[Previously in this series: some happy times and some more FOR FUCK'S SAKE]
Our time at the mansion was coming to an end. We were packing up (one suitcase, one laptop bag, some bedding, and an enormous pile of stuff from the emporium of "I Don't Want This, Do You Want This? Because You Can Have It If You Want It"), working out our new commutes, wondering if we should have a housewarming once we got there. Then a couple of days before we were due to move, the landlady emailed to tell us she would bring our contracts round on moving-in day, and we should give her our first month's rent in cash.
I was done ignoring the alarm bell, so I phoned Shelter for advice.
Her: That sounds weird. If you decide to do that, make sure there's a proper audit trail in case of any problems. Is she a live-in landlady?
Me: The ad says live-out, but she says she might need to stay occasionally.
Her: And she has a room for that?
Me: Yes. We can't go in it.
Her: That sounds weird and I'm a bit worried for you.
I asked the landlady to confirm that we would have a proper tenancy agreement. Landlady confirmed that actually, we would have the exact same agreement as I had with Wine-Diluting Shut-In, meaning that we had no rights to a confirmed length of tenancy and no real rights to get our deposits back either. She offered to return our holding deposits if we wanted to back out, but by that point it was the day before we had to move out. She knew we weren't backing out of anything.
We signed the shitty agreement and moved in. And in a way, it was alright. It wasn't too far to the station and my commute was less crowded and horrible. The night bus stopped more or less outside the front door. There was a convenient supermarket and 24-hour garage. My room really was very nice, and the kitchen and bathroom were both new. Even though our living room was a dingy box because the actual living room had been converted into an inaccessible landlady bedroom, even though our neighbours weren't the shiniest of characters, even though the music from next door was really, seriously annoying, even though I once got propositioned by an employee in the 24-hour Tesco at 7am on my way back from a house party, it wasn't that bad.
But she was.
We'd asked her for notice if she was going to be in the house, so she would text one of us five minutes before she walked through the door. If that person wasn't home or available to let the others know, too bad. We started freaking out every time we heard the door open. Somewhere in my Facebook message inbox is six months' worth of "was that you just coming in? Please say it was you. I can't cope with an invasion tonight." She'd be sweet and polite and not quite all there right up until we asked for something or implied that something was wrong, whereupon she would switch right into super-formal mode and tell us we weren't cleaning adequately or some such.
Before we moved in, we agreed that we'd need a strategy for dealing with her as a house. One would be the nice, normal one, one would be a bit of a ditz who could do things like check she'd given us keys that actually worked, and one (i.e. me) would be the pedantic, legalistic bitch who used long words and demanded everything in writing. This worked reasonably well until she thought she'd found the weak spot.
On the Wednesday before Easter, my flatmate said: "The landlady is coming to stay tonight. I'm going to ask her if she's staying tomorrow as well."
On Easter Saturday, quite late in the evening, I was about to go out when my phone rang.
Flatmate: Jen, I think I'm being evicted.
Me: What?
Flatmate: She's sent me an email headed "Notice to Terminate".
Me: Why?
Flatmate: She says I'm invading her privacy by asking when she's going to be in the house.
Me: What?
Flatmate: What am I going to do? I've got nowhere to go.
Me: It's OK we will sort something out you won't be homeless WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN
We got some advice, looked at our options, and decided the best thing to do would be to try and talk her out of evicting our flatmate. A few days later the eviction was rescinded, with the landlady expressing surprise that the other two of us had found out this was happening.
We spent the next three months on eggshells. We didn't know what might set her off. We complained bitterly about her, getting up every five minutes or so to make sure she hadn't snuck into the house when we weren't paying attention. We wondered what on earth would make someone so paranoid about privacy. We may or may not have come up with several increasingly wild theories as to what she might be up to, which may or may not have been aided by several hours of Google stalking through page after page of increasingly irrelevant stuff. We may or may not have given up when we arrived at "trusteeship of a slightly rubbish-looking golf club".
We'd agreed to stay for six months. It wasn't written down anywhere, but from the point of view of eventually getting our deposits back, none of us could afford to piss her off. We accepted her five-minutes-ahead notifications, gritted our teeth and dealt with her announcements that her small children and elderly father would be staying in the house too, listened with strained ears for any sign of someone approaching the door, and spoke in hushed voices even when we were sure she wasn't around. We marked our moving-out date in our calendars and prepared ourselves to tough it out.
She tried a few times to plant discord among us. I was generally out at my dance classes when she dropped by unexpectedly, and after a few months had gone by in which she'd not seen me at all she began to remark to my flatmates that wasn't it a bit weird that I was never there? Wasn't it strange? They'd been living together for over a year, after all, and I was a relative newbie of only a few months - they didn't really know me at all, did they? What did they think I could be up to? This did not have the desired effect, partly because my flatmates saw me all the time and partly because out of me and the landlady, only one of us was holding onto large amounts of their money and sending them random eviction notices for no reason.
Eventually, the time to hand in our notice drew near.
"It'll have to come from you, Jen. She's scared of you."
"EXCELLENT."
Mindful of our deposits, we composed the most hilarious bullshit notice email. We told her how much we'd loved living there, how devastated we were to be handing in notice, but that our commutes were just too long and difficult and for the sake of our collective mental health, we would need to move somewhere more accessible. We wished her all the best, told her we would be taking away many happy memories, and wished similar happy times for her next tenants. We signed it "many thanks and kind regards", which is a level of contempt I didn't know I could reach. The whole thing was probably the greatest work of sarcasm I've ever constructed.
To our surprise, she responded like a reasonable human being. I can't quite tell from her reply whether the bullshit went straight over her head or whether she got it immediately and responded in kind, but the important thing was that we wouldn't have to fight her. Actually, that was the second most important thing. The most important thing was that she would be out of the country on our leaving date, meaning that her husband would come to do the inventory and I would be able to walk away from the tenancy with the triumph or never having to see or speak to that woman once in the whole six months we'd been there. Sometimes it pays to be the pedantic bitch.
