So I've decided to pick up stakes and move.


Dxx Abroad can now be found at http://dxxabroad.wordpress.com/

All posts from this blog will be there, with new categories of old writing up to view (The triumphant (?) return of Ear Candy and the re-posting of the original Expatriate Dispatches) and some fun new features...

So change your bookmarks. Tell your friends. Come see me at the new address.

And remember: it's always customary to bring a bottle of booze to a housewarming.

I'm going to attempt to put a whole new face on this place. So please bear with me over the next day or two and pay no mind to random banners and other crap you might see. Upgrades are forthcoming. Promise.

Dxx

It's late fall 2005. I'm stuck at a job that makes me alternately suicidal and homicidal. I've just graduated law school, a lifelong goal slightly marred by the fact that I am barely making enough to pay my rent, much less enjoy life in New York.  My job at a small downtown law firm consists mainly of my running personal errands for a nasty, impotent little man who has made it his life's work to rob me of what scant self-confidence and -worth I have left. The firm operates from the 7th floor of an old building in the Financial District. Our office is the only feature of the structure more depressing than its facade. Despite having been granted the title of Associate I have no office. I sit at a cube in the bullpen, a sad collection of desks populated by a small community of young women who lack university degrees and for whom English is a second language.

As the days grow darker and the year stretches toward Christmas I fall into a deep depression. What my job lacks in terms of monetary compensation (I make $35,000 per year, a far cry from the $125,000 my law school classmates are making, and not remotely close to an amount sufficient to pay my $1,200 per month student loans) it also lacks in terms of marketable experience; my time is spent delivering mail to my boss' mother, rearranging his traffic court dates and arguing on the phone with customer service representatives at various lending institutions that I should, for some reason, be allowed to order consolidation of his wife's student loans without her written or verbal consent that I act in such capacity.  I want nothing more at the end of each day than to crawl into bed and be held by the man I think I love and have him tell me it will all work out, somehow. Unfortunately he lives some 2,400 miles to the West in Los Angeles.

I pass the time firing my resume into the abyss, submitting my qualifications to law firms that I know would never consider hiring me - I lack the requisite experience that my contemporaries gained working law school summers with their now-employers - and avoiding contact with my boss, Lewis, a middle-aged prick with power issues whose demeanor and aresenal of blunt insults have reduced me to tears on more than one occasion. Yesterday he threw a paperweight across his office at me because I failed to submit some masturbatory write up he drafted about his last settlement to the New York Law Journal. I held it together until I got to the men's room, where I mourned the future I had spent so much effort and money building by sobbing into the crook of my arm for exactly three minutes before wiping my nose and returning to the bullpen. I have never felt lower in my 25 years; in that moment I am as useless as Lewis tells me I am, dejected to the point of inertia. I contemplate giving up completely. I write a short story, never to see the light of day, in which the protagonist seals his iPod in a plastic bag, turns up the volume as he is walking out his front door just after midnight and heads due South on 9th Avenue, not stopping from 52nd second street until he reaches Battery Park and launches himself into the water, quietly drowning in the dark to the tune of "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles.

The summer just past saw the rise of the blog. I don't read blogs. I read the news. I play on Friendster. I chat with my friends on AIM. I read employment ads and attempt to network. I devise new ways to utilize my spice rack to make the popcorn I'll be eating for dinner more appetizing. I read. I attempt to learn Spanish. I write twenty-odd pages of a thinly veiled autobiography. It's not very good, but it's not bad either.

One day the results of a Google search lead me to the first blog I actually read in earnest, a day-to-day account of the life of a self-proclaimed narcissistic gay man whose grasp of minimalist prose and dark humor inspire me within an hour to start my own blog.

Writing is like being recalled to life. Having strangers read and respond is an embarassment of riches. Things begin to change. 

By Christmas I am fed up with my boss, who has earned the alias "Soulless Fuckwad" on my blog. I give my notice on December 26th and walk out the door on January 6th, 2006 with neither a new job waiting for me nor the funds to survive beyond March. The autobiography grows to over sixty pages, much of it now fictional. By February I've secured a contract job at a top 10 firm making upwards of $80,000. Before 2006 is over I've been hired for six figures as an associate in the corporate department of a mid-size firm. Things have, as so many will promise gay men and women a generation younger than I some 5 years later, gotten better.

