Temporary Straight Flatmate

Straight men are seen as the ultimate mecca of the gay scene. "Straight acting" is proclaimed as a virtue, and for many gay man, their Mr Darcy would be a married plumber from Dalston.

Sadly though, the reality is a sad disappointment. Just as most gay man do not spent their entire time baking quiche on ketamine, so straight men aren't exciting.

This month I have a temporary straight flatmate, and the situation is so ghastly I'm taking the cat down to Plymouth pretty much for the duration.

Here is the spare room:


Take a careful look at the debris. The exploded luggage, the stained sheets, the bog roll wrapped around the duvet, the scattering of cigarettes. It's hardly a Triga video is it?

I had to go in there. I didn't want to, but he'd left a window open and the snow had been pouring in. For six hours. While he'd pumped the central heating up to full blast as strangely, the flat was a bit chilly. And then he'd gone out.

It's truly ghastly. There's the snoring, the farting, the way the flat smells of cheap cheese, and dear god, the man hasn't eaten a vitamin in a fortnight.

Back to the gay cliche, there's a dream of being enslaved to an oblivious man (look! we've grapsed dreams that Suffragettes would laugh at). The reality is spending all your time picking up abandoned food wrappers, discarded glassware and shed pubic hair.

It's not a total write off. He does occasionally wash up. This involves waving cup/glass/bowl briefly under a cold tap.

It's also curiously like being in a relationship, as, oddly, I'm somehow always in the wrong. Especially about hifi equipment. My laptop is terrible, there's something wrong with my television, my DVD player isn't up to scratch, and let's not even talk about my broadband provider.

I've tried reasoning, but this is met with a disapproving "ah" and then a counter-argument. He's not even paying rent, nor has he shown a token "oh, shall I get us some...?" towards the flat. The worst thing is how maddeningly petty it's making me. Stuff vanished into his room - lighters, radios, books. And that's fine. I'll probably get some of it back. But the sheer relentless awfulness of it grinds on and I just get more and more wound up. I think it would be alright if, just once, at some point, he'd said "thank you". But he's straight. And, as we know, that'd just be showing a weakness.

The good news is that soon there will be an end to it when he moves to Dubai, a country that, by all accounts, likes unreconstructed straight men. And, if I do snap before then, let's just hope I get a gay judge.