[Next time: moving out, Rad Rod and the thrilling conclusion... for now]
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Thursday, 19 February 2015
30
I had all sorts of ideas about the kind of person I'd be on my 30th birthday. At 30 I'd be a grown-up. I'd be doing what I wanted to do with my life, or at least know what this thing I wanted to do was and how I was going to get there. I'd have a decent selection of skills, both essential and useless, and be good enough at a couple of them to stand out in a group of people who also had that skill. I'd be happy with my body, with my hair, with my style. I'd have a handle on all the things adults need to do to function comfortably, and I'd be pretty OK with where I was.
What actually happened was that I spent the first few days of my new decade in a state of inexplicable and slightly scary depression, where I cried more or less constantly and felt like the world was caving in. Despite having woken up on my 30th birthday in goddamn Florence.
I had a flurry of half-baked, panicky ideas of how to fix everything that seemed perfectly logical from inside the half-baked panic, then freaked out even harder when they didn't work. I watched myself go through self-destructive behaviour after self-destructive behaviour and gave myself spectacularly ineffective pep talks.
"You see this thing you're doing? You should stop that."
"I agree."
"You're still doing it, though."
"Yeah, I am, aren't I."
"You should stop. You'll feel better if you stop."
"That's true."
[three days later]
"So you're still doing it."
"Yes. I thought about what you said and I decided using logic that the best thing to do would be to carry on doing it."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"No, it doesn't, does it. I'll think about that."
I feel better today, for no real reason. Maybe because I managed to make a phone call I needed to make. Maybe because I've decided that phone call is the one that will magically fix everything. But I've been thinking without crying, and I've made a couple of plans, and I've had a couple of realisations.
This year is going to be really, really hard. I can't even coast this year, because I actually hate coasting and it's making me sick. If I coast, the bottom will fall out of either my job or my health and everything will get exponentially worse. I don't want that year. I've already had the year where apathy fucked everything up, and I do not want it again. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to make things harder for myself.
In my 30th year I need to face things I'd rather ignore, force myself to do things I hate, learn to do things I've been complacently telling myself I'm terrible at. I need to set myself difficult restrictions, forgo things I want to do, and be uncomfortably honest about the person I am. Not because I'm trying to punish myself, but because I deserve better than this. I deserve more than fear and sickness and frustration and aching. I'm better than this.
I am going to have a difficult, scary year, so that when I'm looking 31 in the face I can smile at it.
What actually happened was that I spent the first few days of my new decade in a state of inexplicable and slightly scary depression, where I cried more or less constantly and felt like the world was caving in. Despite having woken up on my 30th birthday in goddamn Florence.
I had a flurry of half-baked, panicky ideas of how to fix everything that seemed perfectly logical from inside the half-baked panic, then freaked out even harder when they didn't work. I watched myself go through self-destructive behaviour after self-destructive behaviour and gave myself spectacularly ineffective pep talks.
"You see this thing you're doing? You should stop that."
"I agree."
"You're still doing it, though."
"Yeah, I am, aren't I."
"You should stop. You'll feel better if you stop."
"That's true."
[three days later]
"So you're still doing it."
"Yes. I thought about what you said and I decided using logic that the best thing to do would be to carry on doing it."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"No, it doesn't, does it. I'll think about that."
I feel better today, for no real reason. Maybe because I managed to make a phone call I needed to make. Maybe because I've decided that phone call is the one that will magically fix everything. But I've been thinking without crying, and I've made a couple of plans, and I've had a couple of realisations.
This year is going to be really, really hard. I can't even coast this year, because I actually hate coasting and it's making me sick. If I coast, the bottom will fall out of either my job or my health and everything will get exponentially worse. I don't want that year. I've already had the year where apathy fucked everything up, and I do not want it again. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to make things harder for myself.
In my 30th year I need to face things I'd rather ignore, force myself to do things I hate, learn to do things I've been complacently telling myself I'm terrible at. I need to set myself difficult restrictions, forgo things I want to do, and be uncomfortably honest about the person I am. Not because I'm trying to punish myself, but because I deserve better than this. I deserve more than fear and sickness and frustration and aching. I'm better than this.
I am going to have a difficult, scary year, so that when I'm looking 31 in the face I can smile at it.
Wednesday, 14 January 2015
adventures in housing, part six
[Previously in this series: Southend and an honest-to-God house]
Before I carry on, I feel I ought to state that the past five parts of this saga only covered six months of my life. Six months. No wonder I was cranky.
I moved into the mansion in early December. I put my own sheets on the bed, the couple of books I'd been carrying around on the shelf, my clothes on actual hangers in an actual wardrobe. I did the happiest food shop I've ever done in my life, whizzing down the aisles of the supermarket with a huge grin on my face, picking up anything that even slightly took my fancy, loving the Christmas music more than I had done in years. I had a shelf in the fridge, my own space in the cupboards. It was one of the happiest days I can remember.
The journey into work wasn't the easiest, but beyond that the place was a dream. We cooked things. We did clothes swaps. My friend and I went to dances together thrilled to have someone to come back with on the night bus. I bonded with one of my new flatmates over the Christmas decorations. We all went for drinks and did pub quizzes together. We had a tiny Judeo-pagan Christmas party. When I went home for the holidays, my friend sent me a message telling me she was really glad I'd moved in. The universe was finally being nice to me.
Of course it didn't last. How could it?
I'd been told before moving in that the landlady was trying to sell the house. I'd also been told that it had been on the market for quite some time and it wasn't anything to worry too much about. So I didn't really think about it at all. Maybe it would get sold in six months, a year, but I didn't need to worry about that now.
A month after I moved in, the landlady contacted us to tell us she was going to "pop by for a chat." My flatmate saw her later that same day, sent round a message headed "IMPORTANT" and gathered us all in the kitchen to tell us the place had been sold.
