There are some activities that require skills that neither the Mista* nor I have. It’s true: we are not fantastic at absolutely everything, hard as it may be to believe. Specifically, any activity that requires a degree of “handiness” will certainly trip us up. Comfortable with this self-knowledge, we reach into our wallets and hire a professional any time a tool might be needed.
The casual reader may be thinking, ‘Yeah, right, nice excuse for being lazy. Bourgeois slacker.’
Really, it has nothing to do with being lazy. Nor a slacker. There are plenty of activities that the Mista and I really hate doing, but nonetheless we do quite well. Things like work and going to the gym and flossing. We do all those things. All by ourselves. And quite well. Just ask our dentist.
In the realm of hammers and nails, screws, wrenches, winches and drills, we are wholly uncomfortable. From time to time I do tighten the screw that holds our bathroom door knob in place. On those occasions, I delight myself with a certain sense of accomplishment associated with DIY**. Anything more complicated than a loose screw: we call for help.
Some help is more proficient than others, as we are learning today.
I hide myself away with the Internet and pretend to be invisible while the manly sounds of “handiness” resonate around me. The Mista paces back and forth. The professionals are under the mistaken impression that The Mista has been designated to oversee the work in progress. He’s doing his best to oblige, but I know he wants to disappear into the Internet too. For a brief moment, I feel badly that a sexist regime has thrust this role upon the unwilling Mista. But then I google ‘sexist regime‘, and the plight of women in Afghanistan distracts me from the current discomfort at home.
“KERPLUNK!”
Oh, boy. That didn’t sound good.
I sink myself deeper into the Internet. Despite trying to be invisible, the Mista finds me. He has a vein in his forehead. It is bulging. I worry about the history of heart attacks in his family. His jaw is set.
“They don’t know what the fuck they are doing.” He mutters.
It’s a shame that neither do we.
*I gave The Mista the opportunity to choose his own moniker. He liked Tired Dad’s suggestion. He thinks it sounds ‘cool.’
**DIY = Do It Yourself. Do they use this abbreviation in the States? I don’t remember it before my life in London.
Filed under: OH
I’m at a loss: I don’t know what to call the guy who lives with me.
I had thought I’d call him “The Other Half” or “The OH” for short.
I wavered between that and “My Other Half” or “My OH”.
Then I had – or rather, thought I had – a Eureka moment.
I will use “The OH” or “My OH” depending on how affectionate I happen to feel toward the guy who lives with me at the particular moment when I am composing my Very Important Tomes.* It will be a subtle distinction. Eureka!
So that’s how the guy who lives we me started off: The Other Half. My OH.
But then I read a list of hated things on the site of a much admired, talented young writer. Said Talent hates the term “Other Half” as much as she hates “Significant Other”. (So, if I am going to let Said Talent’s pet peeves influence what I call the guy who lives with me “SO” is out too). By the by, Said Talent also hates lol … and I use lol a lot. I use lol a lot because I laugh out loud a lot. I laugh A LOT. Out loud. I’m certain that at times I am annoying with my laughter. On occasion I have to resort to self-clamping – by which I mean covering my very own mouth with my very own hand in order to muffle my hearty peels of laughter. And I also really like lol because I used to work with a guy who didn’t know what it stood for and for months he thought I was sending him ‘lots of love’. I love that. That makes me laugh out loud. Lol. Lol. Lol. See, lol is a very useful abbreviation. Maybe not for a scrooge (which Said Talent can NOT be accused of being …. I think she’s just highly discriminating), but certainly lol is useful in my day-in and day-out life. Or, at least that part of my day-in and day-out life when I am sending instant or text messages.
But back to the guy who lives with me. What do I call this guy?
He’s my best friend. BF could do …. if it didn’t sound cheesey.
The great Jonny B has already procured the LTLP. Greavsie invented Barbarella for the gal that lives with him. Could I call the guy, ‘Ken’?
The guy who lives with me often acts as my financial advisor, so should I call him FA?
Sometimes he’s a pain in the ass. PITA’s got a good ring, but it wouldn’t really be fair since he’s generally not really a pain in the ass.
Hmmm. What do you do when you don’t know what to call the guy who lives with you? What do you call him?
*Not that there will be different guys living with me at different particular times during my composition of these Very Important Tomes. No! It will be (it is!) the same guy – just different moments. Christ! You know what I mean.
I am easily starstruck
Unfortunately, I lose my well-practiced veneer of the studied urbanite when I’m anywhere near celebrity. Any celebrity: big or small; A-List, B-List, C-List or X-List; politician; sports figure; star of the silver screen or boob tube floozy.
The OH (“Other Half”) would tell you that I’m downright uncouth in the presence of greatness such as Sandy from Big Brother, Series 3.
2002.
