What I need is you

"You need me," my boyfriend said, pressing his hand against my back, keeping me close. I'd just jumped at him for a quick hug, and it was nice that he took time to savour it. I smiled.

He knows it's true. And I liked his confidence.

"You need me," he repeated. And after only a short pause, said it again, "You need me."

It was getting weird. But what the hell, I played along.

"OK, I neeeeeed you."

He squinted. What's he getting at, I wondered, feeling at a loss. Then he reached his hand down to the front of his jeans, gingerly cupping himself, before saying it one last time in a way I finally understood.

"You KNEED me!"

When he recovered, we decided both were true.

Before I got lucky in London

It was a short, regrettable fling – one of the last, and it may have otherwise been among the most forgettable, had my suitor not resorted to theft to gain my attention, if not my affection.

Lasting only a few days of vegan lunches, soy lattes and his nervous mannerisms, even in its genesis, I knew the deal could never quite be sealed with more than a hops-sloppy kiss. It wasn’t in the stars. So when having the young Scottish import in my personal space became unbearably unpalatable, I delivered the terminal blow by phone and naively expected never to hear from him again. Instead, as it does, dinged pride guided its punch-drunk governor to commit criminal acts of idiocy.

Of the little he knew about me, other than my being the ex-girlfriend of one of his own friends – though the quality of their relationship continues to be debatable – was my love of cruising Montreal’s broad, tree-lined streets on my beloved beater bike, a ’67 Schwinn with just enough of its original paint to suggest it was once a decidedly Californian shade of blue. The bike had been a gift from the ex-boyfriend – a gift he particularly enjoyed reclaiming when it came time to exchange any love he had for me for seething, pathological hatred. Ours was the standard break-up to follow any 7-year union – savage, vengeful and sufficiently bitter to put any Canadian winter to shame. After all I’d invested, anything less and I’d have been offended.

The young Scot seemed an anxious contender for the post, but upon experiencing even a lesser rejection first-hand and over the phone, he both blamed my ex-boyfriend for having rendered me incapable of loving someone new, and set out to win over what he believed to be even the most damaged bits of my icy little heart. But, had he asked me, I’d have said it was less an issue with my heart, and more an issue of instinct. Something, I felt, just wasn’t right.

Within a few days, the misguided young Scot made up his mind and did what he thought best, and resolved to steal my bike back. I know how he arrived at this decision, because the entire decision-making process was recorded in a series of four voicemail messages, from conception to completion. The wayward gesture was highly successful, but only in proving me right about him being so wrong.

While I appreciated his sympathy and creativity, the plan was not very well thought out. My ex-boyfriend, and the bicycle, lived in Mile End, the same close-knit Montreal neighbourhood as me. Surely I’d be seen pedalling guiltily along and be accused of thieving it myself. Nevertheless, in the first message, he said he’d spotted the bike and thought I deserved to have it. The second message reiterated. The third announced he’d developed a plan to steal it. The fifth, told me it had been relocated to the entrance of my apartment building, with a key to its new lock hidden under the seat, awaiting me.

At the time, my ex-boyfriend’s wrath was a fitfully sleeping dragon, and avoiding inducing further nightmares was topped in my priorities only by basic survival. Already subject to random phone calls designed to intimidate and punish me for leaving, any new fodder would surely fan the hellfire. So, after running down three flights of stairs and out the front doors to the bicycle rack, you can imagine my relief to see that despite the young Scot’s strange trail of messages, the bicycle wasn’t there.

What was there, was someone else’s bike – a similar bike, but red, and not the right brand or make or year or, really, anything the same at all. Still, I checked underneath its seat, and there as promised, was a key. I was now in possession of a stolen bike.

After calling friends to rant about my new role as harbourer of stolen goods, I began posting flyers around the neighbourhood, asking for anyone with a bicycle stolen from the area that week to please contact me with a description, so I could return it to its rightful rider. But none of the many hopeful enquiries described the bike I’d been fostering. A week later, it occurred to me to lock the bike up in the same location from where I suspected it had been stolen. To it, I attached my email address, figuring the delighted owner would contact me for the key. Another week came and went, and still no word. When I checked on the bike, I saw that the paper with my email address had been torn away, but a second U-lock was attached and a note snaked through its grimy spokes. It read:

“Dear Bike Angel, I don’t know how you found it, but please call me.”

And he left his number. Bike Angel. I liked it.

Doing the right thing is good, but having it work out is great. The owner of the bicycle was a well-known local character and talented Montreal artist. His prints had been hanging in my home, years before his stolen bicycle made it there to join them. And, because it’s Montreal, and the English-speaking community so small, he was also an acquaintance of my ex, who, as it turns out, still has the blue Schwinn.