It's probably OK, she said. The landlady is nice and wants to make sure we'll be OK. She's chosen a buyer who's willing to take on the existing tenants, so we probably won't have to go anywhere. She'll send us notice to terminate our current contracts, and the new landlord will draw up fresh ones for us. I nodded and shushed the alarm bell in my head because it was fine, it had to be fine, there's no way I'd have to leave this place already because that would just be ridiculous.
We got an email from the woman who'd bought the flat. She told us that yay, she would take us on as tenants at the same rent we were currently paying. Only now it wouldn't include bills, thus pushing the overall cost well out of everyone's budget. We explained this to her, got a snotty email including the phrase "substantially below market value", and gave up.
Me, to everyone I knew: I have to move.
Everyone: What?!
Me: Flat's been sold.
Everyone: For FUCK'S sake!
Me: Yeah.
We decided to try looking for somewhere together, third flatmate having revised her instant hatred of me, as well as separately. We all independently went to view a place down the road, which had several spare rooms as well as a handy built-in Sexual Assault Tunnel with no lights in it, a kitchen that stank, one room we couldn't get into because there was a broken bed and a stack of wallpaper strippings in the way, and a room which contained nothing except a huge pile of cigarette butts.
"So... people smoke in here, then."
"Oh, no," said the twelve-year-old public schoolboy playing at being a landlord. "There's no smoking in this house."
The twelve-year-old public schoolboy upset my friend somewhat. "Who the fuck rents out a cesspit like that? Complete contempt for his tenants, that's what that is. Oh, you don't live here? With the scum? Live in Richmond, do you? See, this is what was wrong with Margaret Thatcher."
Shortly afterwards my friend found somewhere with one free room and decided to take it, leaving the other three of us to look together. We found a house in an area we weren't sure about with a landlady we weren't sure about, but it was clean and had a big kitchen and cost exactly what we were each paying currently. Also I was paying the most and would have the big pretty room with the sofa in it. We had a week until our notice ran out, and none of us wanted to be living in uncertainty anymore. We told the landlady we'd take it.
[in part seven: new house and more evidence of my truly terrible landlord karma]
Before I carry on, I feel I ought to state that the past five parts of this saga only covered six months of my life. Six months. No wonder I was cranky.
I moved into the mansion in early December. I put my own sheets on the bed, the couple of books I'd been carrying around on the shelf, my clothes on actual hangers in an actual wardrobe. I did the happiest food shop I've ever done in my life, whizzing down the aisles of the supermarket with a huge grin on my face, picking up anything that even slightly took my fancy, loving the Christmas music more than I had done in years. I had a shelf in the fridge, my own space in the cupboards. It was one of the happiest days I can remember.
The journey into work wasn't the easiest, but beyond that the place was a dream. We cooked things. We did clothes swaps. My friend and I went to dances together thrilled to have someone to come back with on the night bus. I bonded with one of my new flatmates over the Christmas decorations. We all went for drinks and did pub quizzes together. We had a tiny Judeo-pagan Christmas party. When I went home for the holidays, my friend sent me a message telling me she was really glad I'd moved in. The universe was finally being nice to me.
Of course it didn't last. How could it?
I'd been told before moving in that the landlady was trying to sell the house. I'd also been told that it had been on the market for quite some time and it wasn't anything to worry too much about. So I didn't really think about it at all. Maybe it would get sold in six months, a year, but I didn't need to worry about that now.
A month after I moved in, the landlady contacted us to tell us she was going to "pop by for a chat." My flatmate saw her later that same day, sent round a message headed "IMPORTANT" and gathered us all in the kitchen to tell us the place had been sold.
It's probably OK, she said. The landlady is nice and wants to make sure we'll be OK. She's chosen a buyer who's willing to take on the existing tenants, so we probably won't have to go anywhere. She'll send us notice to terminate our current contracts, and the new landlord will draw up fresh ones for us. I nodded and shushed the alarm bell in my head because it was fine, it had to be fine, there's no way I'd have to leave this place already because that would just be ridiculous.
We got an email from the woman who'd bought the flat. She told us that yay, she would take us on as tenants at the same rent we were currently paying. Only now it wouldn't include bills, thus pushing the overall cost well out of everyone's budget. We explained this to her, got a snotty email including the phrase "substantially below market value", and gave up.
Me, to everyone I knew: I have to move.
Everyone: What?!
Me: Flat's been sold.
Everyone: For FUCK'S sake!
Me: Yeah.
We decided to try looking for somewhere together, third flatmate having revised her instant hatred of me, as well as separately. We all independently went to view a place down the road, which had several spare rooms as well as a handy built-in Sexual Assault Tunnel with no lights in it, a kitchen that stank, one room we couldn't get into because there was a broken bed and a stack of wallpaper strippings in the way, and a room which contained nothing except a huge pile of cigarette butts.
"So... people smoke in here, then."
"Oh, no," said the twelve-year-old public schoolboy playing at being a landlord. "There's no smoking in this house."
The twelve-year-old public schoolboy upset my friend somewhat. "Who the fuck rents out a cesspit like that? Complete contempt for his tenants, that's what that is. Oh, you don't live here? With the scum? Live in Richmond, do you? See, this is what was wrong with Margaret Thatcher."
Shortly afterwards my friend found somewhere with one free room and decided to take it, leaving the other three of us to look together. We found a house in an area we weren't sure about with a landlady we weren't sure about, but it was clean and had a big kitchen and cost exactly what we were each paying currently. Also I was paying the most and would have the big pretty room with the sofa in it. We had a week until our notice ran out, and none of us wanted to be living in uncertainty anymore. We told the landlady we'd take it.
[in part seven: new house and more evidence of my truly terrible landlord karma]
Thursday, 8 January 2015
adventures in housing, part five
[Previously in this series: exploding guest houses and a large dose of FOR FUCK'S SAKE]
I ended up spending a month in Southend.
