Janus and Her Friends

I am experiencing a strange dichotomy while I sit on the balcony of my flat in East London writing this journal entry. I live in the inner-city district of Whitechapel, which is both the most multicultural and ethnically diverse region in London, and one of the poorest. The balcony of the apartment directly overlooks the slums of Whitechapel, second-rate housing projects built after the area was decimated and bombed during WWII—home to many of the inner-city’s Bangladeshi residents who represent over half of the district’s population, many of them in the low-income bracket. Go a little bit further west into East London and you get to the area known as The City (London proper), which features the old financial district mostly spared by the bombs, an area of Victorian-era buildings, gothic-like skyscrapers, and architecturally impressive corporate towers, not to mention the yet-to-be-completed Shard London Bridge, slated to be the tallest building in Western Europe once construction is finished. I can already see the half-erect tower creeping over the skyline as construction workers rush to keep pace with the Olympic countdown. (Yes, I am struggling to refrain from making a psychoanalytically inspired socioeconomic quirk here.)

On the other side of the flat is the district of Canary Warf, home to London’s new financial district. Its domineering towers and abundant office buildings (one of which is London’s current tallest building, at least until The Shard soon pierces the virgin sky), housing the head offices of most of the U.K.’s major banks, were all built in the last two decades or so, surrounded by upper-middle class suburbs and schools in the quaint, peninsula-like area that abruptly swings south to correspond to a sudden dip in the Thames River. Canary Warf is the result of government redevelopment after the West India Docks closed in 1980.

“What shall we do with the Docks?” they asked.

“Build a financial district?”

“We already have a financial district.”

“Well…another financial district. This time we’ll do it right: gentrification style.”

It is like a secluded area of clean, modern-day living, guarded by a Thames moat, if you will. Earn your living and pay your mortgage all in one gated-like community that doubles as the second slice of bread in the financial-district sandwich in which Whitechapel is tainted meat.

Nostalgic, antiquated big-city greed vs. modern-day suburban gentrification, and I’m lost and confused in between it all, right in the middle.

Whitechapel is both dirty and threatening on the one hand, and active and exciting on the other hand. The dichotomies exist within, too. Vibrant food and shopping markets are everywhere, including Brick Lane, which is more vivacious than anything I have encountered back home. But garbage and waste run these parts wild, and the threat of extreme Islamic activity looms over my head like an irresolute cloud. I love that the largest mosque in all of the U.K. is within a five-minute walking distance of my front door, but it's so unfortunate that the joie de vivre brought by such cultural heterogeneity is spoiled by a small minority of residents who give the Borough of Tower Hamlets (within which Whitechapel resides) the nickname of "Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets." As recent as only a week prior to my arrival in London, local media stories reported incidents of death threats to unveiled women, as well as public physical assaults on gay men.

The Janus-faced metaphor couldn’t be more appropriate. Some days I am lost, confused, and lonely as hell. Other days, well, I fall in love. I love falling in love. Can you blame me? London, lyrical, lovely, lilting. I fell in love on the bus the other day. I didn’t get her name, but it was love, real love. She was cute and sat next to me. My phone rang and there was no answer.

“Don’t you hate that? The ring of the cellphone, the anticipation of a conversation, knowing that somebody, someone out there, wants to talk to you. You’re important. And then…nothing. You think you find somebody to love, but it’s just a dial tone. Life is just a dial tone.”

I said something like that. Probably. She smiled and engaged me in small talk. I made a joke about how I struggle to navigate through the settings on my new phone: Normal, Loud, Vibrate, Orange Citrus, Morning Breeze. She laughed. Yeah…love. Then her phone rang, and she had a somebody on the other end. Her stop came when she was on the phone still so all I got was a quick “goodbye” and “nice to meet you.” It was all a dial tone, really; but that’s what love is, a dial tone: two harmonious noises that no one person could hum—it requires two voices in sync. Ironic that a dial tone can symbolize both white noise and love. Apparently Janus is poaching on Cupid and Venus's turf.

