[Previously in the saga: unhinged landlord explains things, more Monologuing Through Doors, and finally moving out]
So then I was homeless.
After that one moment of doubt in the hotel on the first night, I never for a moment questioned whether I was right to move out of the House of Diluted Wine (there is a house in Pimlico, they caaaalll Diluted Wine, and it's been the ruin of many a young life, but God, it won't be mine...) (stupid rewritten song lyrics for every occasion, thank you very much). I didn't have a home, but I'd take that over a home with That Guy in it.
For the first few weeks, things weren't so bad. I stayed in some dancer friends' spare room for a week, then on another dancer friend's floor for two. It wasn't even close to ideal, but I knew where I'd be sleeping every night. I mostly coasted through on a sense of sheer amazement that I had people who'd take me in. Six months ago I'd had almost no support system in London at all, and now I was being offered spare beds and sofas and floors, sent likely-looking roommate ads that people had seen, and contacted by friends of friends who had been told that I would be an excellent person to fill their spare room. I'm not sure I'd have exchanged all that for secure housing.
There was still unfinished business with my newly ex-landlord. I'd sent him a message asking him to get in touch if there were any issues with the return of my deposit, and he had told me (in possibly the world's longest ever text message) that yes, there were issues with the return of my deposit, the issue being that he thought he should get to keep it. He gave me three reasons:
One, that I had given my month's notice at a time he found extremely inconvenient;
Two, that I hadn't bought enough loo roll and cleaning supplies;
Three, that I hadn't been cleaning to his satisfaction whilst I'd been living there.
These hardships, he thought, entitled him to keep nearly a thousand pounds of my money. I rather disagreed. I told him that none of those things were things you get compensation for, especially when you haven't at any point said, "hey, housemate, you're not buying enough loo roll", and that if these were his only issues then I expected all of my money back. We had a tedious and stressful back-and-forth where we fought, then he would say something nasty, then I would stop responding, then he would apologise. Eventually he suggested we "work something out that's fair to both of us", and I asked him to break down exactly what material losses he felt he had suffered and how much of my deposit he was proposing to keep for each of said losses, thinking that maybe it would be easier to negotiate with him if I could just get him to write the words "compensation for inconvenient timing of notice: £500" and read it back to himself a couple of times.
He didn't. A few days later, via email that radiated martyrdom, he told me that he'd returned my deposit in full, because it just seemed like the easiest thing to do. I gave him a forwarding address (my parents') for any mail, and never heard from him again.
It felt like one of my greatest triumphs. I'd got my money back, without having to involve any professionals, and I didn't have to deal with That Guy anymore. But I still had nowhere to live. I was running out of options that would give me a place to sleep for more than two nights and dancer goodwill was drying up rapidly.
I redoubled my efforts to find somewhere and went to a speed flatmating event. Everyone with a room going wanted over £1000 a month for it, but I found a couple of potential flatmates to team up with. We viewed one place, which was in Clapham but also somehow in the middle of a wood, had a pitch-dark stairwell, contained only severely water-damaged furnishings, but was, we were assured, completely safe because "anybody looking to start trouble usually goes to one of the other flats."
I checked into a hotel.
[in part four: exhaustion and the exploding guest house]
Monday, 20 October 2014
Wednesday, 15 October 2014
adventures in housing, part two
[Previously in this story: a break-up, a new landlord, diluted wine, and the first instance of Monologuing Through Doors]
I knew within the first week of moving to this place that it wasn't a long-term option, but I thought I could probably stick it out for six months. My post-break-up social life had taken off in a way I'd never expected, so I wasn't in very much and he didn't try to communicate with me that often, so I just wouldn't go in the communal areas and we could ignore each other until Christmas. I could handle that, I told myself.
Six weeks later, I told everyone else that I was handing in my notice at the end of the month. I had nowhere else lined up, but I didn't care. I couldn't hang on til Christmas, I couldn't hang on til I had another option secured. I had to get out and get out now, before I woke up to find him in my room, draining my blood into a recycling bin because he was worried about the mess I might make on his carpets if I ever happened to cut myself. I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand living with someone who panicked so hard whenever anything was out of place. I couldn't stand being spoken to like a fourteen-year-old girl who knew nothing about the world. I couldn't stand having him repeatedly condescend to me about my own areas of expertise. I couldn't stand having any more basic concepts or household items being explained to me in ridiculous detail.
"Now, I'll show you something that's really useful. These are excellent." [produces a roll of paper towels] "And all you do is tear off a sheet, like this - see? - and then you use it to wipe up any stain on the counter top..."
"Yes, I bought those."
Once he heard me singing and thought it was the radio. He argued with me for five straight minutes that I couldn't possibly have been singing, and finally walked away confused as to how he'd been unable to make me understand that I hadn't been making that noise. Every interaction I had with him was stressful, and I came to dread the mere sound of his voice or his footsteps, even his breathing.
When my fainting problem started to get worse, I was off sick and stuck in the flat more often than I'd like. My tolerance for the man reduced to essentially zero, and I tried harder than ever to keep out of his way. Once when I was off sick, he asked me what the matter was. I explained it - I faint, it's a long term problem, it's my blood pressure, it's a pain but there's not much that can be done about it.
He said, "Maybe it's epilepsy."
"No, it's not epilepsy. They know what it is."
"But if it was epilepsy," he said, "that would be great, because then you could be cured. Maybe you should test for epilepsy."
I struggled past the sheer volume of wrong in those two sentences and told him that no, it wasn't epilepsy, I'd seen specialists, the problem had been diagnosed, and I'd appreciate him not trying to diagnose me.
"Oh no," he said, "I'll still keep thinking of things, and coming to you with ideas." He gave me a satisfied smile. "I'm a journalist, you see."
DUDE. YOU FREELANCE FOR CANMAKERS MONTHLY.
"Yeah. Please don't," I said, and scuttled back to my room.
I sat around running through a list of excuses for moving out, trying to find the one that might cause the least amount of drama. I've lost my job. I'm emigrating. I'm dying. I've been accepted onto a reality show. I've converted to a niche religion which requires me to live in a commune. The one thing I really didn't want to have to do was tell him I was leaving because of him and have him explain to me why it was wrong of me to not be compatible with his personality.