On the one hand, it's a long way away. The walk-bus-train-tube-tube-walk to work every morning was an adjustment I hadn't been quite prepared for, and I am singularly bad at mornings. Most of the time I would wake up about seven minutes before I needed to leave the house and would remain not really woken up for the rest of the day. I have songs on my iPod that take me straight back to sitting on a bus stop in Southend in the November drizzle, hoping that I was awake enough to spot the bus arriving and remember to get off it in the right place (I wasn't always). I did not end that month full of the joys of the suburbs and planning my own future as someone who would happily trade living in London for being able to buy an actual house.
On the other hand, I had a bed for an entire month. I had a room. I had somewhere to leave my things. I could eat actual dinner instead of takeaway or sandwiches in my office. I stopped ping-ponging between hair-trigger irritability, slightly manic hyperactive chirpiness and sullen depression and started acting like a human again. The aches in my back and shoulders faded, and I got some peace inside my own head. I didn't noticeably piss off either of my friends and I left their hospitality with relationships intact.
Living with a married couple was strange. It was like walking back into the same situation I'd just left, only now it wasn't mine. Of course, it wasn't exactly the same situation, since my friends are a functional couple who didn't spend entire evenings sitting on opposite sides of the room attempting to ignore each other, but occasionally I would watch them and remember when this was my life, when I couldn't really separate "my life" from "our life", and I knew his habits and preferences so well that they almost belonged to me. It was a confused nostalgia, a reminder that things weren't always the way they were at the end, and a kind of dreadful, frightened triumph at the thought that I could still be in this place, still living this familiarity that looked so comfortable from the outside but itched like crazy when I was wearing it. I envied the security while wanting to scratch it off my skin at the same time.
My friends are possibly exactly unlike me and my ex, which is why I'm now going to take a moment to say hi, Tom, everything is fine. You are the very best of all the friends and didn't accidentally cause me bad feelings by going about your life in your own house.
I continued to message people advertising rooms. I continued to go to viewings of what turned out to be tiny cesspits hidden away in alleys lined with drug dealers, with front doors that didn't lock and seven people crammed into two bedrooms, that the estate agents and landlords felt perfectly comfortable offering for rent at £160 per week.
"Very reasonable, we think."
"...um."
"The window will be replaced at some point with one that doesn't have a hole in it."
"That's nice."
"And don't worry about Susanne, she's just like that."
"...um."
"You won't find a lot in an area this accessible for this cheap a price."
"That does seem to be true, yes."
"So, are you interested?"
"Let me get back to you."
One morning I got a message from a friend. At the time she was a friend in the way that many people I've met through the dance scene are friends: connected on Facebook, would go and say hi and possibly give them a hug if I saw them, but not close enough to go out for dinner or email stupid videos to each other. She said there was a spare room coming up in her house in a few weeks and would I be interested?
I restrained myself from trying to leap directly through my laptop screen at her and said yes, yes I would be.
After rearranging several times to find some mutual free time in our clashing dance schedules, my friend met me at the closest station and took me to see the flat, which turned out to be a mansion flat with the most ridiculous huge fuck-off living room full of enormous sofas and giant mirrors and Sky TV. And it was cheaper than the drug den box room with Susanne who was just like that, don't worry. I thought perhaps I'd fallen into a mirage. I met the other two flatmates, one of whom was sweet and friendly and the other of whom seemed to dislike me on sight, but I was barely paying attention. Yes, I am going to live here. I am going to live here. I am going to live here.
I sent a "please let me live in your house" message the next day, and both the girls and the landlady accepted me. Shortly thereafter I left Southend, bought myself some bedding and took it and my suitcase to my new home.
[in part six: the mansion and FOR FUCK'S SAKE yet again]
I ended up spending a month in Southend.
On the one hand, it's a long way away. The walk-bus-train-tube-tube-walk to work every morning was an adjustment I hadn't been quite prepared for, and I am singularly bad at mornings. Most of the time I would wake up about seven minutes before I needed to leave the house and would remain not really woken up for the rest of the day. I have songs on my iPod that take me straight back to sitting on a bus stop in Southend in the November drizzle, hoping that I was awake enough to spot the bus arriving and remember to get off it in the right place (I wasn't always). I did not end that month full of the joys of the suburbs and planning my own future as someone who would happily trade living in London for being able to buy an actual house.
On the other hand, I had a bed for an entire month. I had a room. I had somewhere to leave my things. I could eat actual dinner instead of takeaway or sandwiches in my office. I stopped ping-ponging between hair-trigger irritability, slightly manic hyperactive chirpiness and sullen depression and started acting like a human again. The aches in my back and shoulders faded, and I got some peace inside my own head. I didn't noticeably piss off either of my friends and I left their hospitality with relationships intact.
Living with a married couple was strange. It was like walking back into the same situation I'd just left, only now it wasn't mine. Of course, it wasn't exactly the same situation, since my friends are a functional couple who didn't spend entire evenings sitting on opposite sides of the room attempting to ignore each other, but occasionally I would watch them and remember when this was my life, when I couldn't really separate "my life" from "our life", and I knew his habits and preferences so well that they almost belonged to me. It was a confused nostalgia, a reminder that things weren't always the way they were at the end, and a kind of dreadful, frightened triumph at the thought that I could still be in this place, still living this familiarity that looked so comfortable from the outside but itched like crazy when I was wearing it. I envied the security while wanting to scratch it off my skin at the same time.
My friends are possibly exactly unlike me and my ex, which is why I'm now going to take a moment to say hi, Tom, everything is fine. You are the very best of all the friends and didn't accidentally cause me bad feelings by going about your life in your own house.
I continued to message people advertising rooms. I continued to go to viewings of what turned out to be tiny cesspits hidden away in alleys lined with drug dealers, with front doors that didn't lock and seven people crammed into two bedrooms, that the estate agents and landlords felt perfectly comfortable offering for rent at £160 per week.
