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And so, today, I quit. I called the boss and I said, you know how I was already thinking about it before, well, I have been thinking about it again, and well, I quit.
He said he would probably be able to convince me again, but it wasn’t worth the fight every fortnight. He said I might regret it in a month’s time. He said it’s what I trained for.
Thing is, music is what I trained for well before this, and it is what I keep coming back to. I think through these jobs I have been building up confidence on a world level, proving to myself that I am no worse but also no better than any other career-climbing shmuck and I should just get over myself in every which way and just pursue what is within me, which is art, which I have always felt to be art and have always repressed through pure insecurity and, paradoxically, huge ego.
So I found this week too hard. Fumbling around for a story that’s not there, twisting someone’s pain and misery into a cheap sell? and then pretending like it’s for the greater good… no… it’s not. I want to hold the powerful to account, and if that involves crawling over the squirming bodies of the poor dusty folk at the bottom, I don’t want it. Perhaps I am doing some of my own virtue signalling here, but I have sufficient confidence that this will remain for my eyes only for the rest of time.
Life is too short, and I don’t want to be looked at like a filthy bug on the bottom of people’s shoe; some ugly sight at the back of the room that nobody wants to see or hear; an intruder, a paid gossip, a hideous troll. No! I am young, beautiful and I like positive attention, is that so bad? Only one life…
I have observed the obvious flaws in the system now, as more and more lockdown-related tragedies come to light and I have begun reporting them. It’s good to see myself proven right, as to how terribly isolation takes a toll on human life and sanity, but I don’t need to be in the midst of this, so powerless and constantly infuriated. I want to be able to delete my Twitter account and see no more of it.
Today’s story was one of two gay guys who lived together – a sorry-looking landlord of about 40 and a young ruffian off the streets, his tenant. The third tenant seems just to be an innocent bystander. The two characters in this play seem to consider each other great friends, but I think it’s a real opportunistic relationship going on there. And even though the older one takes pains to affirm that there was no romantic involvement whatsoever, I’m sure there was at least infatuation on his part, or why would he do all this for the poor street rat? He takes him in to his home at intervals and puts up with his drink and drug addiction, writes him into his will. The love is deep. The street rat is a lucky little bugger. But lockdown comes and sends him rabid.
So while the older friend is all up in arms about the new rules that have just come into effect two weeks ago, the young man just wants to get off with his new boyfriend. The stickler is all uncomfortable about any outside people coming into the household, and so his little friend has to set up a distraction in order for the boyfriend to get in through the back and into his garden flat. Landlord disbelieves the foolish distraction and, annoyingly, checks his doorbell camera.
Might I suggest that the advent of ubiquitous cameras into our lives have been a source for more harm than good? The camera proves the distraction was false, but the culprit has indeed snuck a foreign body on to the premises.
He sends an irritating, passive aggressive message: ‘Only person I see is your boyfriend. Have him leave now, please.’ Understandably, the defendant gets irritated to fuck and smashes his phone against the wall. Somewhat more insanely, he gets a cool vintage razor out of his bedside table and heads into the house and up the stairs into the landlord and best friend’s room, says ‘I’m so sorry’, asks for a hug, then slashes the shit out of him and keeps trying to do so until the landlord grapples him down with a duvet, blood still pouring out of his throat.
All the parties involved refuse to acknowledge the sheer annoyingness of such sticklery for completely ridiculous, arbitrary rules put in place already two weeks earlier with no hint of letting up. They are all, including his defence lawyer, flouting the idea that ‘there simply couldn’t have been the slightest reason for such anger. For some reason, Mr Landlord’s text sent him into a blind rage. Well, yes. Blind it most likely was, but is it so incomprehensible that the guy can no longer bear the restrictions and needs a good shag? At least, at the very least, acknowledge that the ageing, snaggle-toothed landlord was a bit of a cowish, docile stickling motherfucker who clearly wanted to fuck the cute and vulnerable young boy he had fallen in love with. Couldn’t bear the thought of him having another man on the property, especially breaking **gasp** god forbid! The unquestionable lockdown!
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