The talk, part 2

And so the drama continues. This is the remaining part of the converstion I had with Sister on Wednesday night. As I said in the other post, I've basically constructed a dialogue based on memory fragments, so this isn't quite how it happened but it will give you the idea...

“Look, God created man and woman for each other… it’s a question of complementarity.” She said.

“Sister, honey, I don’t disagree.” He thought that perhaps he shouldn’t call her honey, since she would consider it a gay thing to do, but then he thought fuck it. “God created man and woman for each other, I totally agree, but as I was saying earlier Sister, don’t confuse normality for ‘the norm’.” He paused, then added, “You see marriage as a union designed for one man and one woman, they are the key players right?” She nodded. “I see it as love and commitment make a marriage, not a man and a woman.”

“Well yes, of course they do, but marriage is also about procreation,” she countered. He was happy she had gone down this path, in a way, because he had a smart answer. But he knew this battle would not be won using smart answers to nit-pick his way to the finish line.

“If procreation is a key element of marriage, then old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry if they’re over child-bearing age. Even younger couples who are known to be sterile shouldn’t be able to marry.”

She didn’t really have an answer to this, but he knew that in her mind he had only ‘won’ this round on a technicality.

“What shits me about the marriage debate,” he continued, “is the way everyone says it will destroy the family. I don’t understand why people don’t see that the family comes in different forms and that the nuclear family is but one of them.”

“I don’t deny that, but marriage is a special institution between a man and a woman. Gay couples are like heterosexual de facto couples.”

“But they’re not. In some ways they are, but the Human Rights Equal Opportunities Commission did a report that found fifty-eight federal laws that discriminate against same sex couples. Rudd promised to remove the discriminations as an election promise but the problem is he also appears to have promised the Christian lobby that gay marriage would not go through, yet the Marriage Act 2004 is one of the fifty-eight. Anyway the attorney general found another forty or so more so the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and all kinds of organisations are fighting to have them all removed.”

She mentioned at this point that sometimes discrimination is acceptable, especially when it comes to matters of conscience. She brought up the case of a Catholic adoption agency in the UK that was forced to close because denying service to gay couples was now illegal under new anti-discrimination laws.

He lay dumfounded, croaking “Do you really think it’s better to close up shop and have all these children not receiving placement than to give a child to a gay couple.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Right.”

“Lets move on shall we? There’s no point discussing politics tonight, it’s not what you came here to talk about.”

She asked him if he had ever sought counselling with the parish priest. He said no, but he was a part of a group for gay Catholics. She asked about their doctrinal beliefs, whether or not they were at odds with the Church’s teachings. He said they were and explained he had found out about them because he’d seen them marching in the Mardi Gras parade.

Her eyes widened. “You went to the Mardi Gras?”

“Yes and no… I went to a friend’s place on Oxford St and watched the parade from his balcony. So I was there, I watched the parade, but I wasn’t down on the street with all the punters. I’d never have survived; I’ve never seen so many drunken people in one place.”

“What did you think of the whole thing?”

“It was amazing… so many people, so much positive energy. And yes, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol.”

“What kind of people were there?” she asked.

“You mean who was marching?”

“Yes.”

“Well there were ten thousand people marching… Each group or float has however many marchers, sizes change, but there were community organisations, political organisations, religious ones, PFLAG and all that… just about everything.”

“There were no, like, paedophile groups marching were there?” she asked, wincing a little. He couldn’t be sure if she winced because she was thinking about paedophiles or because he looked like he was about to hit her.

“What?” he stammered, incredulous. “No, Sister, there were no paedophiles, no necrophiles, nothing like that. How dare you lump me in the same box.”

“Well you know there are groups in Scandinavia that do that sort of thing. Sorry but I’ve never been before so how am I to know.”

“Use some fucken common sense.”

The conversation moved to the way in which he had told her he is gay. She resented the fact he had done it on the phone and basically dumped it on her while she was away at the leadership camp. She told him she was angry at him for a while for doing it that way, even though she understood why he did it. He explained that in hindsight, yes, could have been handled better but he had planned on doing it in person while she was home for the weekend but by the time he had psyched myself up for it the opportunity never presented itself.

“Did it really take that much psyching up?” she asked, sounding a little offended.

“Can you blame me?” he asked, gesturing around him. “Look I was scared of telling everyone, even the ones I knew would have no issues. But when I came out to Mum & Dad I always knew they’d never kick me out or anything horrible like that, and even though I was shitting myself about telling you I knew that you’d never stop loving me. Ever.”