"Very reasonable, we think."
"...um."
"The window will be replaced at some point with one that doesn't have a hole in it."
"That's nice."
"And don't worry about Susanne, she's just like that."
"...um."
"You won't find a lot in an area this accessible for this cheap a price."
"That does seem to be true, yes."
"So, are you interested?"
"Let me get back to you."
One morning I got a message from a friend. At the time she was a friend in the way that many people I've met through the dance scene are friends: connected on Facebook, would go and say hi and possibly give them a hug if I saw them, but not close enough to go out for dinner or email stupid videos to each other. She said there was a spare room coming up in her house in a few weeks and would I be interested?
I restrained myself from trying to leap directly through my laptop screen at her and said yes, yes I would be.
After rearranging several times to find some mutual free time in our clashing dance schedules, my friend met me at the closest station and took me to see the flat, which turned out to be a mansion flat with the most ridiculous huge fuck-off living room full of enormous sofas and giant mirrors and Sky TV. And it was cheaper than the drug den box room with Susanne who was just like that, don't worry. I thought perhaps I'd fallen into a mirage. I met the other two flatmates, one of whom was sweet and friendly and the other of whom seemed to dislike me on sight, but I was barely paying attention. Yes, I am going to live here. I am going to live here. I am going to live here.
I sent a "please let me live in your house" message the next day, and both the girls and the landlady accepted me. Shortly thereafter I left Southend, bought myself some bedding and took it and my suitcase to my new home.
[in part six: the mansion and FOR FUCK'S SAKE yet again]
Sunday, 28 December 2014
baggage
I came home for Christmas. I saw old friends and shopped and ate and wrapped presents and wore silly hats and ate some more and lounged on the recliner sofas my parents have acquired all of a sudden and drank whisky and introduced my father to whisky and laughed at the stupidest things and was loved more than any human has a right to be.
Tomorrow I'm going home, so tonight I have to pack. Turns out Christmas presents take up quite a lot of space.
I packed and repacked. I transferred things from bag to bag. I called in my little brother to weigh in on the "it is better to have a wheely suitcase, one shoulder bag and one carrier bag, or a wheely suitcase plus two shoulder bags to keep one hand free?" dilemma. I got it just about done and then realised I hadn't packed about nine of my presents, so I took everything out again. I was starting to get backache.
In the end, I came to the snap and surprising decision to abandon my handbag.
My handbag, like all the handbags that came before it, is a monster thing. I've always been of the opinion that if my handbag cannot carry all my wallet-keys-phone essentials plus an umbrella, a compact camera, two reusable shopping bags, a pair of gloves, a bottle of water, a packet of mints, a pair of dance shoes, a fan, two bottles of body spray and a make-up bag, it's got no right to call itself my handbag. I take most of this stuff, except the shoes, everywhere. Just in case. Who knows when you're going to need body spray in two different scents, right?
My dance teacher pointed out to me ages ago that I carry a lot of extra tension in that shoulder. If I go a few days without taking the bag anywhere, it's immediately obvious to me when I pick it up again that it's heavy and uncomfortable and sometimes physically painful to carry. Sometimes I have so much stuff that I end up walking lopsided. I noticed all these things, but decided that I'd just have to live with them. Because I need all that stuff. I need the six pens and the broken bits of another four pens, the handful of loose change, the packets of paracetamol, the hair ties (my hair has been too short to tie back for four months now), the myriad packs of gum, the screwed-up receipts and cinema tickets and bits of paper with my name on (dance debris is not like normal debris), the cocktail stirrers and flowery hair grips and broken sunglasses. It's necessary.
In trying to find a way to get everything back home with me, I realised that the stuff I actually need, the things I use day to day, will fit in a bag the size of an A5 paperback, and it's possible that the emotional security I get from carrying around 10lb worth of mementoes and precautions is maybe not worth permanent shoulder damage. So I took the essentials out, discarded the bag and everything else in it.
I'd like to write about how freeing it is, how nice it feels not to have to take that weight with me everywhere, how much better I feel now. But tomorrow I still have to lug a wheely suitcase and two shoulder bags from west to east, and I have a sense that my shoulders will be feeling substantially worse until I put everything down again at the other end.
Sorry, shoulders. I'm trying.
Tomorrow I'm going home, so tonight I have to pack. Turns out Christmas presents take up quite a lot of space.
I packed and repacked. I transferred things from bag to bag. I called in my little brother to weigh in on the "it is better to have a wheely suitcase, one shoulder bag and one carrier bag, or a wheely suitcase plus two shoulder bags to keep one hand free?" dilemma. I got it just about done and then realised I hadn't packed about nine of my presents, so I took everything out again. I was starting to get backache.
In the end, I came to the snap and surprising decision to abandon my handbag.
My handbag, like all the handbags that came before it, is a monster thing. I've always been of the opinion that if my handbag cannot carry all my wallet-keys-phone essentials plus an umbrella, a compact camera, two reusable shopping bags, a pair of gloves, a bottle of water, a packet of mints, a pair of dance shoes, a fan, two bottles of body spray and a make-up bag, it's got no right to call itself my handbag. I take most of this stuff, except the shoes, everywhere. Just in case. Who knows when you're going to need body spray in two different scents, right?
My dance teacher pointed out to me ages ago that I carry a lot of extra tension in that shoulder. If I go a few days without taking the bag anywhere, it's immediately obvious to me when I pick it up again that it's heavy and uncomfortable and sometimes physically painful to carry. Sometimes I have so much stuff that I end up walking lopsided. I noticed all these things, but decided that I'd just have to live with them. Because I need all that stuff. I need the six pens and the broken bits of another four pens, the handful of loose change, the packets of paracetamol, the hair ties (my hair has been too short to tie back for four months now), the myriad packs of gum, the screwed-up receipts and cinema tickets and bits of paper with my name on (dance debris is not like normal debris), the cocktail stirrers and flowery hair grips and broken sunglasses. It's necessary.