Eventually I stop blogging; I have neither the time nor the need for creative outlet. The novel returns to the bowels of my computer's hard drive, occasionally opened and spot edited; copies emailed to myself so that it will not be lost in the event of a computer crash. The blog is taken down, its contents visible only to me. The Writer goes on extended hiatus. Desperation fuels the fire of creativity; contentment forces the storyteller into hibernation. I enjoy 4 years of middle class dissatisfaction: my holidays aren't long enough. I'm not getting laid enough. My law firm expects me to actually work for my obscene salary and bonus. Life is good.

****************************

It's mid-fall 2011.  I'm stuck at a job that makes me alternately suicidal and homicidal. I've just moved to London, a lifelong goal slightly marred by the fact that I am barely making enough to pay my rent, much less enjoy life in Europe.  My job at a small conference production company consists mainly of my calling professionals who were my equals and colleagues in my former life as a practising corporate lawyer to ask them about topics in which they are experts and, as instructed, disengage myself from active thought. I sit at a cube in the bullpen, a sad collection of desks largely populated by women for whom English is a second language. The company operates from the 6th floor of a run down building above Old Street station. It occurs to me as I'm staring at the elevator buttons one morning that the 6th floor in London would be the 7th in New York; all buildings in Europe have a ground floor, and start counting floors with '1' on what is the American second floor. The revelation sends a chill up my spine, the type you sometimes get when you pee. 

I'm at dead end job making barely-subsistence-level wages from inside a cube in a bullpen on the 7th floor of a decaying building. Again. 

My life is repeating itself and its giving me the piss shivers. 

As the days grow darker and the year stretches toward Christmas I fall into a deep depression. What my job lacks in terms of monetary compensation (I'm making £34,000 per year, a far cry from the $180,000 I was making before I lost my job and from the $150,000 my friends are making in their new in-house roles, not remotely close to an amount sufficient to pay my $1,200 per month student loans) it also lacks in terms of marketable experience; my time is spent talking to more successful people about the interesting and viable work they do as opposed to actually doing it myself.  I want nothing more at the end of each day than to crawl into bed and be held by the man I am falling for and have him tell me it will all work out, somehow. Unfortunately he lives some 3,400 miles to the West in New York.

I pass the time firing my CV into the abyss, submitting my qualifications to law firms that I know would never consider hiring me - I lack the requisite experience practising in the UK that my contemporaries and lawyers five years my junior are using to leverage their way into roles for which I am infinitely more qualified - and avoiding contact with Ben, the head of Sponsorship, a middle-aged prick with power issues whose treatment of me has led to my daily fantasizing about interesting and violent ways of shuffling him loose this mortal coil. Today he condescended to me about my law degree and insinuated that I was illiterate. I only heard half of what he was saying because mentally I was strangling him with the USB cable from my computer. In my mind his eyes make a satisfying pop just as the last of his gurgling has stopped. I can feel his windpipe giving way under the cord, buckling in the middle like a bent drinking straw.

The summer just past saw the rise of Twitter and iBooks. Everyone has abandoned long-form blogging for 140-characters-or-less dispatches. I don't tweet. I don't own a TV. I read. I attempt to teach myself Italian. I job hunt. I keep detailed spreadsheets of jobs for which I've applied and the recruiters to whom I've spoken. I used to be on Facebook all day long, but it is blocked in my office. I had a music blog on Facebook, where I wrote about my favorite songs and remixes, but I ran out of things to say, which is odd considering I have over 6,000 songs in my iTunes library.

While out at a nightclub I randomly meet the man who writes the blog that first inspired me to start my own some 5 years ago.  I've been kind of blogging since I moved, writing open letters to friends on Facebook. I can't ignore the significance, in a city of 9 million people, of meeting this person who played an unwittingly pivotal role in my life. Before the following week is out I have assumed a new pseudonym, DxxAbroad, and started a new blog. The first full entry is a vignette of the darkest order, in which I color in the deeper shades of my despair. There was a moment, the night after the events detailed in that first post, which I count among the lowest in my 31 years. I lay in bed in my apartment in South London and sobbed heavily into the dark, mourning the comfort I've lost, the future I've spent so much time and money and effort trying to build and the life in London that I can't have. 