“Oh good. I'm glad you know that.”

She asked how their parents had taken the news.

“Good. Dad didn’t give a shit, Mum took a little longer but it’s pretty good now I guess,” he answered.

“I don’t know if Mum is as ok with it as you think she is.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno, I think she feels guilty… she’s made comments about whether she caused it or not.”

“But I don’t care if she caused it. What’s done is done. I mean I believe we’re born gay anyway, but you know what I mean.” He recounted the story of his discussion with their mother in which he told her that if she did feel guilty for not picking up on it, he was over the teen turmoil so there was no need to feel guilt anymore as it was no longer an issue.

“Well that’s important that you said that to her.”

Soon after this the summit ended: “It’s late, Sister, it’s like 4am and you have to be up in three and a half hours. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this shit. You can send me the articles you mentioned if you want, and I have one to send you, and I’ll even read them with an open mind. But like I said it took me twenty one years to work it out and I don’t want to take steps backwards. Besides, I am about to piss myself.”

Logan Shepard

During my journey around the big bad internet yesterday, I found the blog of Logan Shepard, Matthew Shepard's brother, called "Logan's voice". Check it out, bound to be some great reading in the months to come.

The talk, part 1

The following story happened to me late last night. It is not necessarily a true account of what happened or what was said; it is my interpretation of the drug-addled, sleepy memories of last night. It is not fiction; more an amalgamation of two hours’ worth of memory fragments, interpreted into narrative form.

The phone rang in the lounge room as Dan lay reading in his bed; he’d recently started a new novel and was finding it difficult to put down. He looked at his watch and read the time: half past one in the morning. He emerged from his room and hobbled to his parents’ room, knees aflame with pain, to check the call was not the herald of some horrible emergency. Sister joined him, sitting on his parents’ bed as their mother spoke on the phone. The call was for their father, who was away; a lady in the States who has miscalculated the time difference.

He returned to his room and resumed his novel. There was a small knock on the door.

“Yes...” he called out.

“Are you awake?” the knocker asked.

“Yeh, kinda.”

The door opened and Sister entered; her demeanour tentative and unsure. “Can we talk?”

“Umm...” Dan stalled, trying to decide if he wanted to talk to her at this late hour. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly two o’clock. “Fuck it, what’s on your mind?”

“I’m worried about you,” she stated, sitting on the edge of his bed. “I’m worried about you and I want to talk to you about it. We have been avoiding this for nearly a year now and I really think we should discuss it.”

“Is this a gay thing?” he asked wearily, “It’s two in the morning.”

“Yes,” she answered with a nervous laugh.

Dan sighed. “Ok then, shoot,” he said as he tried to get his knees comfortable. He took some pain killers and waited for her to continue. His mind was reeling. He’d been waiting for this conversation for ten months, rehearsing it in his head. He had done reading, formed arguments.

After years of internal turmoil they all fled his head in the wake of the advancing attack.

“Well,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “I guess I’m worried about you reading those novels and watching movies and TV shows that show homosexuality as normal. I’m afraid that it’s going to normalise it for you and that you’re going to ultimately end up unhappy.”

“Right. Tell me, what do you think of it? How do you think homosexuality, or any non-hetero sexuality for that matter, fits into reality?”

She exhaled. “I think that man and woman were created by God to marry, have children etc...” She took a breath. “I don’t like the word ‘gay’ anyway—”

“Well ‘gay’ is a political distinction, I’ll give you that, it’s more than attraction or orientation... it’s an affirmation of identity.”

“That’s what worries me about you. You’re reading these books and seeing it as normal, identifying as ‘gay’ and I don’t want you lead down the wrong path. I don’t think that being gay will ultimately make you happy and I don’t want you to end up unhappy.”

“It is normal, Sister.”

“But it’s not. Same sex attraction, which I think is a better term for it, it’s...” she thought for a second, “it’s intrinsically disordered. That’s what the Church teaches.”

His heart sank.

She explained her reasoning. Catholic teaching holds that having desires for the same sex is ‘disordered’, but that the simple fact of them isn’t sinful or morally wrong. Acting on them, on the other hand, is. He listened, trying to formulate a rebuttal, but the late night and the pain killers were wreaking their havoc on his ability to form a convincing argument. He lay there, nodding, as she spoke. When she finished there was a silence.