My flatmates are the best. George, Mike, Kat, and Alice. Seasoned vets to help me navigate through the financial-district sandwich and through the dial tones. They too are right in the middle of it all. George is a young Jake Gyllenhaal, although a little bit more abrasive and chatty, in a very British way. Everything he says is funny. He enjoys a good drink and chain smoking. Mike is quiet yet friendly. He plays video games, has a quirky taste in indie music, and a dry sense of humour. He looks like Phil Kessel, although he doesn’t know who that is. Kat is confident and approachable, but don’t fuck with her or she’ll make you drink a lot of alcohol. If you are ever unsure of anything, she’s right there with an answer, a strong voice, and a passionate opinion. All three of them study politics, and are currently working as student interns at Westminster that count towards their degrees. During the day they work as assistants to MPs, then at night they come home and write their corresponding reports to be submitted to professors. Weekends are fair game. Alice is smart and easy-going. A house full of politicos, she’s the artist of the bunch. She finished her degree in English literature and creative writing, and spends her time now as a freelance wedding photographer for mediocre money, an amateur photographer selling prints at outdoor street markets in London for even worse money, and a lowly caterer for better money. Perhaps her most interesting gig is her own card-design project that she recently started, Birds in Hats. Alice draws various birds posing with different headpieces, and will then transfer the designs onto greeting cards and sell them in bulk. I get along with her well, and it seems like she and I have a lot in common in order to be good friends.

Lost and confused in London, I have asked them all a million questions and sought their advice countless times. Not once have they been impatient or unhelpful. Caught in between two worlds, falling in and out of love, constantly torn and undecided if I should be happy or sad, valiant or afraid, these four wonderful people have taught me that Janus can get by just fine with a little help from his friends.

"Which Way to the Beach?"

Dante, in his journey to hell, was told that only those who abandoned all fear and cowardice would be allowed to enter. It was more of a warning, an advisory, actually, than a requirement—“Hey, shit’s about to get fucked up, just so you know”—but whatever. The point, I think in this particular context, is to go along with the shit, to think of it as a learning experience, and (maybe not so much in Dante’s case) have a little fun along the way.

London is not hell, unless you want to count the decrepit, impoverished slums that surround my flat. Flat and flatmate stories I will save for later. Suffice it to say that, after walking into my room at close to 4 a.m. local time early Sunday morning on my last night in a hostel before I moved into my flat, although I doubt I would have been afraid or cowardly, there were countless negative reactions I could have expressed upon what I had discovered, but thankfully did not. A rather attractive man who possessed an uncanny resemblance to Hugh Jackman was going through one of my bags I had left on my bed. We made eye contact and he was a deer frozen in headlights as I gave him a suspiciously lighthearted, “So, uh…hey guy, what you up to, eh buddy?”

“Is this your bag?” he asked nervously, pointing at my knapsack.

“Yeah man, it is. Is there something I can help you with?” All of my valuables were locked away elsewhere, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt he had a good-ass excuse coming my way (he did), so I kept the tone friendly.

“Oh shit man, I’m so sorry. I was looking for an iPhone charger and I thought it was one of my buddy’s bags.” He immediately sat down on his bed, his head in his hands out of self-disappointment and embarrassment, and proceeded to apologize for the next half hour. Like a sinner cathartically purging his guilt, paying for the wrongdoing with the humiliation of being caught in the act. To be fair, Dante saw much worse, but I am sticking with the metaphor nonetheless.

His name was Tom. He was charming and outgoing without being abrasive or loud. Short dark hair, chiselled features, and an unshaven, dirty face. Totally Hugh. Tom and his seven friends were from Essex and came into London for the weekend to attend a rugby tournament. The group had their bags scattered around the nine-bed room and Tom did not think that anyone else was staying there. Of his friends who had yet to return from the club, Tom began to go through all of their bags in the desperate search for a phone charger, getting to my bag as I walked in. The story was reasonable and his apology beyond sincere, so I let it slide. Soon the remaining friends returned to the room, and we stayed up close to 7 a.m. getting to know each other. I had little in common with any of them—they were an odd sort, a menagerie of country boys from rural England who were in town for alcohol, sport, and, as they put it, girls to fuck, although this last one seemed to evade them quite well, much to their dismay. I could have chose to ignore them or not befriend them, but then of what do I have to be afraid? Hell doesn’t literally await me, thankfully.

If there was a leader among them it was Tom. He spoke up at the right time and place without being too talkative, scolded his friends when appropriate, who were saddened to have gotten his disapproval; but he was heavily amiable at other times, and was funny without having to try. He was also the most attractive one, naturally speaking of course, in that unshaven, chiselled Hugh Jackman kind of way. Nick and Chris were both attractive too, but more so in an Abercrombie & Fitch kind of way. Then there was “Leggy,” appropriately named after his long legs. Leggy could have been attractive because of a small resemblance to Jack Davenport’s character from The Talented Mr. Ripley, a very British look, but his face always seemed bewildered, and he moved around very awkwardly. Perhaps he was just always lost in thought. Kelvin and “Brooksy” were the muscle of the group—both short and stocky men, ostensibly dim-witted but funny and clever underneath the surface.