A small, awkward friendship budded in the fiasco, with the red bike’s rightful owner, and every time I saw him riding it through the same streets I loved, I felt a little spark of victory. And just once, we also shared a hops-soggy kiss, so every time we stumbled into each other’s paths afterward, my cheeks took the colour of the bike that started it all.

But all of that and all those people have become little more than anecdote. I’ve since fallen in love with someone else, someone without need to impress me, someone completely unrelated this story, someone English who’s never even been to Montreal, and to my own surprise, someone who doesn’t even own a bike. Still, my instincts say he’s also someone for whom it’s worth crossing an ocean.

My ex-boyfriend with the blue bike seems to be letting sleeping dragons lie.

The young Scot must surely have been deported by now.

The artist’s red bike has since been stolen – for good.

And even though it’s raining tonight in London, I’m warm inside with a man who’s doing well at proving I was right about him, and so I think, I may have been stolen for good, too.

This is me with my boyfriend, tolerating London, for some effing good reason.

Interview for a cold day in ... London

You might know him as the co-owner of a trendy London bowling alley chain, or the man behind a popular Notting Hill club, but he’s more than that to me – he’s the guy who wants a naked personal assistant. And he's hiring.

"First, I want you to understand; it's nothing sexual," he said ten minutes into the interview.

Keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he lowered his head and cocked a brow. I braced for the 'but'.

He was handsome enough to expect to get away with it, dishevelled enough to be non-threatening, and posh enough to reveal his unconventional lifestyle as little more than an egoistic echo of boarding school rebellion. But really, why shouldn't we all get everything we want?

The justification he made easily. Since I'd work primarily from his home office, and since he occasionally prefers to be nude in the privacy of his own home, he'd appreciate an assistant who would be comfortable with that.

Fair enough – I'd found the ad on Gumtree (the UK's answer to Craigslist), and the internet is bound to live up to its reputation now and again.

“Very interesting,” I said, and promptly lost my battle for composure to a smirk that carved clear across my face. While I wasn't quite right for the job, what with my preference for clothing while ironing shirts and drafting letters, I couldn’t wait to retell the story.

But I had this sneaking feeling he’d only just scratched the surface with his peculiarities, so I resisted the urge to run off and regurgitate the story, straightened my face and did what I had to do – waited for the juicy bits.

“Again,” he reiterated, “I want you to understand it’s nothing sexual.” There was another ‘but’ in the air. I could feel it. And I wanted to hear it. And I egged him on because I knew the story would be better for it.

When it came, I began looking for hidden cameras.

The scene was too contrived, too scripted – something was fishy. I’d inadvertently stumbled into a gag for a British reality TV show – something akin to Candid Camera, but with a desperate job-seekers theme – I was sure of it. Timely, I thought, for the credit crunch, if not a bit cruel. The air vents, I suspected, was where they’d most likely be, and I gave them all an I’m-onto-you squint, just in case.

I thought back to the ad. He described himself as the owner of clubs and entertainment venues across London, looking to expand his business to the realms of adult dating, and required a personal assistant to help him stay on top of it all, someone open-minded and willing to dig right in and take care of whatever needed doing.

Spotting three red flags in the text – club owner, adult dating and the much-abused term ‘open-minded’ – my initial questions to him during my phone interview were direct. “What exactly do you expect from a personal assistant?” I asked, drawing ‘exactly’ out as long as I could without suggesting I had a speech impediment. Anything as menial as ironing a shirt before a meeting and helping him bounce ideas around for his business, was his tempered, professional answer.

“So there are no specific skills you’d expect that I might not have?” I asked, satisfied with his response and now wanting to clarify, thinking HTML or catering. He barely stuttered and went on about how the one-on-one nature of the job requires above all that we get along. Agreeing to meet, we scheduled a face-to-face interview in Notting Hill the next day. In hindsight, the stutter was either a blazing scarlet-red flag or a guardian angel intervening on my behalf to choke him.

“And because it’s really, really important to me that you are absolutely comfortable with me being naked,” he went on, “and that you know it’s nothing sexual…”

Brow cocked, dramatic pause engaged, he was about to deliver the payload. This, I knew, would be the biggest ‘but’ yet.

“I need you to demonstrate your comfort by occasionally being naked, as well.” And then he let out a little burp. Seems my guardian angel went deep.

As far as collecting stories goes, I couldn't believe my luck. But I had to think of something to say, settling on, “I get where you’re coming from,” as the groundwork for my own enormous ‘but’.

In a small way, I felt sympathetic to him. He’d been pleasant, up-front and maintained appropriate physical distance throughout the interview. He told me what he wanted, and asked me how I felt about it. It was an extension of the classic secretary fantasy cum affair. The difference being that he incorporates it into the interview process.

