The Most Feminist Government in History, by H. P. Baxxter

CHAPTER FIVE

Leopold Bloom looked out of the porthole at the wispy clouds, and sighed. “Pastizzi are delicious puff pastry pasties filled with peas or cheese. Fly AirMalta”, read the blurb on the wing. This flight to Abu Dhabi was taking forever.

Ever since he’d starting working on an oil rig in the desert, he had cut his commuting time to a bare minimum. Now it was just twelve hours every two months. Or maybe it was just a perception.

And his colleagues didn’t come on all matey and then backstab him, either. They were a far cry from the moneyed yuppies that were swarming all over the career ladder back in Malta. He’d come to enjoy the peaceful solitude of the desert. His colleagues prayed five times a day, ate their halal rations, and didn’t ask too many questions.

“Tiyokoffi?” clipped a nasal voice, jolting him out of his reverie.

At one euro a (paper) cup, he couldn’t afford it. He looked at the sorry, soggy roll sweating in its cellophane package. Smoked cheese and butter. The cabin smelled like his grandmother’s old cellar.

Back in the day, you could at least gaze at the pretty air hostesses. Now, with the Most Feminist Government in charge of the airline, you had to watch out for the Adam’s apple.

Some of them were nisa fultajm, but a lot were not. Just partajm.

The fultajm ones were built like rugby players, and on his last flight he’d needed his earlobes stitched back. A gruff chief stewardess the width of two trolleys had torn them almost right off. From then on, he always chose a window seat.

Nisa Fultajm Jew Partajm, Dejjem Bil-Fleksitajm, was the government’s motto for 2015. In the progressive liberal climate which had engulfed the nation, many chose to be flexible. After two years of gender neutrality, the new keyword was gender diversity. So you had transsexual air hostesses, bi-gender ones, tri-gender, and fractionated gender. The acronyms had expanded, and it now took an entire line of foolscap to write out the meaning of diversity. Was it LGBTQIATQGQPAsCS+ or LGBTIQTGQOGUS+?

The crew on this flight was certainly pansexual and omnigender. One of them, the flight engineer, wore a skirt on one leg and half a pair of trousers on the other. He had half a Village People moustache on the right, and glowing violet lipstick on the left. It was hard to keep track, as the nation moved FORWARD! into the unknown.

It was hard to be a proper man or proper woman nowadays. They sort of left you alone on the flight to Abu Dhabi, which was always full of rich Arab businessmen and their burqa-clad wives. It wouldn’t do to lose halal tourists and investment. But woe betide any fultajm and properly feminine air hostess, unless he was actually a man and called Felix or Kenneth.

Most of them had resigned, and gone to work for Emirates instead, where they were made to wear veils.

Leopold Bloom wondered if there was anywhere left where they’d let you just be. And then he woke up, to the clarion call of “When you open the overhead compartment, take care that the contents do not follonyew.”