Writing begins to take up the time I spent learning Italian. It creeps into the time at work I would usually spend job hunting or, God forbid, doing my actual job. The novel has been subject to a writ of habeas corpus, called forth from its digital cell in the prison of my external hard drive. It's still not great. But it's still not bad, either. 

The Writer is rubbing his eyes and trying to figure out where the hell it is that he's woken up. He knows he's been here before. It all looks the same in so many ways, feels so familiar. The Writer knows the road ahead. He's been semi-conscious, if not fully aware, for a while now, recognizing every signpost these last few months, preparing for the tasks at hand, gradually warmed by the fires of Despair and calling out from his slumber as if having a bad dream that there is no stopping, no forfeit, no surrender. 

That's the thing about the Writer; he takes the advice, proffered in so many different ways recently by all the people who care for him, that can be distilled to a simple instruction: Get Back Up.

The Writer Gets Back Up.

Things have not begun to change. Not yet.

"One in the lobby, one under the table."

A* hands me Melanie's left pump. I bend over and lift the table skirting.

"No, fool." She points across the ballroom, beyond the sea of wedding guests now awkwardly gyrating to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" to the cluster of tables closest to the bar.   I am momentarily distracted by two doughy men emulating Beyonce's video in the circle that has been cleared on the dancefloor. They cross paths, bent at the waist and throwing timed punches at their own feet. I know A* has seen it too when I hear her groan. Minutes earlier I had amused her by dubbing myself Dancefloor Moses, raising my arms and commanding "Bounce, Pasty Motherfuckers" as the Black Eyed Peas reached the 'Easy Come! Easy Go!' portion of "I Gotta Feeling". And, predictable as any group of intoxicated caucasian heteros could be, bounce they did. "Not our table. Too easy. I want this loudmouthed asshat searching for her shoes until we come down for brunch."

The whole thing is juvenile. We both know it. But we can't help ourselves. When A* and I are in the same room, which these days is often less than twice a year, a certain alchemy takes place. Alchemy that usually ends with some deserving party as the subject of our combined malice. Emphasis on the deserving.

Tonight's victim is Melanie. Originally we had targeted the bride's Father and his wife. After watching the man belittle Leslie from the day I met her in college through the day she and her now husband moved out of the apartment the three of us shared in Manhattan, only to paint himself as some sort of model parent at her wedding, I wanted to throw a rock on the karmic scales.  Dad and his (fifth) wife are orthodox jews; Dad converted late in life so that he could marry the harridan and adopted the extra obnoxious religious zeal that comes with having to justify to oneself a major realignment of faith after fifty-odd years. His fervor for all things Hebrew transformed his role in Leslie's life from that of cameo annoyance to full time nag, backed by God.  It came as no surprise to me that Leslie walked herself down the aisle, or that she and her husband chose to have a ceremony devoid of religion, asking their closest friends instead to read carefully chosen song lyrics that they felt most spoke to them as a couple. Being asked to stand up and read the chorus to Bon Jovi's "Born to Be My Baby" felt a million times more appropriate for Leslie's wedding than that trite "Love is Patient, Love is Kind..." crap that mindlessly makes its way into every ceremony. Leslie and her husband embody that song: tongue-in-cheek rock and roll. And I love them for it.

The plan was fairly simple: A*, the Maid of Honour and I developed a game wherein the winner would be the one who touched their target parent the most times throughout the evening - Orthodox Jews are not permitted to have physical contact with members of the opposite sex save their spouses and immediate family, or they are subject to some sort of ritual cleansing. So began our campaign of frottage, escalating from a shoulder bump during cocktail hour to my sadly unrealized notion to honk StepMother's Boob. "Fuck 'em," were the Maid of Honour's exact words as she downed her third champagne, "They made Leslie miserable for years. I'm gonna hug the bastard. And then he'll have to take it up with God."