In the end, I told him I was leaving because I couldn't afford to live there, and because I was ill. He suggested that both problems could be solved if I just stopped dancing, which is very much the wrong thing to suggest to me. He fought me on my decision to leave for a little while, and eventually I lied, appealed to his perception of me as an irresponsible child, and told him I was moving back home. From then on he stopped trying to convince me to stay, and communicated with me pretty much solely by Monologuing Through Doors from that point on, or by sending me text messages that said nothing except "PLEASE REPLY TO THIS TEXT MESSAGE." He would kick me out of the house whenever he was conducting a viewing no matter how sick I was and complain (Through Doors) about what terrible timing all of this was.
Finding somewhere else to live would be easy enough, I was sure. After all, there were hundreds of places last time. I just needed to find one that was slightly cheaper and preferably not owner-occupier and I'd be set. I fairly quickly discovered the actual truth about the London rental market: at any given time, there are approximately four habitable places for rent, and eighty-six thousand people applying for each one. Almost everything was extortionate, or infectious, or not in London at all. None of the semi-decent places I wrote to replied to me. None of my friends knew of anybody looking for a flatmate. My notice ran out and I still had nowhere to go and no leads at all.
I booked into a hotel for the night after moving day. My father came to help me move out, and to take most of my belongings back home. When he got out of the car I could see he was judging me; he thought I was being melodramatic and that I probably could have stuck this out a bit longer, at least until I'd found somewhere else to live. After all, the guy had seemed perfectly nice before. An hour or so later, Through Doors, he got to experience the landlord I'd been living with.
"Jen. I'm very concerned because I don't know when you'll be moving out."
"We'll be gone by 6.30 at the latest."
"Because I have other things to do and it's very difficult not to know when you'll be going."
"It'll be 6.30 at the latest."
"This whole thing has been very difficult for me, you know, with you giving notice and leaving when I'm having a very stressful time with my work and when I don't know when you're leaving - "
"Yeah. 6.30."
"Because I'm not able to plan the rest of my day, not knowing when you're - "
"I have said THREE. TIMES. We're leaving at 6.30."
"...oh. OK."
My dad, who asssesses everything and everybody on a scale of "not bad, actually" to "not quite the thing, really" looked at the door, then at me, then back at the door. "Yeah, he is a bit of a funny bugger, isn't he?"
As we drove away from the flat for the last time, he said, "Jesus Christ. No wonder his wife left him."
He dropped me off at my hotel with a suitcase and a laptop bag and left with everything else that I owned. I had a bed for the night, but no idea at all where I'd be going tomorrow. Maybe all the sensible people were right, and I should have stuck it out a bit longer. Maybe I should have waited until I knew I had somewhere else to go.
That night as I slept, my brain registered a clattering from the hotel kitchen and I sat bolt upright and shaking in the bed, terrified that I'd just dreamed the part where I moved out and I was actually still living in the flat. I looked down at the hotel bedsheets, at my suitcase on the floor, at my keycard on the table next to me, and fell into the most comfortable sleep I'd had in months.
No, they weren't right.
[in part three: dancers' floors and the fight for the deposit]
I knew within the first week of moving to this place that it wasn't a long-term option, but I thought I could probably stick it out for six months. My post-break-up social life had taken off in a way I'd never expected, so I wasn't in very much and he didn't try to communicate with me that often, so I just wouldn't go in the communal areas and we could ignore each other until Christmas. I could handle that, I told myself.
Six weeks later, I told everyone else that I was handing in my notice at the end of the month. I had nowhere else lined up, but I didn't care. I couldn't hang on til Christmas, I couldn't hang on til I had another option secured. I had to get out and get out now, before I woke up to find him in my room, draining my blood into a recycling bin because he was worried about the mess I might make on his carpets if I ever happened to cut myself. I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand living with someone who panicked so hard whenever anything was out of place. I couldn't stand being spoken to like a fourteen-year-old girl who knew nothing about the world. I couldn't stand having him repeatedly condescend to me about my own areas of expertise. I couldn't stand having any more basic concepts or household items being explained to me in ridiculous detail.
"Now, I'll show you something that's really useful. These are excellent." [produces a roll of paper towels] "And all you do is tear off a sheet, like this - see? - and then you use it to wipe up any stain on the counter top..."
"Yes, I bought those."
Once he heard me singing and thought it was the radio. He argued with me for five straight minutes that I couldn't possibly have been singing, and finally walked away confused as to how he'd been unable to make me understand that I hadn't been making that noise. Every interaction I had with him was stressful, and I came to dread the mere sound of his voice or his footsteps, even his breathing.
When my fainting problem started to get worse, I was off sick and stuck in the flat more often than I'd like. My tolerance for the man reduced to essentially zero, and I tried harder than ever to keep out of his way. Once when I was off sick, he asked me what the matter was. I explained it - I faint, it's a long term problem, it's my blood pressure, it's a pain but there's not much that can be done about it.
He said, "Maybe it's epilepsy."
"No, it's not epilepsy. They know what it is."
"But if it was epilepsy," he said, "that would be great, because then you could be cured. Maybe you should test for epilepsy."
I struggled past the sheer volume of wrong in those two sentences and told him that no, it wasn't epilepsy, I'd seen specialists, the problem had been diagnosed, and I'd appreciate him not trying to diagnose me.
"Oh no," he said, "I'll still keep thinking of things, and coming to you with ideas." He gave me a satisfied smile. "I'm a journalist, you see."
DUDE. YOU FREELANCE FOR CANMAKERS MONTHLY.
"Yeah. Please don't," I said, and scuttled back to my room.
I sat around running through a list of excuses for moving out, trying to find the one that might cause the least amount of drama. I've lost my job. I'm emigrating. I'm dying. I've been accepted onto a reality show. I've converted to a niche religion which requires me to live in a commune. The one thing I really didn't want to have to do was tell him I was leaving because of him and have him explain to me why it was wrong of me to not be compatible with his personality.