In trying to find a way to get everything back home with me, I realised that the stuff I actually need, the things I use day to day, will fit in a bag the size of an A5 paperback, and it's possible that the emotional security I get from carrying around 10lb worth of mementoes and precautions is maybe not worth permanent shoulder damage. So I took the essentials out, discarded the bag and everything else in it.
I'd like to write about how freeing it is, how nice it feels not to have to take that weight with me everywhere, how much better I feel now. But tomorrow I still have to lug a wheely suitcase and two shoulder bags from west to east, and I have a sense that my shoulders will be feeling substantially worse until I put everything down again at the other end.
Sorry, shoulders. I'm trying.
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
on chivalry
Throughout my online dating history, I have talked to, been on dates with, and had full-blown relationships with various men I met that way. Some of them were great and even though they're no longer in my life, I appreciate that I got to meet them. A lot of them, though, fell into very definite archetypes. The guy who was just a nice guy. The insufferable intellectual. The awkward semi-hermit. The pick-up-artist-in-training. The guy who had a long list of problems that would definitely all be solved if I would just sleep with him please. The guy who had a long list of all his excellent qualities that would definitely solve all my problems if I would just sleep with him please.
Occasionally I would encounter Chivalrous Dude. Chivalrous Dude would be polite to a fault, deliver all manner of compliments all on the right side of appropriate and listen very, very attentively (often without actually hearing anything that was being said). Chivalrous Dude was definitely happy to see that I was a feminist, and he was very committed to treating women right, and wasn't that great? Chivalrous Dude had many Thoughts and Feelings that he was keen to share, and eventually some Traditional Gender Roles that he thought we could perhaps partake of together. My interactions with the Chivalrous Dudes rarely ended well, and I soon learned to steer well clear of them if at all possible.
It's often in response to these guys that I am urged to "cut him some slack". I think I've made my feelings on this phrase quite clear, but let me just say: I get it. I get why people like this chivalry thing, and I get where these guys are coming from. They (mostly) have the absolute best of intentions. They've seen some truly unpleasant behaviour exhibited by men towards women and are appalled by it; they want to be better than that. They are going to be Nice to Women, because they are Nice Men trying to do Nice Things. I understand that.
I also understand that we can't apply a blanket rule of "treat everyone exactly the same" because that just isn't how the world works. We haven't fully corrected the power disparities between genders/races/orientations/whatever else that have existed as long as society has, and we may never do. Treating people with absolute rules-lawyer equality when that isn't what the rest of the world is doing doesn't make things better, particularly not if you are refusing to acknowledge that the behaviour of the rest of the world puts certain people at a disadvantage. So we can't just say "complete equality of treatment, end of discussion." Things are a little too sticky and complicated for that.
However, in terms of basic social interaction, I really do not want to be operating under a Code of How Men Should Treat Women as opposed to a Code of How to Treat Other People. It's weird. If someone holds a door open for me, I will assume they're doing so because I am a person and it is not pleasant to slam a door in the face of a person. If a man in a mixed group holds the door open for women only, I will side-eye him a little bit. If a group of men standing near the door form two groups (or for maximum weird, lines) either side of it, wave me through the door that one of them is holding open and watch me walk through it, I will feel seriously uncomfortable because this is a weird thing to do (if you do this thing? Stop doing this thing, it is a creepy thing).
And in terms of someone I'm dating? I don't want to be treated like Woman as Concept, I want to be treated like me. In my younger and stupider days I dated a couple of men who told me that "the man walks on the outside of the pavement to protect the woman" and "the man walks the woman home to make sure she's safe". What exactly he was going to protect me from by standing on that side of the road, and what dangers he was going to avert that never occurred when I walked home by myself every single other day, was never made clear. If you're going to walk me home, do it because you want to talk to me some more, not because of some unstated Lady Boogeyman.
Mostly the stated position of Chivalrous Dude is less "women are weak and cannot do things for themselves" and more "women are special and magical creatures who must be treated in a special way". Many of the ones I've personally come across have told me that women are amazing, women are worth more than men, women deserve special treatment, men are rubbish and must prove themselves worthy. This is as icky as "women are lesser" and ultimately leads to the same place - these men treat the women around them as if they're not quite human, and as if they're all basically the same.
My major, major bugbear with Chivalrous Dude is this one: there is no way to live up to his expectation of Womanhood. He has a pedestal with Woman on it, casts whoever he's being chivalrous at as Woman, and proceeds to act out his strange code of behaviour until she accidentally reveals herself to be human (by having a past, or a flaw, or on occasion by being a horrible person acting out of outright malice). At this, Chivalrous Dude feels betrayed, upset, maybe angry. Sometimes this is directed at the woman he cast as Woman, feeling that she has let down Womanhood with her unexpected behaviour. Sometimes he doesn't make this distinction between woman and Woman, and her behaviour reflects upon Woman as a whole. If the behaviour is transgressive enough, it breaks his pedestal entirely (you know that guy who got dumped or cheated on or couldn't get that girl to go out with him by hanging around looking hopeful and then spent the next eight years complaining that all women were bitches and whores? He was probably Chivalrous Dude Type 2 once).
You cannot do chivalry, in the modern sense of the word, without bringing in some gender essentialist assumptions to a greater or lesser degree, and frankly I'd rather not. I don't like the behaviours that are coded chivalrous, and I don't like the way I'm expected to perform in response (be quiet, be polite, be gracious, don't make a fuss, don't contradict). Some people do like it, and this is why talking to each other is a thing that people should do more. Then the men that like to behave this way can do so to women who like this behaviour, and I don't have to get called a "lovely lady" ever again.