This was the plan. A way for A* and I to amuse ourselves at the expense of those that had it coming. And then Melanie sat down at the dinner table and started talking about her vagina as the salads were being served.

"I dunno... Someone said I had a scared vagina!" I look down at my salad and chase a cube of beet around the plate with my fork. "I don't know what that means, scared. I mean, I know there are different styles... some look scalloped and some-"

"Melanie! is it?" A* is squeezing my knee under the table, a long-ago developed signal that I must tactfully stop someone from speaking before she steps in to ensure it ends in tears. "Really...great to meet you. Leslie has told me so many nice things about you. But do you think, I mean, I'm sitting at the Ritz Carlton. I've got the Versace on. It looks like you had your hair done. We're all playing at better versions of ourselves. Any chance we can talk a little...less about your vagina?"

Apparently we can not. The conversation shifts briefly, but returns squarely to Melanie's nethers in a matter of minutes. And so we pass through 3 courses, the volume of Melanie's voice making it impossible to concentrate on anything other than her chosen topic of conversation. A*, quietly stewing to my right, reaches her limit as the entrees arrive.

"Melanie, I guess I wasn't here when you pulled 'vagina' from the hat of ice breaker discussion topics. But really, I'm about to have my dinner. And I'd like to enjoy my haddock. So please. I beg you. Talk about something else." Thankfully it is at this moment that the toasts begin.

Dad is up first with his welcome speech, which lasts some twenty minutes, includes three clearly delineated "concepts" and provides him, despite Leslie's repeated insistence that the day involve no religion other than whatever she calls out during the conjugal portion of the wedding night, with opportunity to force four readings from the Talmud into his daughter's special day.  Dick. A* leans into my ear and promises to "accidentally" grab his ass on the dance floor. StepMother is crouched in front of me taking photos. I lean forward and tap her on the shoulder, motioning for her to move to the left and provide me a better view. The Maid of Honour raises her glass to me from across the room.

The Best Man and Maid of Honour make short, heartfelt toasts, and then the Groom takes the mic. He spends the next five minutes paying such loving tribute to his bride, one of my oldest and closest friends, that I actually find myself close to tears. He lists all the ways in which she has changed him, admits that he never thought himself capable of settling down until he found her, and details those qualities that drew not only him, but everyone in attendance to her. The room is intoxicated with his adoration, seeing her through the eyes of the one man who could possibly love her more than any of us.

"...Generous to fault. Possessed of a sense of humor like no one I know. You're strikingly beautiful - "

The moment and every gorgeously heady and romantic thing about it are obliterated in a heartbeat. His speech instantly becomes memorable for an entirely different reason.

Melanie cackles.

The entire room does a spit take in her direction. Leslie actually breaks gaze with her husband and mouths, to no one in particular "What's funny about that?" The Maid of Honour slams back the last of her champagne and looks to me and A*, who leans forward of simply breathes "Oh. Nooooo." into my ear.

Melanie offers no excuse, just looks around and shrugs her shoulders and quacks "Whaaaaat?" at the crowd. No apology. This wasn't church giggles. Not nervous laughter. Melanie has exposed herself as little more than an obnoxious twat. She may as well have used the red wine clutched in her left hand to paint a bullseye on her dress. I can hear A* mentally cocking a pistol. The toast continues. When it's over we're brought sorbet. No one mentions Melanie's guffaw. No one mentions her vagina, either.

So now, hours later, the incident forgotten for the time being by everyone except A* and myself, Melanie has removed her expensively tacky shoes to participate in the exercise in public embarassment that is wedding reception dancing. She is a lifelong friend of Leslie's, though judging by the others at our table one who was invited simply by virtue of her membership in a group of lifelong friends who have more or less grown apart. This relationship makes direct assault inadvisable at best. And so A* and I must take the low road. As I make my way around the outside of the ball room I catch sight of Melanie thrusting her not-inconsiderable backside in the direction of Leslie's husband to the tune of "Jungle Boogie". A* turns and waves to me from the exit before slipping between the doors and into the lobby. I will not ask her where she put her shoe. She will not ask where I put mine. Like terrorists we operate independently on our personal missions within the greater plan so we can not implicate each other should one of us be caught and questioned.