I’ve always questioned social norms – which might have something to do with my degree in Cultural Anthropology, or just having lived in liberal Montreal for a decade – and I do consider myself to be open-minded and non-judgemental. Lifestyles that buck convention have never personally offended me, so long as they’re consensual and respect basic human rights. The lines I draw for myself are, however, very clear.

“But, that’s just not something I can do,” I concluded for him, in case he couldn’t already tell from the look on my face. Had he stopped talking then, my opinion of him would have cemented at the extreme end of ‘quirky’. But making the same mistake as billions of his forefathers, he went on to justify his desires.

While he appreciates her naked body, and is very certain she appreciates his, he’s never “f*cked” his current assistant – despite being in an open relationship – because that would ruin the professional dynamic. I think he’s right about that.

And it went downhill from there.

A telecom blessing, his mobile rang and it was time for me to go. Leaving the club, I still expected a production assistant might jump at me with a disclaimer to sign, so I could make my first appearance on low-budget British reality TV. But that didn’t happen.

The only person outside the club on the posh Notting Hill street, was a high-heeled, bleach blonde in her early twenties, wearing a little too much eye make-up – the next interviewee.

Looking her over I thought, "She's about to make herself a lot of money."

All Star bowling alley, originally uploaded by Will Cheyney.

(Note: I got this photo from Flickr, and for the record, the photographer has nothing to do with my story, nor does use of his photo here express any opinion he may hold, whatsoever, about the story or people involved. He's a talented photographer, but is in no way related to the aforementioned events.)

One sad way to lose a job

If you know London, you know The City refers to the financial district – the new-money hub, the once sparkling centre rife with slick suits, the testosterone traders, the bankers – City Boys. Or so I hear.

By the time I came to England, the credit crunch was in full bloom. My boyfriend took a redundancy package not long after my arrival, and my dreams of jump-starting my international PR career began to wane.

Still, in the face of back-to-back refusals from recruitment agencies – the only real way to get a job in London – on the basis of being a foreigner without at least 6 months experience on the island, I managed to land a PR job through an independent ad. And after about 5 weeks, I quit. Not because I'm a quitter, but because the man I was working for was one of the most difficult personalities I've ever encountered. Even worse than that. And he'd just had an unplanned baby, so even worse than that.

Since then, I've held a total of eight different jobs – each with distinct advantages and horrors, an I've written about most of them in my blog. And it is the eighth job I'd like to introduce now.

You may wonder what happened to my recent 'chugging' job – face-to-face fund-raising for UNICEF – which I spoke about not long ago. Or you may just assume I've grown tired of strangers telling me to 'F*ck off' for the criminal act of saying 'good morning' while wearing a charity t-shirt. That's how I'd assumed it would end, but alas, that's not the case. It ended because I cried. I cried my face off. I sobbed like a 10-year-old, hyperventilated even. And not because someone was mean to me, but rather because I was surrounded by people who were so nice.

Breakthrough Breast Cancer was to be our next campaign. Everyone in the company was gathered in a conference room for a detailed briefing before heading to the streets to pass the word on. Looking around at my colleagues, I felt privileged to belong to a group so good-looking, bright and young. It's the level of overall group beauty to which I imagine cult leaders aspire.

I made it through the munch and mingle breakfast portion, and even a few minutes of the video presentation. But when pre-recorded personal accounts began, I choked up. My face burning hot, I looked to the floor instead of the screen, and began singing an entirely unrelated song in my head. My body needed to be there, sure, but my head requires no warming up to the idea of finding a cure for breast cancer.

When the video was finally over, I took a deep breath and passed a tissue to my tearful neighbour. For a moment, I was quite sure I'd recover. I was, however, very, very wrong. Next up was the mother of a breast cancer victim. Her personal story broke me into crumbly, gooey little bits – and I cried for everyone I've known, and for everyone I'd never had the chance to meet, who've battled this horrible disease, and for everyone who's lost someone they dearly love. And ultimately, I cried myself out of a job.

My manager comforted me in the reception room, the Breakthrough Breast Cancer employees brought me water and tissues, there were hugs all around, and I said good-bye to my other tearful colleagues. They were all incredibly sweet, which exacerbated the profound and overwhelming sadness I felt. There was no question about it, my manager suggested I not work on this campaign, but that I would be welcome to join them for Save the Children in a few weeks' time. Apparently, the global suffering of children I can handle.

After sleeping off an intense crying-related headache, I began worrying about where my next pay-cheque would come from. But I struck it lucky, and landed something within three short days. And get this: I work in The City.

