Saturday, February 07, 2004
Pleasant errands
Decided to make flash-in-the-pan steaks tonight, which involves creme fraiche and parsley and steak, none of which I had. So I went to do a little grocery shopping, intent on using the butcher shop which is a) much closer than the cavernous Tesco and b) has much higher quality meat and c) is just as cheap and d) is a lovely establishment. I also decided to pick up the parsley and creme fraiche at the Hennessey's microFairway next door to the butcher shop. And pick up some beer while I'm at it, because O'Brien's (and all the Dublin Off-licences) has a special going where if you buy six draught pint cans of Guinness, they give you a free glass. The glass, by the way, is not a queen's pint glass, but a draught can glass, which is to say, measured for the can, which is a little smaller (50cl) than the queen's pint (52cl or so). Basically, these are American weenie pints. The problem with the cans was always that they never quite filled the glass, so you weren't pouring the optimal pint. This glass fixes that problem.
I'm reporting only because the butchers behind the counter were so friendly, and the fellow at Hennessey's just handed me a bunch of parsley, saying We don't charge for it, and right before that, after I bought me Guinness and asked for the free glass, your man at the Off-Licence asked if I didn't want a bunch of them. I said Sure. He goes into the back. He returns a minute later with a bag full of boxes. Six glasses. I was quite stunned and have been in a wonderful mood since.
I'm reporting only because the butchers behind the counter were so friendly, and the fellow at Hennessey's just handed me a bunch of parsley, saying We don't charge for it, and right before that, after I bought me Guinness and asked for the free glass, your man at the Off-Licence asked if I didn't want a bunch of them. I said Sure. He goes into the back. He returns a minute later with a bag full of boxes. Six glasses. I was quite stunned and have been in a wonderful mood since.
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Back at last, back at last, thank God almighty, I am back at last
This one promises to be a monster. I just got back, having landed at about 12, and promptly headed for this hot white computer lab, bent on blogging. I have been thinking about blogging since I touched down in London. This should not be atttributed to some sort of withdrawal from the blog, but instead to withdrawal from all communication, full stop. That is, I haven't hardly talked to anyone since monday evening. It occurred to me sometime yesterday that, for a writer, the principal virtue of this much-touted solitude probably lies in the fact that protracted isolation and silence invariably make you want to talk your head off at every opportunity. Whether or not severe logorrhea is beneficial to a writer shall be observed, I suppose, by reading the rest of this post.
So anyway London. I had meant to relate my every move in a travel-diary format, but frankly, I don't have the patience. In brief, then, my activities were as follows:
Arrival at 12:40 at Heathrow. Discover that £1 is now officially $2. Horrified, try to turn around and get back on the plane. Am rebuffed, told It's not our fault your currency's worth bollocks. Purchase a £3.80 ($7.60) Tube ticket and take the Piccadilly line, direction COCKFOSTERS (think My what a quaint, merry little place), to Green Park, switch to the Jubilee line, and take it four stops to London Bridge. Decide to walk halfway over London Bridge, then go to the hostel. It is a nice bridge and a very big river. A destroyer is docked on the south bank, my bank. The buildings seem packed together, all of uniform size (average of seven stories). The first adjective to come to mind is "blocky." Thick and blocky and large, but a wide-open sky, big and blue, for the time being. I walk down Borough High st, find my hostel, St. Christopher's Village, and get my bed. In my room, I take out any objects I may need or want during the day, including the camera, the iPod love box, the new (not new release, new to me) DeLillo book, Libra (finished The Ginger Man on the plane; not a bad book, but can't say it changed my life), and the Underground map I picked up on the way in. This is my only map for now. I soon buy a Time Out guide, hoping to find something for tonight. It does not, stupidly, have a map. Set off in what I presume to be the general direction of Leicester Square, as I have settled on the RSC's roundly-praised production of The Taming of the Shrew for tonight, and the Underground map is indicating that it is this way. This turns out to be not entirely the correct direction; in fact I head for the bleak and strange and empty financial district. I have a tendency to do this; I remember once I found myself in the Loop in Chicago on a sunday, and didn't see another soul for hours, to say nothing of an open restaurant. By looking at my Underground map, I realize I am already considerably off course, which somewhat mitigates the dampening of my disposition towards London. Until this moment I have been thinking this place is just dreadful. I hang a left at random, and after walking at length, turn a corner and am suddenly staring at an immense cathedral, one of the biggest I have ever seen, which is also largely covered in white tarp. It turns out to be St. Paul's, one of the young Sir Christopher Wren's masterpieces. Tomorrow I will consider going in, but it will turn out to be £6 ($12), so I will think ching-ching, you know, and decide to wait until someone considerably more flush than myself offers to take me in. The same will go for Shakespeare's Globe, which is £8 ($16). In any case, having considered my new compass heading, my oracular Underground map is nodding its head approvingly, and after stopping in at the nearby Marks and Spencer to buy their cookies (which definitely outdo the good Mrs. Fields'), I continue westward, following the signs for the west end.