In the end, I told him I was leaving because I couldn't afford to live there, and because I was ill. He suggested that both problems could be solved if I just stopped dancing, which is very much the wrong thing to suggest to me. He fought me on my decision to leave for a little while, and eventually I lied, appealed to his perception of me as an irresponsible child, and told him I was moving back home. From then on he stopped trying to convince me to stay, and communicated with me pretty much solely by Monologuing Through Doors from that point on, or by sending me text messages that said nothing except "PLEASE REPLY TO THIS TEXT MESSAGE." He would kick me out of the house whenever he was conducting a viewing no matter how sick I was and complain (Through Doors) about what terrible timing all of this was.
Finding somewhere else to live would be easy enough, I was sure. After all, there were hundreds of places last time. I just needed to find one that was slightly cheaper and preferably not owner-occupier and I'd be set. I fairly quickly discovered the actual truth about the London rental market: at any given time, there are approximately four habitable places for rent, and eighty-six thousand people applying for each one. Almost everything was extortionate, or infectious, or not in London at all. None of the semi-decent places I wrote to replied to me. None of my friends knew of anybody looking for a flatmate. My notice ran out and I still had nowhere to go and no leads at all.
I booked into a hotel for the night after moving day. My father came to help me move out, and to take most of my belongings back home. When he got out of the car I could see he was judging me; he thought I was being melodramatic and that I probably could have stuck this out a bit longer, at least until I'd found somewhere else to live. After all, the guy had seemed perfectly nice before. An hour or so later, Through Doors, he got to experience the landlord I'd been living with.
"Jen. I'm very concerned because I don't know when you'll be moving out."
"We'll be gone by 6.30 at the latest."
"Because I have other things to do and it's very difficult not to know when you'll be going."
"It'll be 6.30 at the latest."
"This whole thing has been very difficult for me, you know, with you giving notice and leaving when I'm having a very stressful time with my work and when I don't know when you're leaving - "
"Yeah. 6.30."
"Because I'm not able to plan the rest of my day, not knowing when you're - "
"I have said THREE. TIMES. We're leaving at 6.30."
"...oh. OK."
My dad, who asssesses everything and everybody on a scale of "not bad, actually" to "not quite the thing, really" looked at the door, then at me, then back at the door. "Yeah, he is a bit of a funny bugger, isn't he?"
As we drove away from the flat for the last time, he said, "Jesus Christ. No wonder his wife left him."
He dropped me off at my hotel with a suitcase and a laptop bag and left with everything else that I owned. I had a bed for the night, but no idea at all where I'd be going tomorrow. Maybe all the sensible people were right, and I should have stuck it out a bit longer. Maybe I should have waited until I knew I had somewhere else to go.
That night as I slept, my brain registered a clattering from the hotel kitchen and I sat bolt upright and shaking in the bed, terrified that I'd just dreamed the part where I moved out and I was actually still living in the flat. I looked down at the hotel bedsheets, at my suitcase on the floor, at my keycard on the table next to me, and fell into the most comfortable sleep I'd had in months.
No, they weren't right.
[in part three: dancers' floors and the fight for the deposit]
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
adventures in housing, part one
[People have been suggesting for some time that I write about this, because it is completely ridiculous, so I'm having a go. This will be a saga in several parts. Everything in this story is true; names have been omitted for the sake of plausible deniability]
For my first two years in London, I lived with my partner. We had a slightly scruffy flat that I loved fiercely. I loved the chipped tiles on the front step. I loved the awkwardly positioned bathroom. I loved the garden we could never get anything to grow in. I loved the living room that could comfortably sleep my whole family, I loved the loo roll holder that fell off the wall literally any time anybody touched it, I loved the needlessly complicated back door, I loved the kitchen that just felt like mine. I loved the six-minute walk to the tube, I loved the Saturday farmer's market, I loved the cooked breakfasts at the café across the road. I loved our landlords, who rarely bothered us but would sort out any problems as soon as we asked (I miss them. Oh God, I miss them).
But living together got harder. We fought, and I hid, and he would ask me what the problem was and I would tell him and he would try to fix it by explaining to me why that thing wasn't actually a problem, and then we would fight and I would hide some more. When we split up he seemed surprised; like he hadn't seen it coming.
We had a big flat in zone 2 with a cellar and a garden, and I was the well-paid one (which is saying something). There was only one bedroom. Neither of us could keep it. We gave notice to our regretful but understanding landlords, and lived in a state of incredibly confused normalcy for a month, where it took two weeks for us to realise we shouldn't be sharing a bed anymore, because we'd been lying next to each other and not touching for six months already. I set up an ad and started looking for a room.
I was spoilt by that first flat hunt. Everywhere I viewed was at least decent. Everyone I met seemed nice. There must have been an unusual shortage of people looking for rooms that month, because I got dozens of messages every week from people wanting me to come and live with them (spoilers: you will not be reading that again). I found somewhere without too much hassle: not the prettiest but incredibly well-located, with two guys: the landlord, who seemed perfectly nice and easy-going, and another man who was in London maybe three nights a month at most. It seemed fine.
I had my first clue that things weren't fine on my first night there. He suggested we have dinner together, and offered me a glass of wine. When I accepted, he poured half an inch of wine into two tumblers and walked over to the sink.
"Do you want yours diluted?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Do you want your wine diluted?"
"Diluted? ...no thanks."
"Oh. I'm having mine diluted. It's how the Romans drank it."
"No thanks."
So he handed me the glass with half an inch of liquid in it and sipped, slightly defensively, at his strange alcoholic squash drink. I knew that a man who a) dilutes his wine and b) is quite comfortable giving someone half an inch of drink to show his disapproval of her excessive ways was not likely to be a soulmate of mine. (He then told me that he'd "observed that some of our greatest literature... is about change" and I think I deserve some kind of award for not telling him that yes, essentially, that is what a plot is.)
He told me he worked in PR. My next clue that this was not my forever home came during my first week in the flat, when he went out to a launch of some unspecified thing and returned with tales of free alcohol and a really interesting bar. "I've been telling everyone all night, 'My flatmate's a novelist'," he told me, with the air of a fully satisfied man. "I think that bar would be a great place for your book launch. I know exactly how I'm going to organise it."