Occasionally I would encounter Chivalrous Dude. Chivalrous Dude would be polite to a fault, deliver all manner of compliments all on the right side of appropriate and listen very, very attentively (often without actually hearing anything that was being said). Chivalrous Dude was definitely happy to see that I was a feminist, and he was very committed to treating women right, and wasn't that great? Chivalrous Dude had many Thoughts and Feelings that he was keen to share, and eventually some Traditional Gender Roles that he thought we could perhaps partake of together. My interactions with the Chivalrous Dudes rarely ended well, and I soon learned to steer well clear of them if at all possible.
It's often in response to these guys that I am urged to "cut him some slack". I think I've made my feelings on this phrase quite clear, but let me just say: I get it. I get why people like this chivalry thing, and I get where these guys are coming from. They (mostly) have the absolute best of intentions. They've seen some truly unpleasant behaviour exhibited by men towards women and are appalled by it; they want to be better than that. They are going to be Nice to Women, because they are Nice Men trying to do Nice Things. I understand that.
I also understand that we can't apply a blanket rule of "treat everyone exactly the same" because that just isn't how the world works. We haven't fully corrected the power disparities between genders/races/orientations/whatever else that have existed as long as society has, and we may never do. Treating people with absolute rules-lawyer equality when that isn't what the rest of the world is doing doesn't make things better, particularly not if you are refusing to acknowledge that the behaviour of the rest of the world puts certain people at a disadvantage. So we can't just say "complete equality of treatment, end of discussion." Things are a little too sticky and complicated for that.
However, in terms of basic social interaction, I really do not want to be operating under a Code of How Men Should Treat Women as opposed to a Code of How to Treat Other People. It's weird. If someone holds a door open for me, I will assume they're doing so because I am a person and it is not pleasant to slam a door in the face of a person. If a man in a mixed group holds the door open for women only, I will side-eye him a little bit. If a group of men standing near the door form two groups (or for maximum weird, lines) either side of it, wave me through the door that one of them is holding open and watch me walk through it, I will feel seriously uncomfortable because this is a weird thing to do (if you do this thing? Stop doing this thing, it is a creepy thing).
And in terms of someone I'm dating? I don't want to be treated like Woman as Concept, I want to be treated like me. In my younger and stupider days I dated a couple of men who told me that "the man walks on the outside of the pavement to protect the woman" and "the man walks the woman home to make sure she's safe". What exactly he was going to protect me from by standing on that side of the road, and what dangers he was going to avert that never occurred when I walked home by myself every single other day, was never made clear. If you're going to walk me home, do it because you want to talk to me some more, not because of some unstated Lady Boogeyman.
Mostly the stated position of Chivalrous Dude is less "women are weak and cannot do things for themselves" and more "women are special and magical creatures who must be treated in a special way". Many of the ones I've personally come across have told me that women are amazing, women are worth more than men, women deserve special treatment, men are rubbish and must prove themselves worthy. This is as icky as "women are lesser" and ultimately leads to the same place - these men treat the women around them as if they're not quite human, and as if they're all basically the same.
My major, major bugbear with Chivalrous Dude is this one: there is no way to live up to his expectation of Womanhood. He has a pedestal with Woman on it, casts whoever he's being chivalrous at as Woman, and proceeds to act out his strange code of behaviour until she accidentally reveals herself to be human (by having a past, or a flaw, or on occasion by being a horrible person acting out of outright malice). At this, Chivalrous Dude feels betrayed, upset, maybe angry. Sometimes this is directed at the woman he cast as Woman, feeling that she has let down Womanhood with her unexpected behaviour. Sometimes he doesn't make this distinction between woman and Woman, and her behaviour reflects upon Woman as a whole. If the behaviour is transgressive enough, it breaks his pedestal entirely (you know that guy who got dumped or cheated on or couldn't get that girl to go out with him by hanging around looking hopeful and then spent the next eight years complaining that all women were bitches and whores? He was probably Chivalrous Dude Type 2 once).
You cannot do chivalry, in the modern sense of the word, without bringing in some gender essentialist assumptions to a greater or lesser degree, and frankly I'd rather not. I don't like the behaviours that are coded chivalrous, and I don't like the way I'm expected to perform in response (be quiet, be polite, be gracious, don't make a fuss, don't contradict). Some people do like it, and this is why talking to each other is a thing that people should do more. Then the men that like to behave this way can do so to women who like this behaviour, and I don't have to get called a "lovely lady" ever again.
Thursday, 4 December 2014
slack
Today I am going to complain about the phrase "cut him some slack" in order to a) get a grievance out of my head so it doesn't trample all over another post I'm trying to write, and b) stop myself getting involved in an online argument I would surely regret getting involved in. You're welcome.
(Note: "he" in the following list refers to whatever guy I was dealing with at the time rather than this whole post being about one very weird man. Just for clarity's sake.)
Times when I have been asked to "cut a guy some slack" because he is a guy and doesn't know any better/that's just the way they are/was trying to be nice and that's what counts:
When he shouted at me to "smile" from across the street
When he made a nasty joke that upset me
When he ignored everything I was saying only to readily accept the exact same points when made in the exact same way by a man
When he DANCED HIS CROTCH INTO ME FOR FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES ARGHHH
When he objected to me talking to a male colleague whilst at work
When he, as the head of the company I worked for, congratulated me on my weight loss and warned me not to get fat again
When he phoned for advice and asked to be put through to a man
When he told me it was completely reasonable to refuse to hire any woman of childbearing age
When he ran up to me on the street, smacked me on the ass hard enough to bruise, then ran away again
When he sent me sixty text messages in two days
When he complained that women as a gender had really gone downhill in the last twenty years
When he locked me in the car and screamed at me for an hour
When he explained to me that I didn't actually want the things I thought I wanted and in fact wanted these other things instead
When he tried to carry my shopping for me, which consisted of one birthday card in an A5 size carrier bag, and got very upset when I told him I could probably handle the weight myself
When he told me that women were all whores but that I was special
When he tried to follow me home
When he continued to call me by a nickname I hate after I specifically and repeatedly asked him not to
When he laughed for twenty minutes about how indecisive women are whilst trying to sell me a mobile phone
When he made creepy-ass remarks in my ear every time he danced with me
When he tried to teach me to do something I had a qualification in
When he refused to let me make the three-minute walk from the pub to my house by myself EVER IN FOUR YEARS
I have many more, but I'm going to end it there for everyone's sake.