These signs are useless; do not follow them. I do not know who put these signs up but I hope they are dead. And if they are not, I hope they are soon.
I walk for approximately three hours, going in every wrong direction conceivable, including up and down, until I finally find Soho. Soho, it turns out, is Patagonian for Porn District with Chinese Restaurants. At this point, I have in fact caved in to my pragmatic feminine side and asked for directions twice, do you hear me, TWICE, and finally send Duncan a text message saying WHY, why by CHRIST are the English wholly incapable of giving directions? I am looking for the Queen's Theatre and here I am in fucking Chinatown. Then I turn the corner. There it is. I feel sheepish.
I buy tickets for the back ass of nosebleed for £17.50 ($35) for tonight's Taming of the Shrew. Then I go to eat and drink. I have a Samuel Smith's Extra Stout at the White Stag, or the Red Lion, or the Iron Peacock, or the Cock and Balls, or whatever it's called, and am disappointed anew in English beer. Already the day's perambulations were sufficiently thirst-inducing that I was prompted to sally into public houses at least twice, first for a Guinness (thick, like milk) then for something else, God knows what. And after the Samuel Smith's "extra stout" I realized I don't like English beer. It's soft and cuddly. It wants to stroke your stubble, like an affectionate child. I like a beer what whacks you in the jaw. Arrogant Bastard kicks you when you're down, too.
So after a little birru, I go for the cheapest meal I can find, which is chinese. Bad, bad chinese. Something like £4.50 ($9. I am converting thus not because I don't trust you to figure it out, but because I wish to illustrate what is on my mind the ENTIRE TIME) for Beef and Black Bean Sauce. I make better beef and black bean sauce. No, seriously, I do. I use that Knorr's Black Bean Sauce stuff they gave us in our welcome kits. Very handy, that welcome kit. Oh, oh, and then. The waitress brandishes a fork at me: Would you like a NO I would not thank you very much I'll do just fine with these worthless thick plastic chopsticks you've provided probably for your own personal entertainment.
By now it is half seven and time for the show. I present my ticket for nosebleed and am told, sorry, nosebleed's been closed for the night. Heart sinks. You bastards. He continues: We've reassigned the seating. You're down in stalls now, orchestra section, fifth row.
"Agog and magog and the round of them agrog." Well this is certainly unexpected. I have rarely sat so near; so near indeed for $35 that I could see Petruchio's SPit as he SPoke PomPouSly. And a marvelous Petruchio he was, though he was nothing compared to Alex Gilbreath's shockingly brilliant Katharina, who was the picture of simultaneous spite and pathos. The accolades being heaped on this production are entirely deserved. There's just one problem: the play. However you treat it, it's still deeply troubling: treat your disobedient woman like a dog, deprive her of food, drink, sleep, everything, and do it in the name of love, and she will love you back. And this is the only way, period. This is the message of the play. The RSC has decided to treat it, wisely, as something not entirely comic. Both leads are damaged goods. These are not whole people, these are not good people. This production, more than any other show I've seen, vacillates wildly between the tragic and the comic, the tragic being entirely the contribution of the director, Gregory Doran, and the stars. It's quite something. How do you treat a brilliant play which just happens to be morally and ethically reprehensible?
Now the narrative accelerates, simply because I am no longer in the mood, as after that last paragraph, I went to see Girl With a Pearl Earring with Sadie, which is the most stunningly beautiful thing I've ever seen. Every frame looks like a Vermeer painting. You swear up and down you've seen that image before, you're sure of it. So we saw the movie and went for a pint, and it's absolutely lovely to be back in Dublin, and now I wish to get home so I can do my laundry. Also it is ungodly hot in here.