I am a novelist, in the sense that there are half a dozen or so first draft novels sitting on my hard drive. I am not a novelist in the sense of having published anything, or having anything about to be published, or having an agent, or having sent anything off to anybody ever. I am certainly not a novelist in the sense of appointing a PR guy to do my launch party. It was a small incident, and not really enough to point to any conclusions - either that he liked to bullshit, and might have been doing so during the viewing, or he really thought this was reasonable, and maybe his grip on reality wasn't quite what it could be - and so I let it go. By the time I noticed that he hadn't left the house for anything besides food shopping in the month since that launch, and was possibly both bullshitting and delusional, other signs had begun to pop up all over the place.
It had become clear pretty quickly that he didn't want anyone, least of all me, in his house. He was used to the other guy paying him silly money for a barely-used room, and every time he saw me in the kitchen in the morning it was an unpleasant surprise. He wanted to talk about the things he'd heard on the radio or seen on the internet, but he couldn't bring himself to have a conversation about them. He regarded me as though I was a friend's teenage daughter that he'd taken in as a favour, and couldn't comprehend that I'd have anything to contribute to anything.
Once I came home late, had a pizza, and left the box on the table. The next morning I came into the kitchen to find him staring at it with an expression of sheer despair on his face.
"You left this on the table," he said.
"I came in late. I was going to - "
"You see," he said desperately, "it's best - it really is best - if you fold it up immediately and put it in the recycling. It's best to do it immediately. You see, if you fold it up like this - " as he demonstrated exactly how best to fold up a cardboard box " - and put it away in the recycling immediately, that really is best, if that's OK. Is that OK? Because it really is best - "
"I have to get to work."
We repeated this any time I left evidence of my existence out. If I left a cup in the living room, if there was a fingernail-sized blob of tomato sauce next to the stove, if I had a shower and prioritised drying myself above giving the bathroom an immediate and thorough clean. Because I'd just come out of the shower, was lacking in clothes and therefore keeping my bedroom door shut, he developed one of his weirder habits, Monologuing Through Doors.
"Ah, hah, Jen, you are going to clean the bath, aren't you?"
"Yes, when I'm dry."
"Because it's a mess, you know, it's a mess. I can see - there's shampoo - I can see a blob of shampoo in the bath. And I know - I know it's you, because you're the only one in the house with any hair..."
"I'll clean the bath when I've dried my hair."
"Because I can see it, you know, the shampoo, and I don't mind cleaning the bath, I don't mind it, but I think really if you could clean the bath when you've used it, if we could all clean the bath when we've used it, I think we - we should all clean the bath... there's shampoo."
"When. I'm. Dry."
"Shampoo... in the bath."
"I'm turning my hairdryer on now."
"...shampoo..."
[in part two: "if you had epilepsy, they could cure it", and how to leave your scary shut-in landlord]
For my first two years in London, I lived with my partner. We had a slightly scruffy flat that I loved fiercely. I loved the chipped tiles on the front step. I loved the awkwardly positioned bathroom. I loved the garden we could never get anything to grow in. I loved the living room that could comfortably sleep my whole family, I loved the loo roll holder that fell off the wall literally any time anybody touched it, I loved the needlessly complicated back door, I loved the kitchen that just felt like mine. I loved the six-minute walk to the tube, I loved the Saturday farmer's market, I loved the cooked breakfasts at the café across the road. I loved our landlords, who rarely bothered us but would sort out any problems as soon as we asked (I miss them. Oh God, I miss them).
But living together got harder. We fought, and I hid, and he would ask me what the problem was and I would tell him and he would try to fix it by explaining to me why that thing wasn't actually a problem, and then we would fight and I would hide some more. When we split up he seemed surprised; like he hadn't seen it coming.
We had a big flat in zone 2 with a cellar and a garden, and I was the well-paid one (which is saying something). There was only one bedroom. Neither of us could keep it. We gave notice to our regretful but understanding landlords, and lived in a state of incredibly confused normalcy for a month, where it took two weeks for us to realise we shouldn't be sharing a bed anymore, because we'd been lying next to each other and not touching for six months already. I set up an ad and started looking for a room.
I was spoilt by that first flat hunt. Everywhere I viewed was at least decent. Everyone I met seemed nice. There must have been an unusual shortage of people looking for rooms that month, because I got dozens of messages every week from people wanting me to come and live with them (spoilers: you will not be reading that again). I found somewhere without too much hassle: not the prettiest but incredibly well-located, with two guys: the landlord, who seemed perfectly nice and easy-going, and another man who was in London maybe three nights a month at most. It seemed fine.
I had my first clue that things weren't fine on my first night there. He suggested we have dinner together, and offered me a glass of wine. When I accepted, he poured half an inch of wine into two tumblers and walked over to the sink.
"Do you want yours diluted?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Do you want your wine diluted?"
"Diluted? ...no thanks."
"Oh. I'm having mine diluted. It's how the Romans drank it."
"No thanks."
So he handed me the glass with half an inch of liquid in it and sipped, slightly defensively, at his strange alcoholic squash drink. I knew that a man who a) dilutes his wine and b) is quite comfortable giving someone half an inch of drink to show his disapproval of her excessive ways was not likely to be a soulmate of mine. (He then told me that he'd "observed that some of our greatest literature... is about change" and I think I deserve some kind of award for not telling him that yes, essentially, that is what a plot is.)
He told me he worked in PR. My next clue that this was not my forever home came during my first week in the flat, when he went out to a launch of some unspecified thing and returned with tales of free alcohol and a really interesting bar. "I've been telling everyone all night, 'My flatmate's a novelist'," he told me, with the air of a fully satisfied man. "I think that bar would be a great place for your book launch. I know exactly how I'm going to organise it."
I am a novelist, in the sense that there are half a dozen or so first draft novels sitting on my hard drive. I am not a novelist in the sense of having published anything, or having anything about to be published, or having an agent, or having sent anything off to anybody ever. I am certainly not a novelist in the sense of appointing a PR guy to do my launch party. It was a small incident, and not really enough to point to any conclusions - either that he liked to bullshit, and might have been doing so during the viewing, or he really thought this was reasonable, and maybe his grip on reality wasn't quite what it could be - and so I let it go. By the time I noticed that he hadn't left the house for anything besides food shopping in the month since that launch, and was possibly both bullshitting and delusional, other signs had begun to pop up all over the place.