There was also “Musket”—a nickname he garnered for supposedly being able to “fuck as hard as he shoots”—who was the quietest bloke in the bunch, and very thin, wearing a light denim jacket to disguise his frail body. I think he slept in that jacket, and he didn't take it off until the next morning after arriving at the Victoria train station, en route to Twickenham Stadium. The only one of his friends not in a bathing suit of some sort, Musket changed into a parrot costume to abide by the stadium's recommended sea- or beach-themed dress policy for the rugby tournament. I don’t think I heard him utter more than five words. Jerry was the exact opposite. Last—and least—Jerry was the only one whose company I did not find pleasurable. His name is not actually Jerry. I once mistakenly called him Jerry (I can’t remember why) and I forget his real name, mostly because I didn’t bother to remember it, so I will stick with Jerry. He was missing a front tooth, having had it knocked out a couple months ago in a brawl. Until he gets a permanent replacement, he had been gluing in a fake tooth but had lost it at the club. Annoying, rude, and immature, he randomly took his pants off while very drunk in the hostel and tried, forcefully yet unsuccessfully, to have sex with me and some of his friends. I maybe would have been flattered under other circumstances, but he was simply acting like a child. The next day, while we were all out for lunch, he attempted to smear some of us with his dipping sauce, no doubt, I am sure, to compensate for the fact that it would have been too taboo for him to use the sauce as a lubricant on himself right then and there in the restaurant. His actions met the disapproval of all of his friends, especially Tom. I later learned that the rest of them consider him more of an acquaintance than a friend, and that they brought him along to avoid feeling guilty and also because he has a reputation for always buying drinks (he had spent close to £500 at the club for them and others the night before to celebrate a large payout from Her Majesty's Armed Forces for a recently completed stint of military service). Fair enough.

Morning comes and the boys felt bad for having kept me up late that night, not to mention Tom, who was still red-faced for having inadvertently gone through my bag. They had an extra ticket for the London Sevens weekend-long rugby tournament for that afternoon—part of a group of events that form the World Series of rugby sevens. It is called sevens because there are only seven players on each side, instead of the usual 15, and the matches are shorter in length (you guessed it: seven-minute halves). Fast and furious, I say. I had to move into my flat that day, but not until the evening—it wasn’t really my idea of an afternoon out, but rugby sounded fun, and these Essex boys promised me a time. Fuck, eh? Any sporting event that explicitly recommends a costume theme, in this case, the beach, must be worth a look. Heck, Brits at a rugby tournament probably would have dressed up regardless. “Yeah…I will come, thanks.”

Chris, Leggy, and (thankfully) Jerry decided that morning that they were all still too hungover and tired from the night before, not to mention broke, and that they had seen enough rugby the day before when they all attended the first half of the tournament. We left them on the Tube on our way to Twittenham, where rugby was “invented,” Brooksy joked. Aside from Musket, dressed as a parrot, the rest of them either dressed as scuba divers or as swimmers with simply bathing suits and a tank top (I went in a pair of jeans and my black American Apparel hoodie, if you are curious). Kelvin and Brooksy, the two big guys, looked especially amusing (and cold) in their clothes. Tom used his oxygen tank from his scuba diving outfit as a beer container: he was able to pour about five pints of Guinness into it and adapted the breathing tube into a drinking tube.

The stadium was loud and full of thousands of drunk Englishmen, many of them dressed in bathing suits with face paint and noisemakers. The rugby was interesting enough, that is to say I was enjoying myself and was glad I made the leap to do something I had never done before: tag along with a bunch of rambunctious guys I had known for less than 24 hours to watch a big event I had never seen or experienced before. And then Canada, my homeland, came on the pitch to play England, a pure stroke of coincidence. It led to a lot of roughhousing between the boys and I; our prides were on the line. I foolishly made the decision to bet a beer on the game. Canada was winning at half-time too so at first I felt fairly good about making the bet. I should have known the lead would not have lasted.

I left early and said my goodbyes and gave my thanks, having only been there for a couple of hours. I needed to leave myself enough time to not only take the train back into Central London, but to get back to the hostel that was near Hyde Park and move my luggage into my flat in East London for around 6 p.m. It takes a very long time to get around London. By the time I got to the flat I was very exhausted and was kindly offered a glass of water from the chap whose room I was subletting for the summer. Collapsing on the couch, it felt like heaven. See? I told you hell didn't await me.