We rendez-vous at the corner of the dance floor and make our way into the crowd. Leslie and her husband shout "Friends!" at us ('Friend' being the pet name we four use for each other interchangeably) and embrace us in a group hug. "I'm so happy you guys came all this way. It means the world to me." Leslie is almost crying. To my surprise I am too. "I hope you're having fun!"  We assure her, truthfully, that we are. Our foursome is absorbed by the dancing horde and A* and I become 2 slightly swarthier bodies among them. Between us we possess infinitely more rhythm, a lifetime's worth of absurd stories and the sole knowledge that come sunup, Melanie will still be looking for her shoes.

All this travelling has left me way behind on life stuff and with a somewhat debilitating cold. I will write things soon.

I’ve completed the initial stages of the ritual. What remains of my cheddar and branston pickle baguette is knocking against the side of the paper bag I’m holding in my right hand along with the wrapper from a dairy milk bar. The wrapper is smearing the residue of its former occupant on my fingers and the bag handle in equal measure.

Eating that particular sandwich followed by a chocolate bar and a walk through the duty free mall is in part what has kept my plane aloft from Heathrow to JFK for 19 flights in the last 5 years.  Having an aisle seat on the left side of the center section of the aircraft plays another important part. Once I’ve finished talking along with Virgin’s safety demonstration video, all that’s left is to set my iPod to whatever song I’ve chosen for takeoff, flip up the hood of my sweatshirt to conceal my headphones and click play as the plane begins its charge down the runway. In an unabashed flaunting of airline safety rules, I can not recall the last time I turned off all electronic devices until the in-flight crew made the announcement that it was ok to resume use of those deemed approved by the laminated card in my seatback pocket. When my flight reaches takeoff speed I am invariably seated with my left leg sticking out into the aisle, eyes closed, headphones secreted in my ears under cover of a hoodie broadcasting  the journey’s carefully chosen anthem.

The first time I flew to London in 1999 it was “Out of Reach” by the Get Up Kids, a song I was introduced to by my first college crush a week earlier.  In 2005 I cried silently as Damien Rice sang “The Blower’s Daughter” to me while I braced myself to return to a city I had fled after being dumped by the first man I really loved.  Sarah Melson’s “Feel It Coming” brought me aloft after 10 days in Greece in 2008 that changed the direction of my entire life. The Killers’ “This is Your Life” was the last song I heard on American soil.

As I have never flown overseas with a companion of any kind, the ritual remains private. I have never found myself engaged in conversation at takeoff that would preclude my listening to music, never had a boyfriend to request we get sandwiches from somewhere else.

The ritual works for the flight from New York to London as well, though the details are different. An overseas flight from the States requires the transubstantiation of McDonalds Chicken Nuggets and French fries with sweet and sour sauce into safe passage over the Atlantic.  This is the only time I ever allow McDonalds to enter my body. There is a walk through duty free, the route never changes, though it’s comprised of different shops than in London. And there is always a private concert under my hood.

But today the ritual is all off. I’ve flown the same airline for the last five years. The same terminal every time. The same sandwich from the same chain and the same chocolate bar from the same newsstand.  A walk through the same stores. A seat near the same outlet where I can plug in my phone and computer. The same Dxx returning to New York after a visit to London. A seat on the same side of the plane with the same safety video.

The tickets on BA were cheaper for this trip. I’m in a different terminal. There are branches of the same sandwich shop and the same newsstand. The same duty free vendors are here, but they’re in different relative locations. They lack the context of each other, they become foreign.  Dxx is visiting New York from London. In a seat he did not choose, an aisle seat on the right hand side of the plane. All of the elements are there, but they’re lesser versions of themselves. It’s all right in all the wrong ways. I’m panicking.

