As I headed out my bedroom door and down the stairs, Shane was in the bathroom cleaning his teeth, so I decided that that moment was as good as any moment to ask him about his bed.
When Shane moved rooms, he decided to turn the antique fireplace in that room into a bedhead. So, he boarded up the ornate tiles and metal fire insert with a piece of chipboard. (Oh don't get me started on the taste of such a move) The fireplace has two carved wooden columns on either side, which he then place planks across from the base of one column to the base of the other column which would support his pillows. The whole thing is French polished and his mattress is, of course, pushed up against it.
After our first discussed this some weeks ago about moving the bed on to another wall, he wrapped these pillow supporting boards in towels. That was his response to me asking to move the bed.
The fireplace consists of a wooden mantel and an eight foot over mantel with a bevel edged mirror up against which he has pushed his bed. As I said to him, you start having energetic sex in there and the bed will be banging against the French polished wood work, your heads will be banging against the chipboard behind which are brittle tiles and a metal insert. You bash up against that for too long and too hard and it is possible you will bring the whole thing down on top of you.
That’s not even taking into account how much the whole thing would cost to repair/replace.
He just doesn’t see it.
“Shane, you still haven’t moved your bed?”
“No,” says Shane. "It will be fine."
"No it won't, you can't use an antique mantle piece as a bed head."
He tried to defend his actions and gave a clear impression that he was not going to move the bed.
“Do you want to see what I have done?”
“No, you have to move the bed, it is only going to damage the fire place.”
“Do you want to see what I have done?”
“No, you have to move it?”
“Do you want to see what I have done?”
“Move the bed Shane.”
I headed out to the kitchen and proceeded to make coffee. Sam headed to the shower.
Shane came into the kitchen.
He was doing the last few things before he went to work, and he clearly was no longer talking to me. I wanted to smooth things over, so I started talking gently. “Shane, can’t you see how with that set up you are only going to damage the fireplace, it is…?”
“No, it is not going to.”
“You have the bed up against the French polished wood.”
“It’ll be fine, I have made sure of that.”
“But you can’t…”
He stormed off to his room.
There are quite a number of things Shane has broken which he has never taken responsibility for. And you know, that is okay too. It’s wear and tear and things happen. I’m just being preemptive here.
He came storming back. “I will move the bed…”
I got the distinct impression that it wasn’t, actually, until this very moment that he was going to move the bed.
“But, you know the thing that most offends me about all of this, is how you have attacked me about this issue. You haven’t come to me as a friend, you have just attacked me."
“No, I haven’t. We’ve already discussed it.”
“Yes, you attacked me then…”
“I did not.”
“You don’t treat me as a friend. You don’t ask me how I am when I come back from Sydney. You don’t ask me how Tully is. You are just bad tempered and grumpy and…”
I don’t really remember the rest of it, but Shane turned it into a personal attack on me. Poor Shane, so terrified of confrontation. And he seems to have learnt (his ex boyfriend) Mark Windsor’s ad hominem methods of arguing, without Mark W’s intelligence to pull it off.
I was just discussing the bed and how it will lead to damage to the mantle piece, it was Shane who turned it into a personal attack on me.
I was a little surprised, but suddenly Shane was telling me how much he dislikes living with me, how hard I am to live with and what a rotten friend I am.
Really? So who is attacking who? Funny how blindly people are able to be such hypocrites.
I think we are going to have to have a little discussion tonight. “Shane, you made it quite clear this morning that you don’t enjoy living with me any longer, so I have to conclude that our time living together has drawn to a conclusion and it is time for you to find some where else to live.”
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