Monday, December 7, 2015

You Always Need A Plan B

So I'm thinking after four and a half years with my sturdy old Lenovo laptop that it's time I put the Old Girl out to pasture (throw her out of my window) and get a new one. I've been thinking for a while that a tablet would be good, although I would never ever in my fucking life EVER drink the vile elixir of the Apple cult... but then Android tablets don't seem to be that flexible in terms of what you can do with them anyway, I like torrenting things and having some internal storage to speak of, and I don't know I just don't think I quite trust the technology yet. Maybe. I'm in two minds about it.

But why am I boring you with this consumerist nonsense? Well I've just been thinking really, about the very real, some would even say inevitable possibility of Andy finding, and over a series migrane filled, squintily-concentrating days, reading this blog.

On a base level, of course, I'd be fucked.

I've had a few stalls of the heart recently where I'll come home and he'll be standing in the kitchen staring back at me with his head cocked like someone who's about to punch a missile – when you walk in through our front door after climbing the stairs you open it, and you can see down the hallway and straight into the kitchen. He's always standing there. Right next to the fridge and he looks at you as you open the door, and if he's angry at someone, which is always, he has this half-furious, half-delighted look on his face. I'm paranoid and narcissistic, so I always think that look is directed at me.

That's when I know I'm in for a good night though, as soon as he opens his mouth and starts talking about whatever it is that's happened today and whoever it is who has betrayed him and which planes are about to fall out of the sky and where the bombs are dropping and the hitmen and assassins raining from rooftops in the night... as soon as that starts I feel safe. Today it was the guy who's been living in the room adjoining mine (with the paper thin walls) for all of a month. He left and evidently stole Andy's £100 tablet (IF YOU'RE THINKING THAT THE DIRECTION THIS IS GOING IN IS THAT I STOLE ANDY'S TABLET THEN YOU ARE WRONG SHUT UP AND STOP TRYING TO GUESS THE ENDING) and Andy was understandably upset - “it's the principle of the thing!” It is, he's absolutely right!

The other day though I had a real scare when a friend who used to live here wrote something on one of Andy's statuses on Facebook, and then Andy commented on it, so all I saw in my notifications was that Andy commented on something of mine. Andy has no business commenting on anything I put on Facebook, and after I saw what the status was – something about “apparently I'm a horrible person who sucks joy... something something betrayal... something” – the only thought that went through my head was, “well that's it, he's found the blog, read everything, and now all of my shit is on fire in a bin."

Because I think that's honestly what would happen if he read any of this stuff. To be fair (and these are the thoughts that I think to myself almost every day as I justify what I'm doing here), I have been nothing but honest, and the only bit where I am really devastatingly critical of him is the first entry where I call him sad. I think I might have actually changed my opinion of him since writing this though, it's not pity anymore. Actually he reminds me a lot of an old friend from Adelaide who went to jail for drug dealing earlier this year, and realising that made me change my opinion of him, because I still love the old friend, and I see a lot of him in Andy. I can't hate Andy, there's nothing really there for me to hate, and he makes me laugh and FUCK can he tell a story. But he is comically unhinged and I still can't hear the word 'betray' said unironically by anyone without laughing.

“I was betrayed.” Oh my god stop it, please, show me the knife or shut the fuck up. Honestly. I'm laughing right now just thinking about it.

Anyway, so what all these scares have taught me is that I need to be prepared to, at any moment, accept that everything that is in my room has been put into bags and thrown away, and that I'm never going to see any of it again. Even with all of my rationalising and charming smooth-talk (of which there is plenty, I'm fantastic) I don't think finding out that the guy you've been living with for six months has been keeping a blog analysing your entire existence is something that would tickle my volatile housemate. I feel like he'd take everything of mine that he could get his hands on and destroy it, and wait for me to come home, and punch me in the face and yell a lot and tell me to fuck off. And he'd use the word betrayal and that would make me laugh which would only make him angrier.

So I need to know that wherever I am, the only things that are integral to my survival in London are the things that I have on me. The one set of clothes I have on, my favourite shoes, my phone, my wallet, and my beautiful, beautiful brain. And my eyelashes.

And that's why I'm buying a new laptop. One small enough that I can unplug it and carry it around with me every day – that's the last tie I have to the physical place that I sleep in, once that's gone I never need to go back to anywhere – I can sleep on a bus or in the back room at the shop or at friends' places until I get back on my feet. Whatever. Take my meagre possessions dear friend, for you will not take my freedom.

The other option is of course to just stop writing this blog, but fuck no. I'm having way too much fun.

Peace, Taco.

Click here to read the next part - The Hammer Falls Pt. 1

3 comments:

  1. '..,show me the knife or shut the fuck up'. Duuuude. You are fantastic.

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  2. also, fyi, i just had to make a whole new email account and blog thing/profile whatever, just so I could write that comment. feel loved man.

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