The one profession left untouched by recession hysteria, in the heart of the financial district, is mine. I'm a full-time barmaid in a gritty old English pub. Sure, instead of helping people, I'm getting them drunk and sending them home to the wrath of their wives – who've apparently dubbed the spot, The Flying Toilet – but it's fun.

And so far, it hasn't made me cry.

Chugging in Chelmsford

Note: Even if you don't make it all the way through this post, it's worth scrolling down to see the picture.

There's a lot ironic about being run out of town by police from a place like Chelmsford.

Partially because it’s apparently being done to protect townspeople from charities; in a big way because I had a legal right to be there for my job; and, even more so because people in Chelmsford didn’t seem bothered by face-to-face fundraisers.

They certainly liked me more than shoppers near Oxford Street liked me. People with bag loads of sweatshop-produced high street fashion never quite seem ready to indulge in hypocrisy that soon after swiping their card. And they liked me way more than the wealthy population of the aptly named London borough, Richmond, did. The only donor in a seven-hour shift there was the guy who makes their coffee at the local M&S department store, and he lives in Brixton.

Sure three of my new Chelmsford acquaintances were despondent, drunk and homeless, two were evangelistic racists, one declared George W. Bush to be the ‘great leader of our times’, another asked for my phone number for a business proposition requiring a ‘pretty face’, and yet another claimed to have done 8 years in prison for robbing banks, shooting people and working for Montreal's notorious Italian mafia, but maybe that's precisely why the police might want to run United Nations-endorsed charity fundraisers out of town. Our kind, we just don't fit in.

Our first post was on a small footbridge over a canal – the idyllic sort of bridge you might imagine belongs in an old English town with its resident troll waiting to eat, or at the very least, maim wayward offspring. My fundraising partner and I were the slightly less hideous, though no less terrifying trolls on top of the bridge, with intentions to do exactly the opposite for the world’s children. The other half of our team wasn't so lucky.

The story goes that one particular community officer has developed a nearly clinical, Seinfeld-esque obsession with street fundraisers. He's studied the rules and regulations in the hopes of catching us on a technicality, and having us purged from his town. He doesn’t see us as face-to-face fundraisers – our official title – but rather as ‘charity muggers’ or the pejorative, ‘chuggers’. And just as much as we’re tasked with raising funds to eradicate preventable diseases that kill five children every few minutes around the world, he is tasked with eradicating us.

While I missed the opportunity to meet the stocky, cocky antagonist myself, I certainly felt, smelled and trod in his effects.

The psychological warfare was multi-faceted, and according to my team leader, has been fine-tuned over the course of several years. Just keep smiling, she advised, and never let him know he’s getting to you.

I’ve encountered plenty of schizophrenic members of the British public on this job, and I’m loath to develop any comparable paranoia. I’d rather not think the police and town council of Chelmsford are actually out to get me, but indeed that seems to be the case.

Their first strategy is to cause physical discomfort. Usually we stash our purses, lunches and civilian clothing in a large waterproof bag and chain it to a post like most would lock a bicycle, so we’re more comfortable and agile while attempting to charm people in the street – but not in Chelmsford. In Chelmsford, that’s now illegal.

Until recently, as I'm told, kind shop workers took pity on our small groups, and offered to hold our things until the day’s end. But they’ve been ‘spoken to’, and it seems that’s no longer an option. So now we carry everything, all day long, and nurse our sore backs at the end. This tactic is subtle, but effective.

Seemingly convinced we’re criminals cleverly cloaked under the guise of charity branding, Chelmsford police are also rumoured to subject fundraisers to spontaneous criminal checks and enlist ‘mystery donors’ who are tasked with making us slip up to a reportable and ideally banish-able degree. Unfortunately for them, the company I work for drills fundraising ethics into the heads of new recruits from day one, we’re always very careful to let donors know exactly what they’re getting into, and none of us are convicts.

Still, it’s unsettling to do my spiel with a British officer circling me like a Great White, lunging in for nibbles of my shtick – his teeth almost visibly gnashing beneath his stiff upper lip.

There was nowhere to escape – the council has restricted fundraisers to working inside very specific areas of the high street, clearly marked by circular patterns in the bricks of the pedestrian lane. Not one foot was allowed to stray over the border of our small posts, but that was fine. We could do our jobs just as well with or without the freedom of mobility, I thought. But that was before they brought in the cavalry.

Naïve perhaps, it being my first day in Chelmsford, it surprised me that the police would not only force us to remain inside a very small space, but that they would also fill it with horses for our entire first shift of the day. When asked, the equestrian officers’ response was, “We’re on a job.”

So are we, I thought – and one of the horses made a large steaming deposit on the tiny bit of workspace which remained beside my co-workers – but yours is way shittier.

I took this on my lunch break, which, by coincidence or not, also happened to be when these officers and their horses moved on to greener pastures.