After this, I had an ungodly long trundle home, complicated, of course by the problem of the no goddamn map. Did catch a glimpse of the ever-pleasing Big Ben, though, and there was some kind of cool modern bridge I walked over. There was a band playing in the bar downstairs at the hostel, a bar inexplicably called Belushi's, with two life-size fiberglass Blues Brothers dancing on the wall. It was a bad band. I went to bed.
The next morning I washed my hair and headed out at about 10. I hit the Tate Modern, which is a delight, passed on the Shakespeare Globe, which was £8, and went over the Millenium Bridge, passed on St. Paul's as said before, and walked to the little Sir John Soane museum, former home of the 19th century English architect, a delightful place. I was interested because my father once showed me a picture (a copy of which I think and hope we now possess?) he did of his Bank of England as it would look in the year 3000. He saw it as it would look when in ruins. I of course find this brilliant.
Why is it SO FUCKING HOT IN HERE?
After that, I hopped the tube over to the Victoria & Albert, a titanic museum in Kensington, followed by a stop in the nearby Science Museum, both of which I visited at my Old English tutor's behest. At this point my feet were killing me. I'd been on them for about seven hours by then, and all I wanted to do was go find some food and drink near Covent Garden, my spot for tonight. This I did.
The show was a Balanchine celebration. It began with Agon, which, owing to its ghastly music by Stravinsky (No. No, really, shut up. It was horrible and I don't want to hear about how genius it is. It sounds like two thirds of the orchestra were tied up in traffic and couldn't make it on time, so a quarter of the string section and only half the brass soldiered on bravely through the evening. Absolutely ghastly.), I basically slept right straight through. I had an emergency Coca-Cola at the very welcome and, after the rest of the band showed up to play, I proceeded to enjoy very much Prodigal Son and Symphony in C.
It was an interesting trip. Not fun, not exhilarating, not powerful, just interesting. Of course, interesting is what I always say when I'm feeling ambivalent. Yeah. So if I had to sum it up--and I do if I ever want to get out of this sweltering computer room; I don't know what these bastards have done to the heat; it's clearly on full blast--I would say that though I would consider visiting again, I would never ever ever in a million years, not at gunpoint, live there.
p.s. I got over the logorrhea thing quick, didn't I?
So anyway London. I had meant to relate my every move in a travel-diary format, but frankly, I don't have the patience. In brief, then, my activities were as follows:
Arrival at 12:40 at Heathrow. Discover that £1 is now officially $2. Horrified, try to turn around and get back on the plane. Am rebuffed, told It's not our fault your currency's worth bollocks. Purchase a £3.80 ($7.60) Tube ticket and take the Piccadilly line, direction COCKFOSTERS (think My what a quaint, merry little place), to Green Park, switch to the Jubilee line, and take it four stops to London Bridge. Decide to walk halfway over London Bridge, then go to the hostel. It is a nice bridge and a very big river. A destroyer is docked on the south bank, my bank. The buildings seem packed together, all of uniform size (average of seven stories). The first adjective to come to mind is "blocky." Thick and blocky and large, but a wide-open sky, big and blue, for the time being. I walk down Borough High st, find my hostel, St. Christopher's Village, and get my bed. In my room, I take out any objects I may need or want during the day, including the camera, the iPod love box, the new (not new release, new to me) DeLillo book, Libra (finished The Ginger Man on the plane; not a bad book, but can't say it changed my life), and the Underground map I picked up on the way in. This is my only map for now. I soon buy a Time Out guide, hoping to find something for tonight. It does not, stupidly, have a map. Set off in what I presume to be the general direction of Leicester Square, as I have settled on the RSC's roundly-praised production of The Taming of the Shrew for tonight, and the Underground map is indicating that it is this way. This turns out to be not entirely the correct direction; in fact I head for the bleak and strange and empty financial district. I have a tendency to do this; I remember once I found myself in the Loop in Chicago on a sunday, and didn't see another soul for hours, to say nothing of an open restaurant. By looking at my Underground map, I realize I am already considerably off course, which somewhat mitigates the dampening of my disposition towards London. Until this moment I have been thinking this place is just dreadful. I hang a left at random, and after walking at length, turn a corner and am suddenly staring at an immense cathedral, one of the biggest I have ever seen, which is also largely covered in white tarp. It turns out to be St. Paul's, one of the young Sir Christopher Wren's masterpieces. Tomorrow I will consider going in, but it will turn out to be £6 ($12), so I will think ching-ching, you know, and decide to wait until someone considerably more flush than myself offers to take me in. The same will go for Shakespeare's Globe, which is £8 ($16). In any case, having considered my new compass heading, my oracular Underground map is nodding its head approvingly, and after stopping in at the nearby Marks and Spencer to buy their cookies (which definitely outdo the good Mrs. Fields'), I continue westward, following the signs for the west end.