I am nearly thirty years old, and I have had enough of being told that I should assume the best of intentions on the part of any man who annoys me or makes me uncomfortable. I've had enough of being told that I've misinterpreted a thing that happened to me by people who weren't even fucking there, or that I may not have misinterpreted it but that my feelings about it are still wrong. I've had enough of people prioritising the intentions of a man they often don't know at all above the judgement of a woman they do know. It's insulting, and it's especially insulting to have this framed as the position of reason and logic.
Also, look at that list. "Cut him some slack" has become completely fucking meaningless. People say it to me when I'm mildly annoyed in the exact same way as they say it when I'm genuinely scared or hurt. They say "cut him some slack" when I'm griping about a mild sexist stereotype and they say "cut him some slack" when I've sustained actual physical injury from the man in question. So now the phrase means nothing, and it annoys me that much more when applied to the gripe because I remember it being applied to the bruises.
So I say to you, no. I will not cut that man some slack. I made a judgement call. I had this experience and I decided that this man did a shitty thing, or that I don't want to date this man, or that I'm taking my business to a different company. I get to be annoyed or uncomfortable if that's how I'm feeling, and you don't get to tell me my feelings are wrong. I am allowed to not like any given man for whatever frivolous reason (and in turn, people are free to not like me if that's what my frivolous reason inspires in them). I am a grown-ass woman and I am pig sick of having my opinions and boundaries and judgement ignored or disrespected just in case I hurt some poor man's feelings slightly. That man might mean well, in some cases. I fully accept that. But his meaning well does not compel me to accept or enjoy his behaviour, to date him or dance with him or otherwise spend time with him, to knowingly put myself in a situation I know I'm going to hate. Why should I? He wouldn't. It's more important for me to trust myself than to be nice to you, and no, I'm not sorry about it. I'm going to stop twisting myself into knots trying to work out how to not offend anyone and cut myself some slack for a goddamn change.
(Note: "he" in the following list refers to whatever guy I was dealing with at the time rather than this whole post being about one very weird man. Just for clarity's sake.)
Times when I have been asked to "cut a guy some slack" because he is a guy and doesn't know any better/that's just the way they are/was trying to be nice and that's what counts:
When he shouted at me to "smile" from across the street
When he made a nasty joke that upset me
When he ignored everything I was saying only to readily accept the exact same points when made in the exact same way by a man
When he DANCED HIS CROTCH INTO ME FOR FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES ARGHHH
When he objected to me talking to a male colleague whilst at work
When he, as the head of the company I worked for, congratulated me on my weight loss and warned me not to get fat again
When he phoned for advice and asked to be put through to a man
When he told me it was completely reasonable to refuse to hire any woman of childbearing age
When he ran up to me on the street, smacked me on the ass hard enough to bruise, then ran away again
When he sent me sixty text messages in two days
When he complained that women as a gender had really gone downhill in the last twenty years
When he locked me in the car and screamed at me for an hour
When he explained to me that I didn't actually want the things I thought I wanted and in fact wanted these other things instead
When he tried to carry my shopping for me, which consisted of one birthday card in an A5 size carrier bag, and got very upset when I told him I could probably handle the weight myself
When he told me that women were all whores but that I was special
When he tried to follow me home
When he continued to call me by a nickname I hate after I specifically and repeatedly asked him not to
When he laughed for twenty minutes about how indecisive women are whilst trying to sell me a mobile phone
When he made creepy-ass remarks in my ear every time he danced with me
When he tried to teach me to do something I had a qualification in
When he refused to let me make the three-minute walk from the pub to my house by myself EVER IN FOUR YEARS
I have many more, but I'm going to end it there for everyone's sake.
I am nearly thirty years old, and I have had enough of being told that I should assume the best of intentions on the part of any man who annoys me or makes me uncomfortable. I've had enough of being told that I've misinterpreted a thing that happened to me by people who weren't even fucking there, or that I may not have misinterpreted it but that my feelings about it are still wrong. I've had enough of people prioritising the intentions of a man they often don't know at all above the judgement of a woman they do know. It's insulting, and it's especially insulting to have this framed as the position of reason and logic.
Also, look at that list. "Cut him some slack" has become completely fucking meaningless. People say it to me when I'm mildly annoyed in the exact same way as they say it when I'm genuinely scared or hurt. They say "cut him some slack" when I'm griping about a mild sexist stereotype and they say "cut him some slack" when I've sustained actual physical injury from the man in question. So now the phrase means nothing, and it annoys me that much more when applied to the gripe because I remember it being applied to the bruises.
So I say to you, no. I will not cut that man some slack. I made a judgement call. I had this experience and I decided that this man did a shitty thing, or that I don't want to date this man, or that I'm taking my business to a different company. I get to be annoyed or uncomfortable if that's how I'm feeling, and you don't get to tell me my feelings are wrong. I am allowed to not like any given man for whatever frivolous reason (and in turn, people are free to not like me if that's what my frivolous reason inspires in them). I am a grown-ass woman and I am pig sick of having my opinions and boundaries and judgement ignored or disrespected just in case I hurt some poor man's feelings slightly. That man might mean well, in some cases. I fully accept that. But his meaning well does not compel me to accept or enjoy his behaviour, to date him or dance with him or otherwise spend time with him, to knowingly put myself in a situation I know I'm going to hate. Why should I? He wouldn't. It's more important for me to trust myself than to be nice to you, and no, I'm not sorry about it. I'm going to stop twisting myself into knots trying to work out how to not offend anyone and cut myself some slack for a goddamn change.
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