The Bucolic One invited me to live with him in his strange little house down the street from the church where I first met him. We were introduced by a mutual friend, a young woman I had known for four years, or since we were respectively sixteen and seventeen. I already mentioned in another post that I didn't feel particularly impressed. I simply looked to my friend and said, "Who's the behemoth?" He had a large beard, long hair in a pony tail and was wearing a crimson velvet waistcoat two sizes two small.
I badly needed to get away from my mother. I loved her dearly but I did not want to lose the independence or the maturity that I had gained in almost two years of living on my own. I did not much like the idea of sharing a bedroom with a Christian hippy with a bushy beard but at least we were going to sleep in separate beds, or on separate mattresses on the floor. I consented. Things were a bit different in those days. Roommates were more likely to share bedrooms and no one batted an eye about it. It was more in the eighties and nineties that the concept of privacy, personal space, and boundaries really developed. Now, I certainly couldn't imagine sharing a bedroom or even a bathroom.
The house was tiny: a kitchen heated by a wood stove with a bathroom in the back and a bedroom.
And old. I wanted to beautify it somehow so I bought two vintage armchairs, one red and one green. The rent was very cheap and the Bucolic One to my surprise was clean and didn't snore. He listened to bluegrass music and was actually a warm and engaging raconteur. He was a university graduate with strong opinions but a great laugh and a wonderful sense of humour. It was also, as far as he was concerned, his house, and I was but a boarder. But I didn't mind chopping firewood.
I worked for three weeks as a furniture swamper. The driver didn't seem to like me. I don't think I was a bad worker but his small-minded hostility made him difficult to work with. He must have told his boss some lies about me since I can think of no legitimate reason for him firing me on the spot for arriving five minutes late and only once and only because the busses were running late that morning. But the boss was an equally small minded ignoramus and I was actually happy to be rid of such reptiles.
The Bucolic One drove down to the US, where he was from, for a week. He brought back with him some beautiful hand made glass by a friend of his and an obnoxious little dog that wouldn't give me the time of day. I was feeling increasingly alienated regardless of the enjoyment I took in hanging out with the Bucolic One. He was territorial. I lived in his house. He was older than me and somehow he seemed a little threatened by me, since I did not, do not, never did and never will fit into any of the stereotypical male garbage that typifies our toxic post-patriarchal culture.
Or it might also be because I allowed an idiot I met downtown to crash for a week in the house while the Bucolic One was gone. This was a fellow about my age who seemed unpleasantly attracted to me and whom I was trying to help out since he didn't have a place to stay in. He took over the house and when the Bucolic One returned from his trip he found him lounging in the front yard listening to heavy metal music on his amped-up ghetto blaster. The Bucolic One promptly kicked him out but didn't give me a scolding. I suppose that I let him down somehow.
At the end of the month another living situation opened for me. The pastors of the church we were attending down the street were intent on rescuing me from the Bucolic One and his disordered lifestyle. I went promptly from the frying pan into the fire in the communal house and this I will document in my next post, gentle reader.
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