I can’t find a bin for the remains of my pre-flight meal. I leave it on a table in front of Starbucks and follow the sign pointing to the toilets where I close myself in a stall. The lights are too bright. The stall is too small. I take a fitness magazine from my bag and proceed to crush a valium on the abs of the cover model. I’m almost out of valium. Dean will give me some when I stop by his apartment tomorrow.  I push the yellow powder around with my oyster card until it forms a fat equal sign across the model’s waist. I pull a 5£ note from by pocket and roll it up and with two quick turns of my head leave the model first with a yellow belt, and in plain blue shorts once again. My nose burns and my eyes tear. I put the lid down and sit on the toilet until the valium takes effect and the panic passes, at which time I gather my things and walk back into the terminal. My gate has been posted on the departures board.

The woman next to me sneers when I pull out my iPod during taxi. The old man behind me is apparently struggling with a bout of restless leg syndrome while concurrently having a seizure. I put up my hood and start flicking through my music library as the plane turns and the crew is instructed to take their seats.

We are picking up speed. Shortly I’ll be hundreds of miles above the Earth hurtling backwards through time, 5 hours backwards, 4 months backwards, Dxx Abroad slowly sinking behind me into the sea, what remains of Dxx rising to take my place as I pass through immigration in New York. I have no idea who occupies my skin for the hours in between.

In the 38 flights I’ve taken between New York and London in the last five years I’ve always know when I was leaving home and when I was going home.

38 flights and I’ve always arrived at the airport with no one to meet me, on either side of the ocean.

Every part of the ritual is different this time.  

I stab at my iPod repeatedly with my finger.  My brain whirrs through the catalogue of songs I’ve spent 31 years using to define my experience faster than the its processer can call them forward to the screen. A sideways look reveals only the deep purple of the inside of my hood. My headphones have muffled the engine sound, but they aren’t playing anything. I have no idea what I need to hear. Panic cuts through the valium. The plane stutters and the wheels leave the ground.

Four stubby digits steal around the edge of the elevator door and prevent it from closing. I'm tired. I'm hung over. I want to get out of the building and get a coffee and return the call of the first recruiter I've reached in a week who hasn't told me that I'm unhireable. I do not want to spend the next 45 seconds in an elevator with Ben.
 
The door shuts and he moves around behind me as the the car descends.
 
"Catherine's out sick?"
 
He is attempting to make eye contact in the polished surface of the door

"She's here. She's been on a conference call with Brenda for the last hour."
 
Brenda is our CEO who works from home overseas. Each of us is required to have two conferences with her per week. I have a double tequila at lunch every Tuesday and Thursday preceeding our appointed calls. At 67, Brenda is out of touch and possessed of three conversational tactics: condescension, ignorant insistence and self-important babbling. My first call with Brenda lasted over two hours. By minute 100 I had muted my phone and was banging my head on my desk. Catherine reprimanded me for this, stating that it was unprofessional in an open plan office. The following call I took to choking the receiver, which is apparently of an acceptable level of office decorum and was met with no resistance.
 
"Oh, poor Catherine. These things we must endure."
 
"Tell me about it. Being forced to engage in conversation with a colleague you hate is the worst"
 
The elevator stops. I exit before the door is fully open.
 
 

Settling into a new apartment is a series of little discoveries: The walls are thin enough to hear the downstairs neighbor's baby crying in the middle of the night. The hall light is for some reason controlled by a switch in your flatmate's bedroom. The ceiling in your bedroom is just low enough that a less-than-careful stretch will result in scraped knuckles. I have started to build routines around these things. They evolve quickly from novelty to annoyance to fact of life to unconscious habit.

On Tuesday evening I am in a terrible mood. I have neither focus nor energy at the gym and I am incapable of locating the right track on my iPod to translate my anxiety into extra sets of bench presses. Carrying the weight of the last twelve waking hours has exhausted me. Nothing specific made today any more demoralizing than yesterday, but it somehow is. I suspect the effect is cumulative and that tomorrow will likely be worse. I depart for home, workout only half finished.

There are at least five people I should call back in New York. I need to look for a new job. I need to transfer money between continents to pay my already overdue bills in the States. I can not to do any of these things. I want nothing more than to lie in a xanax-and-red-wine-induced torpor in a hot bath. It is during this attempt to create a high point in my day that I become aware of yet another feature of my new home: the drain plug for the bathtub does not completely seal. The rate of drainage is almost imperceptible. Seven minutes after settling in up to my chin, the water barely covers half of the phoenix tattooed on my hip. Two minutes beyond that I'm lying naked in an empty tub.