It had become clear pretty quickly that he didn't want anyone, least of all me, in his house. He was used to the other guy paying him silly money for a barely-used room, and every time he saw me in the kitchen in the morning it was an unpleasant surprise. He wanted to talk about the things he'd heard on the radio or seen on the internet, but he couldn't bring himself to have a conversation about them. He regarded me as though I was a friend's teenage daughter that he'd taken in as a favour, and couldn't comprehend that I'd have anything to contribute to anything.
Once I came home late, had a pizza, and left the box on the table. The next morning I came into the kitchen to find him staring at it with an expression of sheer despair on his face.
"You left this on the table," he said.
"I came in late. I was going to - "
"You see," he said desperately, "it's best - it really is best - if you fold it up immediately and put it in the recycling. It's best to do it immediately. You see, if you fold it up like this - " as he demonstrated exactly how best to fold up a cardboard box " - and put it away in the recycling immediately, that really is best, if that's OK. Is that OK? Because it really is best - "
"I have to get to work."
We repeated this any time I left evidence of my existence out. If I left a cup in the living room, if there was a fingernail-sized blob of tomato sauce next to the stove, if I had a shower and prioritised drying myself above giving the bathroom an immediate and thorough clean. Because I'd just come out of the shower, was lacking in clothes and therefore keeping my bedroom door shut, he developed one of his weirder habits, Monologuing Through Doors.
"Ah, hah, Jen, you are going to clean the bath, aren't you?"
"Yes, when I'm dry."
"Because it's a mess, you know, it's a mess. I can see - there's shampoo - I can see a blob of shampoo in the bath. And I know - I know it's you, because you're the only one in the house with any hair..."
"I'll clean the bath when I've dried my hair."
"Because I can see it, you know, the shampoo, and I don't mind cleaning the bath, I don't mind it, but I think really if you could clean the bath when you've used it, if we could all clean the bath when we've used it, I think we - we should all clean the bath... there's shampoo."
"When. I'm. Dry."
"Shampoo... in the bath."
"I'm turning my hairdryer on now."
"...shampoo..."
[in part two: "if you had epilepsy, they could cure it", and how to leave your scary shut-in landlord]
Friday, 3 October 2014
call centre
Caller: [explains problem]
Worker: That's not something we deal with here, you'll need to speak to [relevant people].
Caller: But I phoned YOU.
Caller: [explains problem] I'm thinking I might sue. Should I sue?
Worker: Well, that would be your decision to make.
Caller: So I should sue! Would I win?
Worker: There's no way for me to know that.
Caller: Fantastic! [away from phone] Honey, she says we should sue!
Worker: I didn't say that.
Caller: It's so great that you said that.
Caller: Don't tell anyone I said this. I don't want it attached to my name.
Worker: That's OK, you haven't given me your name.
Caller: YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT I KNOW YOU
Caller: Last time I called I spoke to Trevor. Can I speak to Trevor this time?
Worker: I'm afraid we're not set up to direct people to specific advisors.
Caller: [pouts audibly] I liked Trevor.
Worker: I'm sure I'll be able to help you.
Caller: Is Trevor there?
Worker: Not in this office.
Caller: Fine. I'll keep trying until I get Trevor.
Worker: OK, so you have four options here. [explains options]
Caller: So you're saying there's nothing I can do about this?
Worker: Well, there are the four options...
Caller: So, nothing, then.
Caller: Thank you so much for your help, Jezebel.
Worker. My name's Jane.
Caller: Yep! Bye, Jezebel!
Worker: So that's all you need to do, and you'll be set.
Caller: Why can't you do it?
Worker: ...
Caller: I phoned you for HELP.
Caller: So I called before, and you guys told me to use a filter to get rid of my junk mail, and I got drunk and punched a guy in the pub, and now everything's got worse. I'd like to complain about your service.
Worker: [call centre], may I help you?
Caller: Trevor?
Worker: ... no, this is -
Caller: [hangs up]
Worker: That's not something we deal with here, you'll need to speak to [relevant people].
Caller: But I phoned YOU.
Caller: [explains problem] I'm thinking I might sue. Should I sue?
Worker: Well, that would be your decision to make.
Caller: So I should sue! Would I win?
Worker: There's no way for me to know that.
Caller: Fantastic! [away from phone] Honey, she says we should sue!
Worker: I didn't say that.
Caller: It's so great that you said that.
Caller: Don't tell anyone I said this. I don't want it attached to my name.
Worker: That's OK, you haven't given me your name.
Caller: YOU ARE THE GOVERNMENT I KNOW YOU
Caller: Last time I called I spoke to Trevor. Can I speak to Trevor this time?
Worker: I'm afraid we're not set up to direct people to specific advisors.
Caller: [pouts audibly] I liked Trevor.
Worker: I'm sure I'll be able to help you.
Caller: Is Trevor there?
Worker: Not in this office.
Caller: Fine. I'll keep trying until I get Trevor.
Worker: OK, so you have four options here. [explains options]
Caller: So you're saying there's nothing I can do about this?
Worker: Well, there are the four options...
Caller: So, nothing, then.
Caller: Thank you so much for your help, Jezebel.
Worker. My name's Jane.
Caller: Yep! Bye, Jezebel!
Worker: So that's all you need to do, and you'll be set.
Caller: Why can't you do it?
Worker: ...
Caller: I phoned you for HELP.
Caller: So I called before, and you guys told me to use a filter to get rid of my junk mail, and I got drunk and punched a guy in the pub, and now everything's got worse. I'd like to complain about your service.
Worker: [call centre], may I help you?
Caller: Trevor?
Worker: ... no, this is -
Caller: [hangs up]
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
silence
The other night I went dancing. The scene is still small and I'm pretty much always there, so I generally recognise most people I see when I enter a venue. People I know well, people I know by face but not by name, people I love to dance with, people who are in massive demand that I have to fight to dance with. Then there are the people I will not dance with again under any circumstances.
