The Salad Dressing and Other Disasters

And Now it's Time for a List of my Flaws

Linked to my fear of confrontation, is obviously the time someone tried to sell me a bathroom. 

It was eight o'clock on a Tuesday night. The doorbell rang, and who can be bothered? Not me, clearly (Flaw #5 - life-threateningly lazy). But I answered the door anyway and there he stood. The Bathroom man. 

He was a greasy Bathroom man. A greasy Bathroom man in a shiny suit. Grey. A few beads of sweat glistened on his pink scalp between the grey tufts. He carried a fat folder. He was quite overweight himself to be fair, and immediately had a brief fit of wheezing from the eight stair climb.

In he came, slumped on my sofa, opened his fat folder, and began his tired speech. It was clear he was exhausted in general and one couldn't help thinking of Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller in which Willie Loman has all the wrong dreams and in the end tragically kills himself for the insurance money. It's a sad play and the scene where Mrs Loman darns Willie Loman's socks whilst he is having an affair with another woman is actually so awful I just break down in tears. But not about the death of Willie Loman. I'm glad he dies.                   

Anyway, what was I supposed to do? Send the poor man away? Is that what you'd have me do to Willie Loman? Even though I hate him and I'm glad he dies at the end I was glad about that. It helped me understand that the play was a tragedy - one of the only salient points I made when I had to write an essay about it at University. (I understood very little at university, but I understood that when someone dies- particularly at the end, it's certainly a tragedy) I'd never have sent him away. Not in your life. The poor, tired out, sweaty man. 

I would have definitely sent him away, of course I would. He creeped me out from the get-go. But due to flaws #1 people pleasing, #2 non-confrontational, and #7 rarely ever contradict people in conversation, it was my fault he was even there in the first place.

I had personally agreed to it, bullied as I had been by an assertive aggressive woman over the phone. Perhaps I was weakened by exhaustion (and nightly crying from the heartbreak) but I felt very pressurised on that phone. I remember it clearly. I was in Bruntsfield. I'd missed my bus. I was late for my friend. The phone rang and I'd answered it. It was a bad move, but there was no going back now. And I'd come phone to phone with her. Nemesis. Bossy, terrible, horrible, logical, articulate, a thinker with an answer for everything. (And all I can say is this: I'm glad I don't have her flaws.)

She played to my narcissism (flaw #18) - of course she did! Lured me in. Painted my future with photographs of my bathroom on the front page of every glossy magazine in the interior design world. I'd be the envy of all! Owner of the most beautiful bathroom in the kingdom! I was momentarily seduced. But no matter. People can me momentarily seduced, and then they move on. I needed to move on and the answer to whatever question she was asking me, was No. No, no, no! NO! Of course it was no. I had literally no intention of getting a new bathroom. None. 

My bathroom was a tired old relic. But it was fine, you know. Everything worked, give or take: the water worked, the toilet worked and I could add a few stick on tiles, a try-hard mirror and a plant. NO! I should have positively shouted down the phone, squashing this dark, flawed, assertive voice, using my narcissism against me with the precision of an assassin ... and slammed down the phone. But because of that and most of my 20 other flaws I had thrown myself into her powers. Her cruel intentions, her answer for everything, her lethal logic meant she refused to let me off the phone until I had agreed to the visit of Willy Loman here, sitting sweating on my couch.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had made him a cup of tea. Of course you give them an inch, and here I'd come back in with his builders (2 sugars) to find him not in the lounge, but in the bathroom, drawing everything out to scale on graph paper in a black biro pen.

Then we'd gone through the bathroom catalogue, hadn't we? I'd chosen some beautiful, minimalist chrome taps and an exciting (try-even-harder) mirror and dark, dark grey tiles of dreams, tiles, he promised me would turn the whole space into the bathroom in the palace of a movie star (he'd gone back to his car to collect these and had dropped them on the steps. Looking back, it might have been a sign that he was selling no one a bathroom that night). He looked defeated when he waddled back into my flat. The tiles were cracked and I felt sorry for him, even though he was creepy and had told me several lies, like this would be the 6th bathroom he'd sold that day and he needed to sell six a day for some esoteric reason. His wife had died. I think I let this tragedy get in the way of things.

He worked out the finances. Took more money off, then showed me the most horrendous home video of someone who had been extremely pleased with their designer bathroom. The man featured looked like he was just out of prison and I couldn't understand a word of his thick West coast accent. I wanted to run away.

But I'd shaken his (sweaty) hand and signed on the dotted line. Even as I was doing it I was thinking, I don't want this bathroom. I can't afford it (despite the generous discount). I'd bought the bathroom just to get him out of my flat. I'd also done it because he'd told me his wife had died. Eighteen grand? My compassion can be so out of control that in Dickens time, I would have been thrown into the debtor's prison (flaw#20).

I tossed and I turned. I dreamed of the mice in the debtor's prison (flaw #16), running over my feet, crawling over my neck as I slept. I woke up panting in cold terror and phoned him. He answered straight away. "It's me" I'd yelped. "I don't want it!"Then I'd silently burst into tears because of the perceived confrontation. In partner with this the self-contradiction which for me with my 20 flaws is sometimes the worst.

I'd been on an emotional journey of the likes of Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress, but he didn't seem to blink one sweaty eyelash. Can I ask why? is all he'd said, very calmly. "It's just not right for me at the moment" I'd said with great dignity. (In reflection I'm proud that I contravened flaw #7.)

In other news, have an AirBnb guest tonight whose name is Philip. "I was the original nutritionist Nazi" was his opening line, (brave words for a German.) He'd developed an app, become a millionaire, then moved on from nutrition. I was happy to hear this because I was beginning to panic due to flaw #3 too many carbohydrates (of which sugars). Addicted to white bread from the supermarket, etc etc. His latest theme and app was: relationships. "IT"S NOT A DATING APP" he almost yelled at me. "IT'S FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY IN RELATIONSHIPS!" He said it like he could somehow tell this app wasn't for me - because of my 20 year old elephant t.shirt probably. And my greasy hair.

He was very impressed by my one relationship fact, that men who kiss their wives goodbye in the morning, live 4 years longer. In fact he sat down on my couch and immediately wrote it down. His app is called "kuddl -for people who are actually in relationships, NOT a dating app."

He had lived in Scotland between the ages of 4 and 6 and was retracing the steps of his childhood as he had few memories, his memories were sketchy. By all accounts he'd been a naughty boy at school because he looked immediately guilty when I told him I was a teacher. But it didn't stop him in life obviously he's obviously a millionaire entrepreneur now. Next he is going to Greece, then he is going to South America. Boy it was a great life.

It wasn't long before he was back on to the nutrition though "once I did an experiment where I did 6 hours of exercise to burn 3000 calories, then offset it with the amount he'd need to eat to gain the 3000 calories again. I'd put them back on by lunchtime. And all I had was toast. Bread is just sugar, he says.

I'm off now to move the white supermarket bread pertaining to flaw #3 that is laid out for his breakfast tomorrow.