On this particular brush with greatness, The OH and I are treating my father to a pizza at the Pizza Express on St. Christopher’s Place. I know, I know: Pizza Express isn’t exemplary London dining. But, my Dad is over from America. What’s he know? He’s lucky that the OH and I are willing to be seen with him and his white socks and trainers and money-pouch hung around his neck in public. And his luck doesn’t stop there: an outing in London and a celebrity siting!
I’m suffering all the symptoms of Celebretititus. My eyes bulge, my neck cranes, I chew on my lower lip. I stammer, ‘Dddaaad. Tha tha that guy over there … ‘ my nod in the direction of Sandy is not as subtle as I would like. ‘He’s been on TV.’
Dad twists around in his seat to get a good look, turns around, with a shrug grunts ‘Never seen ‘em before.” then returns to his pizza.
The OH, having been born and bred in NYC is a true urbanite. He shakes his head in humiliation.
I’m certain Dad will be suitably impressed if I fill him in on the level of fame to which Sandy has reached.
‘See, Dad, he was on Big Brother. He used to wade around the swimming pool for exercise every morning; he couldn’t take it any more so he escaped the house by climbing up the roof.’
Dad looks at me like I wasted his hard earned money on my university education. He just keeps chewing on a slice of his 2nd rate pizza.
A brush with Sandy is but a small test. These days, my aspirations to stay cool in the presence of fame are being sorely tested. Right Said Fred live in my neighbourhood!
When we drunkenly stumble out from the basement of a Camera Care / Repairs shop at 5 O’Clock in the morning, we know we’ve had a result: we’re NOT old! we’ve still got it!
The night didn’t start off with such high falutin’ aspirations:
My Other Half (who, from here on out, will be “OH”) and I have misplaced ourselves: we’re non-ravers in a raver joint in Brixton. And, we’re old. The oldest ones with the possible exception of the bald guy in the corner who is, The OH informs me, a drug dealer.
“What? How would you know?” Just the slightest hint of scorn in my voice. Like OH would really know.
“It’s obvious. Look.”
A whisper in the bald guy’s ear. A laugh that is, seen even from a distance, false. A handshake: money passes, and something else.
Drugs in this kind of establishment? I don’t believe it.
Oh, come on. Of course I believe it. Look around. Strobe lights. Imitation smoke — or is it fog? Girls – for they surely aren’t women – do some kind of accelerated, new age Can Can to the pulsating beat dictated by that God on stage, the DJ. Half the girls wear boots made out of Wookie dyed fluorescent pink or blue or green.
What would Chewbacca say?
OH and I nurse our beers. Petunia joins us. We’re fish out of water. The three of us are here on purpose. We’ve come to say good-bye to Wild Child who happens to be our friend. The beer fuels us.
We say good-bye to Wild Child and move from Brixton to Clapham. And later from Clapham to Soho where, when Bar Solona closes and our faces shine with disappointment that the night has come to a forced end, someone whispers in our ear, “Go to Pepes. It’s open late night.” And that’s how we found ourselves under a Camera Repair Shop called Pepe’s where we discovered the fountain of youth.
When we drunkenly stumble out from the basement of a Camera Care / Repairs shop at 5 O’Clock in the morning, we know we’ve had a result: we’re NOT old! we’ve still got it!
The night didn’t start off with such high falutin’ aspirations:
My Other Half (who, from here on out, will be “OH”) and I have misplaced ourselves: we’re non-ravers in a raver joint in Brixton. And, we’re old. The oldest ones with the possible exception of the bald guy in the corner who is, The OH informs me, a drug dealer.
“What? How would you know?” Just the slightest hint of scorn in my voice. Like OH would really know.
“It’s obvious. Look.”
A whisper in the bald guy’s ear. A laugh that is, seen even from a distance, false. A handshake: money passes, and something else.
Drugs in this kind of establishment? I don’t believe it.
Oh, come on. Of course I believe it. Look around. Strobe lights. Imitation smoke — or is it fog? Girls – for they surely aren’t women – do some kind of accelerated, new age Can Can to the pulsating beat dictated by that God on stage, the DJ. Half the girls wear boots made out of Wookie dyed fluorescent pink or blue or green.
What would Chewbacca say?
OH and I nurse our beers. Petunia joins us. We’re fish out of water. The three of us are here on purpose. We’ve come to say good-bye to Wild Child who happens to be our friend. The beer fuels us.
We say good-bye to Wild Child and move from Brixton to Clapham. And later from Clapham to Soho where, when Bar Solona closes and our faces shine with disappointment that the night has come to a forced end, someone whispers in our ear, “Go to Pepes. It’s open late night.” And that’s how we found ourselves under a Camera Repair Shop called Pepe’s where we discovered the fountain of youth.