These signs are useless; do not follow them. I do not know who put these signs up but I hope they are dead. And if they are not, I hope they are soon.
I walk for approximately three hours, going in every wrong direction conceivable, including up and down, until I finally find Soho. Soho, it turns out, is Patagonian for Porn District with Chinese Restaurants. At this point, I have in fact caved in to my pragmatic feminine side and asked for directions twice, do you hear me, TWICE, and finally send Duncan a text message saying WHY, why by CHRIST are the English wholly incapable of giving directions? I am looking for the Queen's Theatre and here I am in fucking Chinatown. Then I turn the corner. There it is. I feel sheepish.
I buy tickets for the back ass of nosebleed for £17.50 ($35) for tonight's Taming of the Shrew. Then I go to eat and drink. I have a Samuel Smith's Extra Stout at the White Stag, or the Red Lion, or the Iron Peacock, or the Cock and Balls, or whatever it's called, and am disappointed anew in English beer. Already the day's perambulations were sufficiently thirst-inducing that I was prompted to sally into public houses at least twice, first for a Guinness (thick, like milk) then for something else, God knows what. And after the Samuel Smith's "extra stout" I realized I don't like English beer. It's soft and cuddly. It wants to stroke your stubble, like an affectionate child. I like a beer what whacks you in the jaw. Arrogant Bastard kicks you when you're down, too.
So after a little birru, I go for the cheapest meal I can find, which is chinese. Bad, bad chinese. Something like £4.50 ($9. I am converting thus not because I don't trust you to figure it out, but because I wish to illustrate what is on my mind the ENTIRE TIME) for Beef and Black Bean Sauce. I make better beef and black bean sauce. No, seriously, I do. I use that Knorr's Black Bean Sauce stuff they gave us in our welcome kits. Very handy, that welcome kit. Oh, oh, and then. The waitress brandishes a fork at me: Would you like a NO I would not thank you very much I'll do just fine with these worthless thick plastic chopsticks you've provided probably for your own personal entertainment.
By now it is half seven and time for the show. I present my ticket for nosebleed and am told, sorry, nosebleed's been closed for the night. Heart sinks. You bastards. He continues: We've reassigned the seating. You're down in stalls now, orchestra section, fifth row.
"Agog and magog and the round of them agrog." Well this is certainly unexpected. I have rarely sat so near; so near indeed for $35 that I could see Petruchio's SPit as he SPoke PomPouSly. And a marvelous Petruchio he was, though he was nothing compared to Alex Gilbreath's shockingly brilliant Katharina, who was the picture of simultaneous spite and pathos. The accolades being heaped on this production are entirely deserved. There's just one problem: the play. However you treat it, it's still deeply troubling: treat your disobedient woman like a dog, deprive her of food, drink, sleep, everything, and do it in the name of love, and she will love you back. And this is the only way, period. This is the message of the play. The RSC has decided to treat it, wisely, as something not entirely comic. Both leads are damaged goods. These are not whole people, these are not good people. This production, more than any other show I've seen, vacillates wildly between the tragic and the comic, the tragic being entirely the contribution of the director, Gregory Doran, and the stars. It's quite something. How do you treat a brilliant play which just happens to be morally and ethically reprehensible?
Now the narrative accelerates, simply because I am no longer in the mood, as after that last paragraph, I went to see Girl With a Pearl Earring with Sadie, which is the most stunningly beautiful thing I've ever seen. Every frame looks like a Vermeer painting. You swear up and down you've seen that image before, you're sure of it. So we saw the movie and went for a pint, and it's absolutely lovely to be back in Dublin, and now I wish to get home so I can do my laundry. Also it is ungodly hot in here.