The small room is hazy with steam. What little remains of the water I was soaking in is floating in the air above me. As the room cools it clings to my skin before rolling off and down the drain. I have no idea how long I lie there. I'm shivering by the time I stand up.

I’ve known Jake and his now-husband Carl for about 2 years. Our level of intimacy ranks slightly above acquaintance. Jake works in the London office of my former law firm, and Carl works with Jane, a friend of mine from law school. They’re perfectly friendly Americans, possessed of the nerdy sensibility and just-out-of-step social graces that make for successful career attorneys.

Jane’s housewarming last night is the first time I’ve seen them in about 8 months. We pass exaggerated statements of happiness to see each other between us like a joint, and Jake returns to recounting the previous night’s events to Jane and the Russian woman standing with her.

“So that was our big adventure in Soho. God, that’s the first time we’ve been out there in a while. We’ve just outgrown it, you know? Last night was definitely proof. And forget about it… we never go to” his right hand moves pointedly in my direction  “Vauxhall.”

“Why did you gesture at me when you said ‘Vauxhall’?”

“Well… I mean…”

“Yes?” He stammers. I tell an outright lie, because it helps my argument.  “Truth be told, I haven’t been out in Vauxhall in over a month.” 

“Well… the muscles, the beard. You’ve very Vauxhall.”

I make no attempt to veil my annoyance with the suggestion.

“Jake, I’ve been in London for 10 weeks. I have had a beard for 5 years. The muscles for longer.  Vauxhall has nothing to do with it.”

This kind of aesthetic pigeonholing pisses me off for a number of reasons, not least of all because he’s partially right; one thing I love about London is the seemingly limitless number of men that resemble myself, often found in the bars and clubs in Vauxhall. It’s the type of man I’m attracted to. Gay men are narcissists; we usually want to fuck ourselves.  I am no exception.

“Well I know you like the clubs down there. In fact someone told me you moved to Vauxhall. So that’s why I-“

“Someone was wrong. I moved South, but not to Vauxhall.”

I’m not ready to let Jake off the hook. Nor am I prepared to accept the label and completely disappear into the persona my more-successful contemporaries have been attributing to me since law school.  My idea of a memorable night out may be vastly different and involve fewer shirts and a great deal more narcotics, but I fail to see how that gives them license to ignore the fact that I went to the same law school or passed the same bar exam or, in this case, worked for the same law firm. I grew tired years ago of attempting to separate the chaff of envy from the kernel of truth in their comments and now prefer to back them into a defensive corner. For sport.

“Well I didn’t mean…”

Jake is unable to spar with me and I’m losing interest. Jane and the Russian woman are visibly uncomfortable. Carl interrupts and attempts to change the subject. I excuse myself to get a glass of wine.

                                                       ______________________________________________________

This afternoon I’m stationed in my ground level crow’s nest on Old Compton Street.  Bradley is meeting me in an hour, and I’m passing the time writing.  Despite all advice to the contrary, I find that I write better in public. The more distractions, the more focused I become. To amplify the sensory overload, I’ve plugged my headphones into my computer.  Katie White of the Ting Tings is shouting in my ears, resenting the world for not knowing her name. She’s lamenting Them calling her “Jane” when I become aware that someone is standing over me. I look up and meet the expectant faces of a gay couple in their early forties. The less attractive of the two is saying something.

I remove my headphones. “Excuse me?”

“You’re so cool. Look at you. Sitting at Café Nero, working on your Mac. You’re very cool.”

I have absolutely no idea if this man and his boyfriend are mocking me.  For a split second I wonder if I’m being paid a strangely sincere compliment.

“Thank…you?”

Then he mutters “So cool.” again and their disdain for my existence is brought into sharp focus. They turn and walk away. I imagine self-satisfied smirks on their faces. I would have never noticed them had they not approached me. But they did. Completely unprovoked. To what end? I can’t imagine what slight I perpetrated to warrant this random act of nastiness. But there it was. Ringing in my ears and walking toward Wardour Street.