“It’s easy for you, Sister, to tell me that same sex attraction and being gay, or not being straight for that matter, is intrinsically disordered. You’ve never lived it. You’ve never thought you were dirty or sinful or wrong or disordered.” He took a breath and steadied his voice. “All I’m saying is that it’s easy for you to right me off as disordered and accept the Church’s prevailing wisdom in this area, but let me tell you about my life growing up...”

“Ok.”

“When I was five, I remember having a crush on the male school captain. It was a childish crush, it wasn’t overly sexual but I remember looking at boys and being attracted to them.”

“Yeh, but—”

“Please let me get this out in one go. It’s not easy to talk about so I just want to get it said.” She nodded and he continued. He explained that at age five, he didn’t think it was wrong (he used air quotes around the word) or right for that matter, it just was. By the time he was in upper primary school, everyone said he was gay and they were merciless in their taunting and bullying. He was called horrible names on a daily basis and it began to chip away at his self esteem. By the time he was in high school he was still being called a faggot on the playground. She winced at the word faggot but after all these years of being called faggot, the word didn’t phase him at all.

“I didn’t realise it was that bad.” She said, quietly.

He continued that in eighth grade he had a crush on a girl and his world of internal turmoil plunged further into chaos. Then he got sick. At the time, he thought it was some divine punishment for not being ‘normal’. All this time he never could admit the possibility of being gay... but deep down he knew he wasn’t normal, not like everyone else. He went to the Church youth group camp and his health went downhill really really quickly. He didn’t understand why he felt closer to God yet got sicker and sicker, and these feelings about boys didn’t go away. He got very depressed. It started out just a black depression, like nothing mattered and nothing would ever be fixed again. He developed a crush on a friend of his, a guy, and that confused him even more. He didn’t see it as a crush at the time but the benefit of hindsight is 20/20 vision, isn’t it?

The depression deepened until he just wanted to die. Death was so much more desirable than the confusing life he found himself stuck in...abused on the outside by people at school, and on the inside by himself. It got to the point where he cut his wrists and arms to bleed the sin and dirtiness out of himself. He didn’t want to bring up these things, they are not something he enjoys discussing, but he wanted her to know how desperate he was back then...to know that he thinks about these times every time he showers and sees his scars. Her calling same sex attraction ‘intrinsically disordered’ did not affect him, but others were saying it to him at the time, and he didn’t want her to be one of these other people to someone else.

He summed up by saying that by the age of twenty-one he realised it wasn’t sinful, nor dirty, and that God loved him... he had been desperate for God’s love and acceptance throughout his teenage years and had finally gained it.

“Yes but just because God loves you doesn’t mean that everything you do is acceptable.”

“I agree.” He said. “My point is, Sister, that it’s easy for you to tell me that my sexuality is intrinsically disordered because you’ve never had to deal with discovering the hard way that it isn’t.”

At this point in the proceedings, he explained his stance: that sexuality is a God given gift to us all, that homosexuality and bisexuality are natural permutations of human sexuality (and as such are not ‘disordered’), that just because something is not the norm does not mean it is not normal, that Jesus never said anything against homosexuality in the gospels, that the Church’s teaching is damaging to so many souls and that it has fed hatemongers’ discriminations and vile actions, that love between two men or two women has the potential to be just as deep and fulfilling as that between a man and a woman, that love and commitment make a marriage not the genders of the participants.

They argued the points in terms of the Church’s doctrines; he was tired and couldn’t form very convincing arguments to counter her points.

“Look Sister, it’s late. I have a better explanation than ‘it feels good therefore it’s ok but you’re going to have to wait until I am more awake, ok?”

She agreed and changed tack.

There is more to this story, but I am exhausted. Emotionally and physically, so it will have to wait for tomorrow.

Coming out gifts

I forgot to mention in the last post about the one year anniversary something that happened a few days after I had come out.

My dear friend Kate decided to buy me a coming out gift and her son, Lance, decided he should get me one too. They were out shopping and he asked her why they were buying me a gift. She told him that they are buying me something because I was very brave because I had just told my parents that I like boys and not girls like they thought. He didn't understand why it was so brave of me to tell Mum & Dad that I'm gay when to him it's no big deal at all. I told him that that was the best gift of all.

Incidently, he chose a book called "Little Miss Forgetful" for me. Kate asked if he was sure and he was adamant that that book was the one he wanted to give me. He knows me so well.

One year...

“Hey, Mum, do you know what Tuesday is?” I asked Mum on the weekend. Predictably, she had no idea. Even for me it’s hard to believe it’s been a year since that fateful night last March. “You don’t remember what we were doing a year ago?” “I don’t know Daniel, getting ready for Easter?” she guessed. “Not quite…” (big breath) “A year ago on Tuesday I told you and Dad I am gay.” “Daniel! You expect me to remember the fucken date do you? I was in shock for a week.” Mum laughed. I, on the other hand, have the date firmly stamped in my brain.