After this, I had an ungodly long trundle home, complicated, of course by the problem of the no goddamn map. Did catch a glimpse of the ever-pleasing Big Ben, though, and there was some kind of cool modern bridge I walked over. There was a band playing in the bar downstairs at the hostel, a bar inexplicably called Belushi's, with two life-size fiberglass Blues Brothers dancing on the wall. It was a bad band. I went to bed.
The next morning I washed my hair and headed out at about 10. I hit the Tate Modern, which is a delight, passed on the Shakespeare Globe, which was £8, and went over the Millenium Bridge, passed on St. Paul's as said before, and walked to the little Sir John Soane museum, former home of the 19th century English architect, a delightful place. I was interested because my father once showed me a picture (a copy of which I think and hope we now possess?) he did of his Bank of England as it would look in the year 3000. He saw it as it would look when in ruins. I of course find this brilliant.
Why is it SO FUCKING HOT IN HERE?
After that, I hopped the tube over to the Victoria & Albert, a titanic museum in Kensington, followed by a stop in the nearby Science Museum, both of which I visited at my Old English tutor's behest. At this point my feet were killing me. I'd been on them for about seven hours by then, and all I wanted to do was go find some food and drink near Covent Garden, my spot for tonight. This I did.
The show was a Balanchine celebration. It began with Agon, which, owing to its ghastly music by Stravinsky (No. No, really, shut up. It was horrible and I don't want to hear about how genius it is. It sounds like two thirds of the orchestra were tied up in traffic and couldn't make it on time, so a quarter of the string section and only half the brass soldiered on bravely through the evening. Absolutely ghastly.), I basically slept right straight through. I had an emergency Coca-Cola at the very welcome and, after the rest of the band showed up to play, I proceeded to enjoy very much Prodigal Son and Symphony in C.
It was an interesting trip. Not fun, not exhilarating, not powerful, just interesting. Of course, interesting is what I always say when I'm feeling ambivalent. Yeah. So if I had to sum it up--and I do if I ever want to get out of this sweltering computer room; I don't know what these bastards have done to the heat; it's clearly on full blast--I would say that though I would consider visiting again, I would never ever ever in a million years, not at gunpoint, live there.
p.s. I got over the logorrhea thing quick, didn't I?
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Because I have like no time left on this stupid ripoff hostel computer
London is a weird city. If I had to choose a single adjective, it would be "blocky." More on this later.
Also, thank you for the outpouring of sympathy. It was actually unexpected.
Also, thank you for the outpouring of sympathy. It was actually unexpected.
Monday, February 02, 2004
Off to London town
Me flight's at 10:20am tomorrow. I have a fair, though nevertheless sketchy, idea of where my hostel is. I shall do my best to blog between now and thursday, but chances are any and all blogging will be about the stupid dollar and how fast it's tanking. I practically burn them for fuel now.
Ever so sorry to have kept you all waiting
One would have been naive to think we could have coasted through the year without it.
So far this year, you faithful blogonauts have seen revelry, furor, ribaldry, dancing, delirium, hatchet jobs, scenery chewing, obscenity--a cavalcade of the vividly mundane ("Novels that pander/To my taste for candor/Lurid, licentious, and vile.../Make me smile..."). But this morning, as I was thinking of how I would write this, it occurred to me that one thing has been missing all along: drama. And that's what we've got here. This is when friend A comes to you and begins complaining bitterly about what friend B has done, and you are expected to not only listen, but commiserate, and it's all you can do not to say, Look, I don't see how friend B is wrong here, just to drive them off, because clearly there's nothing to be done, and bitching is only going to make it worse. Oh, well. Here we go.
Oh, and Duncan, you're going to hate me for this. Sorry. You had it coming.
It's friday night, and we've all congregated in Sadie's flat, just hanging around. And Duncan, quite suddenly, says to me, Look, we have to talk about housing for next year. I want to live with Sadie, Caitriona, and Stephen, but I do not think that I can live with you. And something silent exploded in the middle of the room.
In retrospect, I think I should have walked out of there right then and left it at that for a while. But I had not expected this, and was therefore wholly unprepared. Just earlier that night, I had spoken with Caitriona about it, and the day before, had talked to Sadie. I thought plans were taking shape, and that those plans involved me. They did, it seems, but once Duncan dropped the bomb, everything changed. See, I had been under the impression that Duncan either wanted to live alone or stay at Halls, which is what he'd told me a few months before when we chatted about it. At that point, he and I had agreed that most likely, we couldn't live together. I think I might have softened over the next few weeks; he, it seems, hardened, which is why it came as a shock when the language used to draw the lines between us--which we are trying very hard not to call battle lines--came out extremely strong. I appear to be a friend to Duncan--and very possibly to all the rest--but little more, that is, a friend with whom one enjoys hanging, but whom one does not actively seek out. Perhaps that's a bit strong. It seems to cast me as an intruder, which I never felt like until now. If anything, I'm an auxiliary friend. I'm George fucking Martin.
