I should explain: when I was alive, I lived in a time of beautiful men. They were everywhere: big and broad and manly, managing everything mannishly, manifesting whatever they wanted and manhandling what they didn’t. I ogled them, it’s true. Everyone did. It was normal. They were so beautiful. As my mother used to say: we had two religions; there was the Church and then there were the men.

After I died, I found myself in a time of beautiful women.

It was a shock, of course, when I noticed this. It was not something I’d considered in my life. Women had represented only safety to me, comforting boredom. My mother, for instance, single-handedly managing the family pig business. My sister. Girls in the village who understood me completely and had their item worries and secrets and fears that were just like mine. I had never seen anything remotely alluring in them. The idea! Like being attracted to a glass of milk.