To celebrate I went shopping. I went to Broadway plaza and bought some nice new undies, two pairs of jeans and two shirts. It doesn’t sound like much, I know, but this is a boy who rarely spends money on himself, especially when it comes to buying new clothes. I was hoping to go to the bookshop to get a novel or a DVD as well to mark the occasion, but after the clothes shopping my legs were in no state for any walking or movement of any kind. So I did things the old fashioned way and bought it online instead.

There’s not much more to say except that 367 days ago I couldn’t conceive of my parents, Sister, family-at-large and everyone Knowing. And now they do, and the world hasn’t ended.

Recent bloodshed

The other day I bought a bookshelf for my room in an attempt to put some order to the piles of books currently occupying the floor space between my fridge and my bed. The shelf was a bargain, $39 and flat packed for my convenience, so I snapped it up at the local Officeworks and lugged it home: “Nooo, I don’t need any assistance, thanks,” I told the boy serving me, “I live just down the road.” But after carrying it for a mere twenty metres I felt every gram of its 8.2kg. Pretty pathetic right?

I opened the cardboard box with a key and removed all its many pieces, sorting the A pieces into one pile, the B pieces into another, and so on. I noticed the little screws were Philips head as I noted that I do not have a Philips head screwdriver, or any screwdriver for that matter, except for the small ones on two pocket knives (one of which is buggered). I searched my room for the pocket knife with the working screwdriver to no avail, adopting the frenzied practice of searching the same cupboards and drawers several times in a vain hope that the knife I was after would materialise solely by my will. Predictably, such a practice failed to turn up the knife.

I inspected the screws once more, considering the best path of action. I reasoned I had several options that I could explore, each with their own unique downside: I could a) walk to Officeworks to buy a screwdriver, however this would probably be very expensive considering I am only using it to put together one shelf; b) walk to Glebe to buy a new screwdriver from the discount store, which would be much cheaper, probably only a couple of dollars, however I was totally stuffed so the walk there and back would not do me any good; c) ask a housemate for a screwdriver, but everyone was out at the time and I am not very patient; or d) use the actual knife in the pocket knife to screw in the screws, which, while somewhat dangerous, was going to get the job done now. I chose to take path D.

I slowly assembled the shelf, using the knife to screw the screws into position slowly and carefully. I soon found that while turning the screws was an easy task with the knife, tightening them was considerably harder—as soon as the screws met any kind of resistance it became very difficult to turn and I was worried of twisting the knife—yet still I persisted.

As I was tightening one fateful screw with the knife, the screw met resistance fairly quickly, far too quick for me to stop the turning action of my hand. As my hand continued turning—the knife not turning anymore due to its newfound obstruction—the blade started to fold itself towards the knife casing, coming crashing down on the second finger of my right hand and gouging a deep gash into its flesh. The deep gash promptly bled like a fountain, dripping on the shelf and the floor.

After instinctively sticking my finger into my mouth, an action whose effectiveness baffles the logical mind, I wrapped it up in a bandaid and looked at my bed for guidance as my finger throbbed. “What now?” I asked my mute bed. “How the hell am I supposed to screw in the screws to make the shelf sturdy, and how, furthermore, am I to use the shelf when the screws are not tightened, making for a very rickety shelf indeed.” My bed, being inanimate, offered no advice. It did its best to entice me to lie down, however, and rest for a bit before worrying about the shelf and/or losing any digits.

I lay down and exhaled at length. Glancing over at my bedside table I saw the pocket knife hiding under a novel, silently mocking me with its proximity to the recent bloodshed. I opened the small screw driver, creating an awkwardly corkscrew shaped tool, and used this to tighten the screws. Bookshelf now set up, I loaded it with my books and DVDs, only to realise I would have to move it once the carpet is steam cleaned. Talk about suffering for small luxuries.

“Pain is never permanent”

Dan is not a happy camper tonight. Oops sorry for the third person commentary, I’ve been on facebook and that is conducive to this kind of thing.

St Teresa of Ávila, who suffered a lot of pain in her life, said “pain is never permanent”...but the pain is spreading...onwards and upwards...through my torso to my shoulders and arms. And I’m not at all pleased by this development. I’ve been dealing with the pain in my torso for some months now, to the point where I am actually used to it (a fact that is in itself utterly depressing), but I’ve never really had arm pain for any length of time before. I was always so glad that my arms were pain free, being that they are essential to so many activities. I mean walking is important, don’t get me wrong, but you can do most things sitting down as long the back holds out...

