Eleven Shoulds by Noon
I have a theory about the man who lives in your head. He got the room without an interview.
Anyone who has looked for a flatmate knows how it goes. You show them the room and try to find out whether they talk in the mornings. Nobody asked him. He moved in before you could open your mouth and took the sofa, the good end of it, and he's been talking ever since, never more than when you're trying to get to sleep.
Last week, the Tuesday I think, I got the chance to check. The boiler had gone, and my landlord had booked a plumber for some time between eight and one, so I took the day off work to wait in. I sat at the table with a notebook, a red one I'd bought for an evening class I never went to, and wrote down everything the man in my head said, word for word.
"He'll come at five to one. They all come at five to one."
That was before the coffee. On my way down the hall to look out for the plumber's van, the man in my head started on my neck in the mirror.
"Look at that. When did your neck start doing that? Turn your head. You could wear turtlenecks. No, you couldn't."
He spent the best part of an hour on whether to buy a new kettle. The lid on mine hasn't stayed shut since the summer, so I hold it down with a tea towel, and while I held it he argued both sides.
"Thirty dollars. You use it six times a day."
"It's a kettle. It boils."
"It boils with a tea towel on it."
"Read the reviews."
"The reviews are people like you."
"Thirty dollars for a lid."
By the end I'd had two coffees and still had the old kettle.
I'd never take money advice from this man. I've taken it every day of my life. He does it in my own voice, so I believe him.
Later he asked if the back door was locked. It wasn't. In fairness, that's one.
After that he had the row with the plumber, in my head.
"He'll say it's the whole boiler. You say it was serviced in the spring. He'll say they all say that. Then you say."
He never got to what you say. I'd lost an argument to a man still sitting in his van somewhere, eating a sandwich I'd guess, and the man in my head had written both parts.
By noon there were eleven little marks in the margin, one for every "should". Should've gone to bed earlier. Should've bought the kettle.
First he annoyed me. Then he made me laugh out loud, alone in a kitchen. He had views on that too. By the eleventh mark I was nearly fond of him. He works so hard, and nobody pays him.
The plumber came at twenty to one, young and cheerful. He took his boots off at the door without being asked, and I liked him for that before he'd said a word, and he had the boiler going before I'd found him a clean mug. He said I'd done the right thing ringing, though it was my landlord who rang.
The man in my head had kept that row ready all morning. He didn't mention it. As the van pulled away he said, "You talked too much at the door."
That afternoon I read the six pages back as if a flatmate had said them from my sofa. I'd have asked him to leave before the coffee.
He isn't me. He's a flatmate who talks all day and is wrong about most of it, and you don't have to take a flatmate's orders.
Give him one hour of yours. Write down what he says, word for word. Then read it back as if somebody on your sofa had said it.