This dance shitlist is small and not based on dance quality. I can easily dance with someone who's not very good. To get on the shitlist you either have to dance in a way that's physically painful to your partner, or be seriously creepy. For example, my shitlist contains the following names:
Ass Groper: guy spent most of the dance just shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, then suddenly reached out and started rubbing my ass.
Spine Trumpet: whose idea of leading is to hold me uncomfortably tightly and poke me in the back and/or hands, leaving me in some pain and also once with a bruise on my wrist.
Crotch Lead: WORST DANCE EVER OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.
This time I saw the most recent addition to my Do Not Dance list: the Skirtlifter. When I danced with him a couple of months ago, he held my hand quite low against my leg, and then using my hand as a sort of cover he physically lifted up my skirt and started stroking my thigh. I went Eek and tensed up my hand to force him away, he said, "Mmmm, just as good as I remember," and I fought back the urge to throw up on his shoulder. There will be no more dances with this guy.
I told people about him. There is a creepy guy, he did a creepy thing, would recommend you avoid. And said people, after going, "Ew," would say, "Did you say anything?" or "I hope you smacked him."
Well, no, I didn't. I froze up and tried to work out how I could get out of this with the least amount of fuss.
We are socialised to believe that nothing is a problem until someone draws attention to it, and therefore that the act of stating the problem out loud is what creates it. So when people complain about something that's made them uncomfortable, they're making a scene, creating drama, forcing everyone else to be aware of something unpleasant when they were quite happy in their ignorance, thanks. So we are tacitly encouraged to keep quiet, try and make the problem go away as politely and diplomatically as possible, without letting anyone know the problem was ever there, including and perhaps especially the perpetrator (because they can't have meant it, they were probably trying to be nice, it was only a joke, it didn't actually hurt you, now, did it? Which leads to that lovely and familiar pattern where you're overreacting because it didn't hurt you, right up until you do get hurt, at which point you really ought to have done something about that, you know).
The idea that we aren't to upset Creepy Guy, that it's not nice to set boundaries with Creepy Guy or get him banned from places where he's been persistently creepy, is so ingrained at this point that it's very hard to fight against in the moment. I'm a lot stronger about boundaries than I used to be, but my instinctive reaction to being unexpectedly felt up was Oh God hand on thigh get it off very politely and then finish the dance and say thank you and walk away and never come back. Reprogramming myself not to do this is going to be pretty tough.
In the latter days of Crotch Lead's reign of doom and terror, I told several people that I'd had enough of hiding on the other side of the room and letting him take over my night. I told them that the next time he asked me to dance, I would say no, and also tell him why I was saying no. Most people, including the ones who'd said they'd just kick him in the nuts if he tried it or that he "wouldn't dare" dance with them like that, looked completely taken aback. "No thank you, the way you dance makes me really uncomfortable" shouldn't be such a radical statement, but there is something about a person (particularly a woman) openly and bluntly refusing to do something she's not comfortable with that feels almost transgressive. In the end I didn't say anything, mostly because he never did ask me again. But that, in turn, was mostly because I never really did stop hiding from him.
Dance-wise, I am absolutely secure in my limits. I don't question whether I should be enjoying something more than I am or whether I'm overreacting to a certain hand placement. I am completely comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, as it were, and I won't subject myself to it again just to be nice or to seem more likable. But actually saying something directly, even to someone who clearly knows he's doing something inappropriate, still feels like it's beyond me, and I don't quite know why that is. It would be better for the scene if we spoke out. And the worst that could happen is - what? That the person in question mocks me for overreacting and won't dance with me again? That he mocks me to other people? That his feelings are very badly hurt by me taking his innocent groping the wrong way and never comes back? None of these are catastrophic things, and having Creepy Guy and his creepy friends avoid me or socials in general as determinedly as I avoid them would improve my evenings tremendously. And yet still I keep quiet.
This shouldn't be a part of the scene. We should be able to deal with this when we see it, instead of defaulting to the strange and inefficient method of letting them dance with everyone in the scene until everybody is avoiding them and they stop coming back because all the women mysteriously vanish between songs (in effect, what happens is that the regulars all find out pretty quickly and Creepy Guy just spends months upsetting new dancers and putting them off the scene entirely). It should be normal and expected for dancers to set boundaries, and for those boundaries to be accepted by others. We shouldn't be managing Creepy Guy's potential hurt feelings first and foremost, driving other dancers away from the scene in the process, but that's what we do. It's easier to go with what we know, to not make a fuss, to underreact for as long as possible then feel bad when people start to get hurt.
I have no solution. But maybe seeing the problem is a start.
This dance shitlist is small and not based on dance quality. I can easily dance with someone who's not very good. To get on the shitlist you either have to dance in a way that's physically painful to your partner, or be seriously creepy. For example, my shitlist contains the following names:
Ass Groper: guy spent most of the dance just shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, then suddenly reached out and started rubbing my ass.
Spine Trumpet: whose idea of leading is to hold me uncomfortably tightly and poke me in the back and/or hands, leaving me in some pain and also once with a bruise on my wrist.
Crotch Lead: WORST DANCE EVER OH MY GOD I WILL NEVER GET OVER IT.
This time I saw the most recent addition to my Do Not Dance list: the Skirtlifter. When I danced with him a couple of months ago, he held my hand quite low against my leg, and then using my hand as a sort of cover he physically lifted up my skirt and started stroking my thigh. I went Eek and tensed up my hand to force him away, he said, "Mmmm, just as good as I remember," and I fought back the urge to throw up on his shoulder. There will be no more dances with this guy.
I told people about him. There is a creepy guy, he did a creepy thing, would recommend you avoid. And said people, after going, "Ew," would say, "Did you say anything?" or "I hope you smacked him."
Well, no, I didn't. I froze up and tried to work out how I could get out of this with the least amount of fuss.
We are socialised to believe that nothing is a problem until someone draws attention to it, and therefore that the act of stating the problem out loud is what creates it. So when people complain about something that's made them uncomfortable, they're making a scene, creating drama, forcing everyone else to be aware of something unpleasant when they were quite happy in their ignorance, thanks. So we are tacitly encouraged to keep quiet, try and make the problem go away as politely and diplomatically as possible, without letting anyone know the problem was ever there, including and perhaps especially the perpetrator (because they can't have meant it, they were probably trying to be nice, it was only a joke, it didn't actually hurt you, now, did it? Which leads to that lovely and familiar pattern where you're overreacting because it didn't hurt you, right up until you do get hurt, at which point you really ought to have done something about that, you know).