Anyway I’m going to sleep, and to pray that this is only transient...

“Christopher Robin, my feet are sore”

Just quickly, before I forget, I felt I should mention this little insight into the Space Cadet's psyche.

The title of this post is something I heard him say this afternoon, quite out of the blue, as he walked past my window. I had until now been only partially convinced that he was talking to himself, hoping against hope that he was just on the phone at all times, even when showering. But this is so bizarrely out there that I now not only worry for his sanity but also worry for my safety because when I see him next I am so worried I will start laughing which will in turn prompt him to beat the shit out of me.

The week in pictures #10

Week 10

2/03: The bookshelf again, now standing upright, more like a bookbin or a bookbox than a bookshelf.
3/03: M&Ms. From the freezer. Brilliant.
4/03: The DVD of Latter Days, a birthday gift from the gorgeous and very generous Bryan. Thank you!
5/03: Wednesday’s dinner. It looked so impressive I had to take a photo.


6/03: The new, white hot paving stones on Eastern Ave. I’m sure that when the works were being designed that the architects and planners wanted a cool, breezy pedestrian boulevard but in reality we are stuck with a hot, muggy concrete jungle.
7/03: The contents of my fridge. Frozen M&Ms, ice cubes, a bottle of frozen water, coke, milk, apple juice and four bananas.
8/03: The bath. My parents’ place hasn’t had a bath since I was a teenager so this is a big deal.

The week in pictures #09

Week 09

24/02: The piñata that Luke and Zoe beat the shit out of at the birthday celebration for Lukas’s sixth birthday. It is so strange to have a six year old godson at my age… During the shit-beating of the piñata, Zoe managed to strike my Dad in the temple with the bat. She drew blood.
25/02: The fairy lights on my bedroom wall. I found a way around the “no sticking stuff to the walls” rule… just use the hooks that have the special sticky stuff that doesn’t mark the wall.
26/02: The carnage from leak.


27/02: Tripod playing at a comedy night during O Week. The Axis of Awesome were also playing that night. Fucking. Awesome.
28/02: The Fisher forecourt, which has been in various stages of construction over the last four months, is finally looking more like a forecourt and less like a mud pit.
29/02: I was amused to see the image of milk bottles on the recycling bins in the food court are detailed enough as to have an image of lost child on it, like they do in America (but not here to my knowledge).
1/03: A pitiful photo of the fireworks lighting the skies over Oxford St on the night of the Mardi Gras. I was at Drew’s place—the perfect viewing position—but I had no camera except the one in my phone so I have no photos at all. An awesome night though.

The week in pictures #08

Week 8

17/02: Rainbow balloons on a railing post in Victoria Park for the Mardi Gras picnic day.
18/02: The pitiful security light outside my door. When this photo was taken, the light was barely bright enough to illuminate a shoebox, but a few days later it got a second wind and lit up the little landing area brilliantly—to the point where I had to block the window above my door with newspaper—before dying a few days after that.


19/02: The fountain at Hyde Park; I sat and watched the fountain for a good half hour after going to Mass at the Cathedral for Pop. I’m generally not a fan of fountains but this one had me mesmerised.
20/02: A view of the Holme Building from the other side of Parramatta Road, on the way to uni.
21/02: Cannabis and Opium scented incense sticks available at a discount store near you.
22/02: Possibly the most useless lift in the world in one of the buildings at uni… You will notice it has a button for every floor between one and five, yet it only actually delivers passengers to floors two, three and four during semester, and only two and three during the breaks.
23/02: My trusty shopping cart which goes with me to the grocery shopping… best fifteen bucks I ever spent!

The week in pictures #07

I haven't forgotten, I just haven't been able to upload due to my acute lack of internet. This has now been remedied so I'm uploading three weeks' worth tonight.

Week 07

10/02: Nada.
11/02: Zip.
12/02: A curtain that hung in a lift I caught that said “Danger, mirror behind”. What does one have to be afraid of in their own reflection, I wondered.
13/02: A bowl of peas that I found in the microwave which, judging by its smell, had been there for a number of days, obviously a forgotten part of a long forgotten dinner.


14/02: Little bulldog clip man.
15/02: As we drove into the laneway behind my new place, about to move in, this was that view that greeted us.
16/02: The bookshelf in my bedroom; in a former life it was the box that I bought my printer in.