It was mighty awkward in there, let me tell you. After from Duncan's dungbomb (between slagging the blog and slagging me, you're on some pretty thin fucking ice, bucko), there ensued a period of everyone grasping for what to say, and finding nothing. There was a lot of staring intensely on one spot on the far wall or, alternately, at one's feet. It seems minor--"I like you, but can't live with you"--but the way it was worded, it came out meaning a lot more. I have always known the preference--or if not the preference, the force of familiarity--to be for Duncan, simply by virtue of A)spending vastly more time down there than I do (that is to say, every night), and B)having the generally and rightly beloved Stephen as a flatmate and best friend. So I knew from the moment he said that that I was going to be shut out. Not immediately, but gradually. We might end up miles away next year, and frankly, that would kill whatever bond I'd built up. Distance will do that. We will see how it progresses. I am not getting my own studio, not at the rents they charge. I will have to hole up with flatmates, whether other friends (Lord knows where I'll find other friends I'm capable of living with--Mike? Is the transfer application deadline past yet? I'm serious.) or complete strangers, like this year, and we all know how well that turned out. Maybe campus.
There are other possibilities: Stephen might go on Erasmus next year, which would throw the whole mix into chaos a bit. Sadie won't promise she'll hang around, but we're not buying it. We're not sure. Situations could change. But right now, it looks like good ol' Loose Cans has gotten hisself good and shafted.
Finally, we all settled down. Everyone involved felt like shit. I finally agreed not to keep us in there until morning, beating ourselves up trying to find a solution, which is what I wanted to do. I figured that as long as I didn't know where I stood, I didn't want to see any of them. Hence I wanted to reach a conclusion sooner rather than later. Stephen and Caitriona talked me out of it, to the point where I spoke words which will make Samantha "sunup over the old campus" Do gasp: "You're right." At this point, we decided that we needed something to drink. This was procured with minimal delay and we set about patching up a fractured friendship, the success of which attempt has yet to be proven.
Look. It's not that blaming anyone. I'm not faulting Duncan, nor calling him a bastard. I am calling you tactless, but that's something different. I understand the disposition I'm dealing with, and that there's nothing to be done about it. This is the way it is. I lose out here, end of story. I can understand that. It's futile. Which of course makes me absolutely irate. Because for all its inevitability, it was still a smack in the face.
I should stop this now before I go into deeper self-pity mode. Also I'm knackered. I've been up since seven, after crashing at 1am. I walked three miles to meet Ruthie and the girls before they got on the plane, and--Good Lord that "YOU-ARE-AN-I-DI-OT HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!" thing just went off on some other poor shmuck's computer, and again I had to go turn the sound off. Much gratitude--after breakfast Ruthie and I went to the Joyce centre, which naturally renewed my desire to reread Ulysses, because Lord knows I'm not having nearly enough trouble getting my work done as it is.
So. I want to go lie down or close my eyes for a half hour till today's lecture. I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open. I've been typing half of this with them closed. Sorry to have dropped this on you, but in all honesty, not nearly as sorry as I was to have it dropped on me.
So far this year, you faithful blogonauts have seen revelry, furor, ribaldry, dancing, delirium, hatchet jobs, scenery chewing, obscenity--a cavalcade of the vividly mundane ("Novels that pander/To my taste for candor/Lurid, licentious, and vile.../Make me smile..."). But this morning, as I was thinking of how I would write this, it occurred to me that one thing has been missing all along: drama. And that's what we've got here. This is when friend A comes to you and begins complaining bitterly about what friend B has done, and you are expected to not only listen, but commiserate, and it's all you can do not to say, Look, I don't see how friend B is wrong here, just to drive them off, because clearly there's nothing to be done, and bitching is only going to make it worse. Oh, well. Here we go.
Oh, and Duncan, you're going to hate me for this. Sorry. You had it coming.
