There was a guy that used to live here. He really really didn't like us. Before we even moved in he had rung M up on a Sunday morning and shouted down the phone at him, and stood over me while I was sitting on the floor in a meeting yelling you will follow the decision of the group!!! (Which isn't exactly what consensus decision making is supposed to be about, amirite, but you know what they say, scratch a hippie, find a fascist).
He did quite a lot of shouting at me, all told, certainly more than average. And also at other people. READ YOUR LEASE!! he would bellow, if someone suggested that seeing how it was summer maybe a barbecue might be nice? (I did read my lease. It basically says that lots of things are ok if we say they're ok but not if we don't say they're ok, so it was a valid question).
He's gone now, but his residue remains. I have a couple of his greatest hits emails that I go back to sometimes when I think "did that really happen?" At this point I am more curious than anything else at what it was about us that he found so enraging -- he once called me "silver-tongued", which ha, I fucking wish. Has the patriarchy crumbled?? Not last time I looked.
Anyway, my absolute favourite phrase of his, which he deployed fairly frequently and fairly forcefully in the early years, was THIS IS WHAT YOU SIGNED UP FOR.
Yeah, I guess so, and I'm still standing. And as testament to that, I have created this piece of art. It is rag-rugged from all of the garments of ours that have worn out since we moved here 11 years ago. I started it just before lockdown, I finished it today, and I love it deeply. You can see that I got better at it as I went along, but that's all part of its joy.
1 comment:
getting better at it as you go along is the dream!
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