The idea that we aren't to upset Creepy Guy, that it's not nice to set boundaries with Creepy Guy or get him banned from places where he's been persistently creepy, is so ingrained at this point that it's very hard to fight against in the moment. I'm a lot stronger about boundaries than I used to be, but my instinctive reaction to being unexpectedly felt up was Oh God hand on thigh get it off very politely and then finish the dance and say thank you and walk away and never come back. Reprogramming myself not to do this is going to be pretty tough.
In the latter days of Crotch Lead's reign of doom and terror, I told several people that I'd had enough of hiding on the other side of the room and letting him take over my night. I told them that the next time he asked me to dance, I would say no, and also tell him why I was saying no. Most people, including the ones who'd said they'd just kick him in the nuts if he tried it or that he "wouldn't dare" dance with them like that, looked completely taken aback. "No thank you, the way you dance makes me really uncomfortable" shouldn't be such a radical statement, but there is something about a person (particularly a woman) openly and bluntly refusing to do something she's not comfortable with that feels almost transgressive. In the end I didn't say anything, mostly because he never did ask me again. But that, in turn, was mostly because I never really did stop hiding from him.
Dance-wise, I am absolutely secure in my limits. I don't question whether I should be enjoying something more than I am or whether I'm overreacting to a certain hand placement. I am completely comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, as it were, and I won't subject myself to it again just to be nice or to seem more likable. But actually saying something directly, even to someone who clearly knows he's doing something inappropriate, still feels like it's beyond me, and I don't quite know why that is. It would be better for the scene if we spoke out. And the worst that could happen is - what? That the person in question mocks me for overreacting and won't dance with me again? That he mocks me to other people? That his feelings are very badly hurt by me taking his innocent groping the wrong way and never comes back? None of these are catastrophic things, and having Creepy Guy and his creepy friends avoid me or socials in general as determinedly as I avoid them would improve my evenings tremendously. And yet still I keep quiet.
This shouldn't be a part of the scene. We should be able to deal with this when we see it, instead of defaulting to the strange and inefficient method of letting them dance with everyone in the scene until everybody is avoiding them and they stop coming back because all the women mysteriously vanish between songs (in effect, what happens is that the regulars all find out pretty quickly and Creepy Guy just spends months upsetting new dancers and putting them off the scene entirely). It should be normal and expected for dancers to set boundaries, and for those boundaries to be accepted by others. We shouldn't be managing Creepy Guy's potential hurt feelings first and foremost, driving other dancers away from the scene in the process, but that's what we do. It's easier to go with what we know, to not make a fuss, to underreact for as long as possible then feel bad when people start to get hurt.
I have no solution. But maybe seeing the problem is a start.
Thursday, 11 September 2014
inspiration
So I allowed myself the weekend off to do important things (read: murder ALL OF MY MUSCLES at a two-day dance workshop), with the full intention of starting again all bright-eyed and fresh on Monday. At this point it appears to be Thursday. Note to self: make more effort.
It's September. The days have started to shrink but it's not quite autumn yet. When I sit in the office and look out of the window, I can feel the next four months coming up on me. I can feel the leaves drop. I can feel the shift from green to orange to grey, from bare arms to layers, from long evenings outside to leaving the office in the dark. It all feels quite nice until this thought path inevitably leads me on to Christmas, and then I have to stop for the sake of my sanity.
Before I get to Christmas, I get to NaNoWriMo.
My experience over the last ten years of attempting to produce 50,000 words of at least semi-readable prose every November is that either I get my idea now, or I don't get it at all. In the years where I've known what I'm going to write before the month starts, it's come from an image or two that I got in September. A child in a swimming pool, an argument in a bathroom, a woman sitting on a table in a bookshop, a motorbike accident, a man with a camera, two people sitting on a bench in the dark. That's usually all I need. With the image comes a mood, a feeling that I can access when I'm writing, and as I turn the image over in my mind, trying different directions and characters, the feeling tells me whether or not the story is working. Then when November comes, I have two or three scenes mapped out in my head, at least one character relationship that I understand, and a sense of the story's voice. These are the years when I like what I write.
More often than not, I don't get the image I connect to, and I greet November in a flailing panic.
Friend: You're doing NaNo again?
Me: Yep.
Friend: What's it about?
Me: I DON'T KNOW there's a mystery and there's a lot of yoghurt involved for some reason and my main characters are a bear and a fireman and France.
Friend: Your main character is France?
Me: Yes.
Friend: How?
Me: I DON'T KNOW it just happened please help.
Given all this, and given that I failed spectacularly last year (mostly due to homelessness), it would be nice to start November with a plan. But making a plan happen is next to impossible. I can't make myself connect to an idea. I've tried a few times to go into the NaNoWriMo forums and adopt a plot or a scene or a character that someone else has thought of and can't find a use for, and it just doesn't work, because I don't care about it. Even if the idea is amazing, if I don't know how I'm supposed to feel when I write it, it won't happen. I'll end up with a few forced and disjointed pages which are either so bad as to make me give up entirely, or so dull that I end up wandering off the point and my characters get stuck in a fish market for three chapters or start arguing about yoghurt or all put on robes and snipe at each other about the nature of questionhood or an iguana shows up in a yacht or someone loses a foot (all of these have happened. The yoghurt and foot things are apparently recurring themes in my work).
Friend: Don't worry about how good it is, just write.
Me: Yeah, I've tried that, and what I end up with is a mystery I don't understand and inexplicable threatening flamingos.
Friend: But you can edit that.
Me: If I edit out all the bad bits, there will be no remaining bits. It'll just be a list of names I thought were funny.
Writer's block, for me, isn't necessarily an inability to write anything at all. It's an inability to care about what I'm writing. There is nothing that comes close to the exhilaration I get when I understand the feeling in my head enough to wrap it up in words and put it onto a page, when I can see my setting clearly enough to recreate it for someone else using as few words as possible, when I stop thinking about sentences and structures because I'm not trying to make a story anymore, the story is there and it's real and I can feel it. It's been a long time since writing fiction felt that natural.