It's friday night, and we've all congregated in Sadie's flat, just hanging around. And Duncan, quite suddenly, says to me, Look, we have to talk about housing for next year. I want to live with Sadie, Caitriona, and Stephen, but I do not think that I can live with you. And something silent exploded in the middle of the room.
In retrospect, I think I should have walked out of there right then and left it at that for a while. But I had not expected this, and was therefore wholly unprepared. Just earlier that night, I had spoken with Caitriona about it, and the day before, had talked to Sadie. I thought plans were taking shape, and that those plans involved me. They did, it seems, but once Duncan dropped the bomb, everything changed. See, I had been under the impression that Duncan either wanted to live alone or stay at Halls, which is what he'd told me a few months before when we chatted about it. At that point, he and I had agreed that most likely, we couldn't live together. I think I might have softened over the next few weeks; he, it seems, hardened, which is why it came as a shock when the language used to draw the lines between us--which we are trying very hard not to call battle lines--came out extremely strong. I appear to be a friend to Duncan--and very possibly to all the rest--but little more, that is, a friend with whom one enjoys hanging, but whom one does not actively seek out. Perhaps that's a bit strong. It seems to cast me as an intruder, which I never felt like until now. If anything, I'm an auxiliary friend. I'm George fucking Martin.
It was mighty awkward in there, let me tell you. After from Duncan's dungbomb (between slagging the blog and slagging me, you're on some pretty thin fucking ice, bucko), there ensued a period of everyone grasping for what to say, and finding nothing. There was a lot of staring intensely on one spot on the far wall or, alternately, at one's feet. It seems minor--"I like you, but can't live with you"--but the way it was worded, it came out meaning a lot more. I have always known the preference--or if not the preference, the force of familiarity--to be for Duncan, simply by virtue of A)spending vastly more time down there than I do (that is to say, every night), and B)having the generally and rightly beloved Stephen as a flatmate and best friend. So I knew from the moment he said that that I was going to be shut out. Not immediately, but gradually. We might end up miles away next year, and frankly, that would kill whatever bond I'd built up. Distance will do that. We will see how it progresses. I am not getting my own studio, not at the rents they charge. I will have to hole up with flatmates, whether other friends (Lord knows where I'll find other friends I'm capable of living with--Mike? Is the transfer application deadline past yet? I'm serious.) or complete strangers, like this year, and we all know how well that turned out. Maybe campus.
There are other possibilities: Stephen might go on Erasmus next year, which would throw the whole mix into chaos a bit. Sadie won't promise she'll hang around, but we're not buying it. We're not sure. Situations could change. But right now, it looks like good ol' Loose Cans has gotten hisself good and shafted.
Finally, we all settled down. Everyone involved felt like shit. I finally agreed not to keep us in there until morning, beating ourselves up trying to find a solution, which is what I wanted to do. I figured that as long as I didn't know where I stood, I didn't want to see any of them. Hence I wanted to reach a conclusion sooner rather than later. Stephen and Caitriona talked me out of it, to the point where I spoke words which will make Samantha "sunup over the old campus" Do gasp: "You're right." At this point, we decided that we needed something to drink. This was procured with minimal delay and we set about patching up a fractured friendship, the success of which attempt has yet to be proven.
Look. It's not that blaming anyone. I'm not faulting Duncan, nor calling him a bastard. I am calling you tactless, but that's something different. I understand the disposition I'm dealing with, and that there's nothing to be done about it. This is the way it is. I lose out here, end of story. I can understand that. It's futile. Which of course makes me absolutely irate. Because for all its inevitability, it was still a smack in the face.
I should stop this now before I go into deeper self-pity mode. Also I'm knackered. I've been up since seven, after crashing at 1am. I walked three miles to meet Ruthie and the girls before they got on the plane, and--Good Lord that "YOU-ARE-AN-I-DI-OT HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!" thing just went off on some other poor shmuck's computer, and again I had to go turn the sound off. Much gratitude--after breakfast Ruthie and I went to the Joyce centre, which naturally renewed my desire to reread Ulysses, because Lord knows I'm not having nearly enough trouble getting my work done as it is.
So. I want to go lie down or close my eyes for a half hour till today's lecture. I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open. I've been typing half of this with them closed. Sorry to have dropped this on you, but in all honesty, not nearly as sorry as I was to have it dropped on me.
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