An hour until the cleaner gets here - what better an opportunity to catch up on a bit of blogging? I have to let her in because nobody else is in the flat and she doesn't have keys, then I can go out for a morning run. Admittedly I haven't written anything in ages, but this is because I feel a bit like I have been swept up into the London whirlwind again, and in addition, as I mentioned to CM the other evening, I am trying to channel my creative energy into music at the moment (without any overwhelming success, but picking up my guitar twice in the last week is a start...).
So not much change, globally speaking, in my life at the moment, though I find myself more often than not on the verge of clinical disappointment. It occured to me last night that one of things with which I am not satisfied is that, while I look around at all these people who seem to have reached a certain stage of adulthood, I really don't feel like I'm there yet. Yawn. But when I look in the mirror, all I see is the same skinny boy I saw when I was a teenager. I've subtly changed as a person, but my relationships with friends have the same basis in mockery and derisory comments they had when we first met (i.e. when we were kids), and often no more sophisticated. With some of my work colleagues, I am conscious that I am not taken seriously or respected - this isn't paranoia - and some of them, after almost two years, still rely on the same old tired jokes based on the confusion between my metrosexual outlook/ refusal to be an old-school alpha male/ lack of obviously manly physical traits (for want of a better phrase, I am a pretty boy) and their prejudice against homosexuals. This is most likely in order to try and strike some kind of chord with me - I play along with it to a point, but I've started snapping back at them recently, complaining of a lack of originality and that their obsession with my alleged homosexuality is probably rooted in their own closets. Still, this doesn't do my office credibility any good, but then I'm finishing this contract - perhaps without return - in November so that I can go on my mammoth trip around the world (well, a couple of months, mostly in Asia)...
I've also just had a week of confrontations, with two at work and one with a friend. Let's start with work - these were quite ridiculous. The first was with a black colleague, who, when I asked why there was another (black) man in his seat, said, infront of several other people of different ethnicities, in a very accusatory manner, "It's because we all look the same, isn't it?" I was a little dumbfounded, but felt like I had to break the silence somehow. "Easy, easy" (English slang for calm down) didn't quite say all that I wanted to say, neither did my quiet word with him afterwords asking if he was ok by referring to his "bitter comment". What I actually wanted to say was something like,
"I don't appreciate you making me out to be a racist on the back of my recognition that you had changed seats with another black man. If you have a big fat fucking chip on your shoulder because you still haven't come to terms with the fact that you are black after almost thirty years then that's your fucking problem - just don't bring it to work with you, and definitely don't inflict it on other people, ok?"
Though I suspect the little man in my head would want me to say, "Ok darkie?" at the end for purely comic effect. Talk about a fucking persecution complex - I thought my lot were bad...
The reason I didn't come back with a speech like this is because I'm basically very bad at confrontations: I like to take the time for considered rational thought before getting angry - this makes me pretty useless in arguments too. Until such point as I have decided I can rightfully counter-attack (and figured out exactly how I would like to phrase said counter-attack), my priority is usually to defuse the situation as quickly as possible and make sure that I haven't caused any undue offence. The unfortunate consequence of this is that I often get angry well after the event and never have the chance to air my feelings, and this type of unilaterally unrequited argument does not make an ideal host for forgiveness/ resolution. I guess I have a lot of half-arguments stored in my head. I am, in this sense, completely lacking in emotional drive*.
The second confrontation at work is hardly worth mentioning - a paranoid free-thinker (though one for whom I have a lot of respect) getting the wrong end of the stick and subsequently asking if I had a problem with him. No I don't, so go back to the fairies and tell them everything is fine (I think what I actually said was, "Absolutely not" before checking - 20 minutes later - why he thought there may have been a problem).
The third is more significant. A friend, A, asked me last weekend - allegedly as a representative of a couple of the other guys in our friendship group - why I had been so distant recently. So they're finally sitting up and taking notice! I admire him for having the stones to ask, and had a long chat, basically telling him I'm doing my own thing at the moment and I'm doing ok, and that I don't really like the fact that within our friendships everything is up for mockery and that some things I'd prefer to keep to myself. In addition, I also said that I felt that - and this was the crucial bit - he and the others did not pay enough respect to the fact that, while a joke is acceptable amongst those who know it is only a joke and that there is only a small basis in truth, other people present might not fully understand because they do not know the subject of the joke (i.e. me) well enough, which would lead them to form potentially damaging opinions of the subject. We are so quick to escalate an innocent action or comment into a wildly exaggerated and perpetuated label for our friends - all borne out of a desire for unity through esoteric comedy - that we forget that some people just aren't in on the joke.
This came to my attention recently when the fiancée of one of my friends - who I don't know all that well - took issue with something quite innocent that I had done and inappropriately accused me of always doing that, whatever "that" may have been. The context of the situation, and the fact that she didn't know me well enough for me to have always been doing anything, lead me to only one conclusion - that she was unknowingly jumping on the "Ben is x" exaggeration bandwagon, which she could only have picked up from her fiancé and my other friends. My point to A was this - I'm all up for a joke, but be careful how far you take these jokes and in front of whom.
In other news (I think I used that phrase a while back - I'm just waiting for the paperclip to reprimand me for using a stock phrase) I am kind of seeing someone else now - what a great few months it has been for my soulless sex-life. It's going nowhere - for one, I don't really like her all that much (how despicable). In addition, she says she doesn't want anything serious as she's just come out of a long relationship. Fine, so couple this with my first admission, and conclude that all I want is sex: while she knows this, I am not allowed to overtly state it, nor is she willing to accept that if she doesn't want a serious relationship, and she doesn't want a solely physical relationship, then she's just using me to comfort her. What a mess - I'd give it another week, maximum.
The cleaner's here, so off I trot...
* The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley (1997 ed. pp134-136) has a very interesting discussion on why acting on our emotions (and others' expectations that we do so) can be more advantageous in the long run than considered rational thought.
