Familiarity Breeds Contempt

The relationship between Gustav Jensen and your humble narrator, his lodger these past six months, had been strained for some time. One Tuesday afternoon the dam burst.

Gustav returned from work early and walked in as I was engaged in what he considered a heinous act. In preparation for a date that evening I had hand-washed a pair of my socks, and to assist the drying process I was vigorously turning the handle of my host’s plastic salad spinner to expel excess water from the socks therein.

The noise coming from my makeshift spin dryer was such, I heard neither Gustav’s entry nor the crack of the camel’s breaking back. He had caught me in flagrante, and his rage was evident.

While you may not associate the word heinous with drying socks in a salad spinner, such is the notoriety of my feet, Gustav discharged an explosion of fury that had been simmering for weeks. He tipped my socks into the sink, threw the salad spinner to the floor, and stamped on it to ensure its centrifuging days were over. In so doing, he may have prevented the world’s first case of athlete’s gum.

The sink was full of water so I fished out my sodden socks. I was piqued, but I didn't voice my irritation to Gustav. Turning up on a first date in damp socks is one thing, explaining missing teeth is another.

Gustav and I had been good friends for many years. We had done Glastonbury together, been arrested for affray, and jointly ran a record stall at a local market. But sharing the same living space proved trying, and cohabitation saw personalities clash and contempt breed.

Tensions were exacerbated by the careless manner in which I plod along the path of life. While Gustav is a stickler for order, I’m more the moth-in-a-hurricane type, and mishaps are never far away.

The first domestic disaster occurred only three days after I moved in as I prepared for a job interview. Rather than drag the ironing board from a kitchen cupboard, I reasoned, it would be less troublesome to press my shirt on a towel on the living room carpet.

When I returned from the bedroom with my shirt, I saw the wretched iron had fallen over and was burning a scorch mark into the light grey carpet which, I learned, had only been laid two months earlier. Of course, Gustav blew a fuse when he saw the damage, but I assured him I’d sort things out. He scoffed at that, aware of my miserable financial situation.

But, I was true to my word. The following day I went into town, where I bought a hefty hardback book from a charity shop which bore the title Types of Ethical Theory. On the way home, I congratulated myself on my ingenuity. When laid strategically on the carpet, the book would cover the burn, and because of its emphatically dull subject matte, there was very little chance of someone ever picking it up. The perfect crime, I said aloud on the bus.

Back home in the kitchen, I told Gustav my plan. He laughed, grabbed my tie, and dragged me into the living room. I was astonished to discover the burn mark was gone. Gustav has a carpet fitter friend whom he called to save the day by cutting a patch from the carpet under the TV unit. I have to say, I was impressed with the guy’s handiwork.

Gustav paid for the repair at a reduced rate, but he insisted on my reimbursing him to the tune of every penny. I thought that was a fair arrangement, although my state of insolvency would dictate a slow rate of return. I started the repayment fund by selling the ethical theory book on E-bay, but the debt remains unpaid to this day.

With the recent salad spinner incident and earlier carpet calamity serving as bookends to my stay at Gustav’s, I could fill the space between with a dozen tales of woe, all down to my having this lax approach to life and being something of a scatterbrain.

For example, Gustav called my name one day when I was in the garage painting a bedside table with red gloss. I should have left the brush at the job, but I fetched it into the house. Inevitably, the paint-loaded bristles came into contact with Gustav’s new jacket.

Another time, when my host was out of town for the weekend, I entertained a young lady at the flat. I wanted to put on a show, so I played an album from Gustav’s impressive and well-kept vinyl collection. To create a more intimate ambiance, I lit several scented candles, but as I struck a match the burning head flew off and landed on track three of Unknown Pleasures, creating a tiny crater with a rim of gnarled plastic. That damage is an unknown displeasure for Gustav, as he is yet to discover it.

But drying my socks in the salad spinner had been the final straw, and one morning in October, I bade farewell to Gustav. We shook hands, embraced, and arranged to meet at a local bar the following weekend. Our friendship had survived my calamitous stay.

Gustav went to work, and I packed my belongings into two holdalls. I had tea, toast, and a final cigarette, and then I left the house and put the key through the letterbox as arranged.

As I stood at the bus stop contemplating my return to living with the parents, back at Gustav’s, a smouldering cigarette end had come into contact with a paper till receipt in a loaded waste basket by the curtains in the living room.

After a brief trial, the jury decided that, although I was responsible for the fire, I had not started it intentionally as revenge for being evicted, and I was acquitted.

Gustav has since moved to France.