All I can really do is be receptive, explore the unformed ideas that fly around just outside my head, and hope for something to settle. I miss it, and I'm ready for it. I'm ready to feel it, I'm ready to work at it, I'm ready to be absorbed so far into that I really get on my friends' nerves. I'm ready to write, dammit. I just need my story to find me in September.
It's September. The days have started to shrink but it's not quite autumn yet. When I sit in the office and look out of the window, I can feel the next four months coming up on me. I can feel the leaves drop. I can feel the shift from green to orange to grey, from bare arms to layers, from long evenings outside to leaving the office in the dark. It all feels quite nice until this thought path inevitably leads me on to Christmas, and then I have to stop for the sake of my sanity.
Before I get to Christmas, I get to NaNoWriMo.
My experience over the last ten years of attempting to produce 50,000 words of at least semi-readable prose every November is that either I get my idea now, or I don't get it at all. In the years where I've known what I'm going to write before the month starts, it's come from an image or two that I got in September. A child in a swimming pool, an argument in a bathroom, a woman sitting on a table in a bookshop, a motorbike accident, a man with a camera, two people sitting on a bench in the dark. That's usually all I need. With the image comes a mood, a feeling that I can access when I'm writing, and as I turn the image over in my mind, trying different directions and characters, the feeling tells me whether or not the story is working. Then when November comes, I have two or three scenes mapped out in my head, at least one character relationship that I understand, and a sense of the story's voice. These are the years when I like what I write.
More often than not, I don't get the image I connect to, and I greet November in a flailing panic.
Friend: You're doing NaNo again?
Me: Yep.
Friend: What's it about?
Me: I DON'T KNOW there's a mystery and there's a lot of yoghurt involved for some reason and my main characters are a bear and a fireman and France.
Friend: Your main character is France?
Me: Yes.
Friend: How?
Me: I DON'T KNOW it just happened please help.
Given all this, and given that I failed spectacularly last year (mostly due to homelessness), it would be nice to start November with a plan. But making a plan happen is next to impossible. I can't make myself connect to an idea. I've tried a few times to go into the NaNoWriMo forums and adopt a plot or a scene or a character that someone else has thought of and can't find a use for, and it just doesn't work, because I don't care about it. Even if the idea is amazing, if I don't know how I'm supposed to feel when I write it, it won't happen. I'll end up with a few forced and disjointed pages which are either so bad as to make me give up entirely, or so dull that I end up wandering off the point and my characters get stuck in a fish market for three chapters or start arguing about yoghurt or all put on robes and snipe at each other about the nature of questionhood or an iguana shows up in a yacht or someone loses a foot (all of these have happened. The yoghurt and foot things are apparently recurring themes in my work).
Friend: Don't worry about how good it is, just write.
Me: Yeah, I've tried that, and what I end up with is a mystery I don't understand and inexplicable threatening flamingos.
Friend: But you can edit that.
Me: If I edit out all the bad bits, there will be no remaining bits. It'll just be a list of names I thought were funny.
Writer's block, for me, isn't necessarily an inability to write anything at all. It's an inability to care about what I'm writing. There is nothing that comes close to the exhilaration I get when I understand the feeling in my head enough to wrap it up in words and put it onto a page, when I can see my setting clearly enough to recreate it for someone else using as few words as possible, when I stop thinking about sentences and structures because I'm not trying to make a story anymore, the story is there and it's real and I can feel it. It's been a long time since writing fiction felt that natural.
All I can really do is be receptive, explore the unformed ideas that fly around just outside my head, and hope for something to settle. I miss it, and I'm ready for it. I'm ready to feel it, I'm ready to work at it, I'm ready to be absorbed so far into that I really get on my friends' nerves. I'm ready to write, dammit. I just need my story to find me in September.
Thursday, 4 September 2014
fake
My former landlady has readvertised my room. She's put up the rent, glossed over the fact that the lounge is a box and neglected to mention that she actually lives there. I say neglected to mention; she explicitly claims that she doesn't live there.
We could report her. We will.
But first, we want to make fake profiles and ask her questions.
When I lived in her house, she knew me as an awkward, pedantic, legalistic bitch. I wanted everything in writing, took nothing on trust, and didn't ever seem to be in the house when she showed up unannounced (at first this was coincidence, but I will admit to hiding in my room on a couple of occasions because it amused me to be the Phantom Housemate). When it came time to leave, the others said, "You write the notice email. She's scared of you."
So when a naive young girl contacts her about the superawesome room in her superawesome house, she'll never see it coming.
I have my character all planned out. She'll be 22, fresh out of university, just got her first ever adult job in the big city, and wanting to move somewhere that's close to her boyfriend. She'll never have dealt with tenancies before; she won't know anything about deposits, or the protections she doesn't have if the landlord lives in the house. She'll be excited about the move, and not ask too many awkward questions. The only thing she'll want to know is whether other people are already in the house. She won't mind what the answer is, she can just feel that this is the place for her. But she'll ask the question.
Also, I'm going to spell everything badly. That'll be a challenge.
We could report her. We will.
But first, we want to make fake profiles and ask her questions.
When I lived in her house, she knew me as an awkward, pedantic, legalistic bitch. I wanted everything in writing, took nothing on trust, and didn't ever seem to be in the house when she showed up unannounced (at first this was coincidence, but I will admit to hiding in my room on a couple of occasions because it amused me to be the Phantom Housemate). When it came time to leave, the others said, "You write the notice email. She's scared of you."
So when a naive young girl contacts her about the superawesome room in her superawesome house, she'll never see it coming.
I have my character all planned out. She'll be 22, fresh out of university, just got her first ever adult job in the big city, and wanting to move somewhere that's close to her boyfriend. She'll never have dealt with tenancies before; she won't know anything about deposits, or the protections she doesn't have if the landlord lives in the house. She'll be excited about the move, and not ask too many awkward questions. The only thing she'll want to know is whether other people are already in the house. She won't mind what the answer is, she can just feel that this is the place for her. But she'll ask the question.
Also, I'm going to spell everything badly. That'll be a challenge.
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