For the second time in 24 hours I find myself reduced to a single word based on choices I’ve made that have nothing to do with the resulting label. I want to follow the pair as they mince away and tell them that I have a Mac because I think they’re great computers. That I’m working in front of Café Nero because I like to be around people. I want to bring up this blog and click on my post from last week and give them a dramatic reading. I want to ask: Is it my clothes? I think jeans and a hoodie are comfortable. The tight t-shirt? I don’t go to the gym for my health. I worked hard for this body and I’m allowed to show it off a little. The sunglasses and scarf are due to the fact that it’s both sunny and cold as London is wont to be in September. If the whole is greater than the sum of those parts, then, well, excuse my personal alchemy.

I’ve lost track of whether I’m aspiring to a particular stereotype or the rest of society is rising to meet me. Maybe I’ve just been misplaced these last 30 years, and Vauxhall and Café Nero have just been waiting for me to come home for the first time. I'm too old to put too much effort into affecting a persona. Thankfully the rest of the world seems perfectly willing to choose one for me.

I save what I was working on and start a new project. Let the nerdy lawyers and bitter, ageing queens of the world label me as they will.  Neither was right, but neither was completely wrong. I’m a lot of things. Stupid is not one of them; Self Aware is. I’ll own both of those titles, at least in part. I can wear either pretty well. I can’t say the same for the people making the accusations.

So, Jake and Stranger and Boyfriend on Old Compton Street: You’re right. I am a hot piece of Vauxhall ass. And I’m effortlessly fucking cool.

Jealous?

Ben has declined your meeting invitation.

I breathe deeply, hoping that he's just busy tomorrow and not, as I suspect, enacting some ridiculous power grab as early as 9:22 on a Monday morning.

Then the follow-up email arrives.

Dxx, you must circulate your project brief 24 hours prior to the meeting.

I rise from my desk and prepare myself for an exchange that will undoubtedly leave me seething. I cross the floor and intercept Ben as he waddles back to his desk from the kitchen.

"Ben, are you not available at that time, or is it just the brief issue?"

He smirks. When he speaks I am confronted with the evidence of thirty-seven years of British dental work: hardened deposits of food and bacteria solidified into coffee-colored peaks shoring up the spaces between his yellowed bottom teeth.

"It's company policy. Briefs need a 24-hour lead before a meeting. Your meeting is scheduled for 1:30 tomorrow. You said you'd distribute the brief by the end of today. That's not 24 hours." His smirk becomes a grin. My eyes dart sideways to the scissors lying on Maria's unattended desk. In one swift motion I could scoop them up and bury them to the hilt in his right ear. I picture his mouth continuing to move as brain matter begins to leak from the flume I've created in his skull. I find myself smiling back at him.

"The portion that affects you is a paragraph. Do you really need 24 hours to read a paragraph?"

"It's company policy."

"I'll read it to you if you have trouble with the larger words."

"Don't get smart with me, young man."

I consider explaining that I would be loathe to do so, lest I confuse him. I determine that the time spent arguing with him is time wasted and will only leave me angrier.

"I'll send it out immediately. It won't be finished, but your section will be. I hope that's enough for you."

I turn and walk back to my desk, calling him a twat at a level that is nowhere near under my breath and attach the unfinished document to an email. In the body of the email I thank Ben for pointing out my grievous error in failing to account for the necessary lead time for my brief and explain that I am sending out an unfinished document so that we might be able to hold the meeting, at which time I will fill in any missing details. I hit send and promise myself that this will be the last time I respond to Ben's passive aggression in kind. Next time I intend to tread the high road of open aggression.

I pick up my phone and dial the number at the bottom of the personal email open on my screen. One of the six recruiters with whom I am currently working picks up on the other end. My voice is lost among those of my colleagues. They pay no mind to what I'm saying. They assume I'm making a research call. They assume that I, like them, am pressing a claims director at some insurance company for his opinions on what topics should be included in the agenda for a conference on fraud detection.

"Hi Camille. It's Dxx. Please tell me you're closer to getting me the hell out of here."