Full house

This morning the fifth and final member of the household moved in. Technically he should be the “first”, I guess, since he was living her last year and has had his stuff stored in his room over the Christmas break. He occupies the room that we had supposed belonged to the alleged Phantom, but it turns out that, while we still cannot explain the shower we heard running late one night, he was overseas at the time.

While describing such an eclectic mix of people to friends I have fallen into the habit of giving them names based on their descriptions and not calling them by their actual names. For the purposes of this blog that works nicely since I don’t have to work out nome-de-plumes for them all that exist independent of reality. So we have (in the order I met them)...

The Space Cadet, formerly known as Dougie, named as such because every sentences he utters includes the word “man” at a ratio of at least one “man” to every verb, making him sound as spaced out as he no doubt is at any given point of time. He’s a friendly enough guy, when not giving me the shits, but I don’t trust him. He has, however, desisted his “ostensible showers” and general shifty behaviour since I ceded the bathroom to him last week, so things are looking up.

Then we have The Optimist, whose room is above mine, the nineteen year old first-year maths/science student who is awaiting tomorrow’s classes with an undying optimism that can only be affected by those straight out of high school and/or those who have never dealt with university bureaucracy. On the one hand it is refreshing to see such bald-faced enthusiasm while on the other I’ve found myself almost jealous of his uncanny ability to make a 9am, Monday morning IT lecture sound appealing in any way.

Next there is The Accountant, who lives upstairs also and never turns off the shower in his bathroom hard enough to stop it dripping (which doesn’t affect me in any way, it’s just that I hate dripping taps). He’s an international student from China, and when I asked him what he studied when I bumped into him in the kitchen on the day we met he answered “accounting, all Chinese students study accounting, don’t you know that?”

And then last but not least is The Brit, so named because he is British. I know this because The Accountant told me so, it’s not that I can place his accent or anything sleuthesque like that. I have literally spoken one sentence to him as I rushed towards the toilet and he rushed towards the front door so I guess I will have to reserve judgement for now. He is, I should add, by far the best looking of the five.

When it rains it pours

On Tuesday night, Sydney bore mute witness to a massive thunderstorm. It was a spectacular show of light, sound and thumping rain on the parched earth. I’ve always loved thunderstorms; their power and beauty has always mesmerised me. Until Tuesday night.

I was in the shower when the storm hit. I didn’t pay any attention to it, it was just a storm after all, but after a thunderclap that sounded like a small office building had imploded I decided I should get out of the shower and go downstairs to unplug my computer and TV so that they didn’t transform into unrecognisable lumps of molten plastic and circuitry. On the way through the kitchen I noticed that there was a leak coming from the top of the window frame, so I mopped up the water that had already spewed forth and put a pot under the drip to prevent any further wateriness. I smugly smiled to myself, secure in the knowledge that the kitchen bench would last another day, and went to my room.

As I walked into the room I was relieved to see that only a little bit of water had sprayed in through the open window (behind the TV of all places). I was about to get another towel to mop this up when I felt a drip on my head. I looked up and saw another leak coming in through the top of the doorframe. One more pot later and I again smiled smugly to myself that I had averted an aquatic crisis.

It was at about this point that I noticed something shimmering on the walls in one corner. Upon closer inspection I was horrified to discover that there was a veritable waterfall cascading down the brickwork from in between the wall and the cornice and that water was also spluttering in through an air vent. I frantically moved the piles of books that were on the floor as they were getting soaked (in lieu of a bookshelf to sit my books on, I implement a very technically advanced system of piles on the floor). I grabbed still more towels—four bath towels in fact—and lay them over the carpet to try to soak up some of water that had already soaked into the flooring and to prevent any more water from getting through. Since the water was running down the walls, there was no way I could put pots until the drips so I had to basically watch and wait until the rain stopped.

Two days later, Thursday, a steam cleaner was sent by the powers-that-be at the university to clean the carpet and draw out some of the trapped moisture for me. Not three hours later a torrential downpour again enveloped the city, so when I got home on Thursday afternoon I again found a very soggy carpet but thankfully no soggy books.

A plumber was sent over to have a look on Friday. At seven-thirty. AM. I was not pleased and he is only lucky that he’s cute otherwise he may have been met with a much nastier reception at that time of the morning. He has hypothesised that a hole in the gutter has caused water to gush down the wall from the top floor and as it passes my room it seeps through the bricks into the ceiling. Sounds reasonable to me but I won’t be putting anything in that corner for a while I think.