out of my pocket when we were throwing the body off the balcony, my non-dream brain thinks), but in the dream this connection carried less weight than the fact that I'd found the keys next to the serial killer's keepsakes.

The last thing I remember is looking at the quasi-penguin in my hand, thinking about the little girl who had loved it (maybe I'd seen her in television, in a homevideo shared by her parents to gain public sympathy?).

Part III

I wake up in my bed, in Cambridge. It's not bright nor sunny, and the things stressing me out have nothing to do with serial killers. My heart's still going faster than it should though. Was it a nightmare?

I haven't had nightmares for a long time, probably since I woke up sweating with fear as a kid. As I got older the nightmares went away, or maybe I used them all up in stories I told or wrote down. Then came the stress dreams, but these were different. When I had an exam coming up, or an important event, I would dream about it and wake up with my heart pounding and my mouth dry. But I wasn't scared. They were stressful, but firmly tied to reality, and easily explained away. Now that I think about it, I haven't had a stress dream since my undergraduate days.

I analyse this dream. I wasn't scared during the dream. All I really felt was dread. Anxiety, a pressure in my chest, and an overwhelming sense of something bad about to happen that I couldn't completely control. A stress dream then. But all my stress dreams have been obvious, grounded in reality. This is different. If I believed that dreams can be decoded, that they are our subconscious trying to tell us something, I would likely pick up Freud's 'The interpretation of Dreams' and try to figure it out. But I'm not sure that I would find sunny Miami in the book, and I have little faith in Freud. So for now the dream will remain a mystery, just something to write about.