So I told Nupur about this blog,
and she said I needed to back up a bit and write about the two months we spent
getting the store ready to open. For two
women who had been living in nerdworld for a long time, the leap to working
with tradesmen (emphasis on the “men”), material (“real” material as in tiles,
paint, electrical, shelves, fridges, sinks, counters, etc. as opposed to the
esoteric material of critical sociologists), and the public (a.k.a. the masses,
the multitudes, the “faces of the other”), was jarring, to say the least.
For the better part of a decade, Nupur
and I were immersed in libraries, building fortresses of books around us and
mingling only with other theory-heads in that intense and unhealthy way that
only grad students can understand. Our
particular clique of nerds communicated in a short-hand language that was both
obnoxious (to other people) and charming (to us). We weren’t as insufferable as
some academics. For instance, we didn’t pepper our
conversations with French cinema and Crit Lit references or mention important
theorists by their first names like we had just Starbucked them the other day.
Still, our day-to-day parlance
was shaped around the contours of our work.
When confronted with the dilemma of whether to shampoo AND condition, we
would wonder, “What would Foucault do?” (He
would actually forego both since he was bald) When bored, we resorted to games
of mental endurance with inebriated rounds of “Who’d you do? Lenny Kravitz or Paul Gilroy?” (Well, d’uh!) The
highlight of our social life was hitting the wine and cheese events that
followed the lectures of visiting scholars. The bigger the scholar, the bigger
the cheese. This didn’t apply to
wine. Although, the bigger the scholar,
the less likely you will get boxed wine.
But again, these rules are contingent on which faculty is hosting the
event, when in the budget cycle the talk was happening, yadda yadda yadda, so
perhaps you should ignore all the above examples as God’s truth...
But back to the store. We rented an empty space measuring
approximately 650 square feet on the ground floor with the same dimensions in
the basement. To get it ready, we had to
build all the shelves, re-wire the electrical, put in new flooring, install
lighting, purchase equipment, and a million other tiny details in between. 100% of the people who we worked with in
order to pull this thing off, were men.
Old men, young men, White men, Black men, Asian men, nice men, mean men,
indifferent men. Misogynists, feminists,
capitalist pigs, burnt-out labourers, artists, anarchists, hipsters – you name
it, we came across them.
A particular low point: We went
to the lumber yard to buy 40 two by fours for our carpenter who didn’t have a
vehicle. All the workers refused to help
Nupur and I load the wood in her minivan because they didn’t want to take
responsibility in case the sheets fell off and killed somebody (their
words). They didn’t mind standing around
and watching though. As Nupur and I
grunted, got slivers and bruises, and swore a bloody streak up and down the
minivan, a dozen men stood around us with arms crossed and stone faces. Remember, I had just given birth, and what
they call my “pelvic floor” was not having its best moment, especially while
hefting heavy lumber around. I am sure I
peed a bit, but under the circumstances, I really didn’t care if anyone
noticed. We shoved a sheet in, and
another slipped out. We tried piling
them on top, but the ropes wouldn’t tie tight enough for them to stay
still. I’m not sure what those guys
expected us to do. Perhaps break down in
tears, pleading with them in our littlest girl voices for help. Actually, I was positive that that’s what
they expected. These are the reasons we
didn’t: 1) we didn’t own little girl
voices because we were 40 year old grown feminists more apt to kickass than to
cry, and 2) I would sooner schlep each piece of lumber on my own shoulders
across Dundas piece by piece like a crazed Jesus than ask these a-holes for further
assistance. After 2 hours of this (yes,
2 HOURS), the manager finally stepped in and called them to help. They got the lumber secured in 10 minutes
flat, and we finally drove off the lot.
I muttered “fuck” beneath my breath a hundred times and couldn’t wait to
change my pants.
Then, an unexpected experience: We contacted a lighting company to help us figure out what we needed. By this point in the process, we were dressed
to work – old jeans, stained t-shirts, hair all fucked up. In strode two men who were dressed like they
were going to a wine bar on a second date.
The flattered us, even flirted a bit. It’s a haze around what was actually said and
done, but like all good players, they had finesse. There were moments that I
thought the four of us would break into a hot and heavy salsa right there in
our dingy, dirty storefront. I started
to regret that I hadn’t applied eyeliner that morning. Don’t get me wrong. While I loved, loved, loved my partner (oh,
Andrew, you know I do!) and didn’t have the desire to change my FB status to
“open relationship”, it’d been a long time since some young guy in nice clothes
paid me any attention. When Nupur and I were sufficiently charmed, these
players laid it on us. They whipped out
their plan – a detailed depiction of the floor plan we had described on the
phone, overlaid with their ideas for lighting.
They included LED spotlights that would make the colour of the produce
POP. Apples would take on a thousand
hues of red, each leaf of lettuce defined, the curve of a banana
accentuated. They would look like candy,
enticing all the people on the street to march like zombies into our store,
dazzled by the array of our wares. The
men swept their arms across the room, describing the soft glow that would bathe
the store so that it would always look like mid-morning in the Caribbean. Light!
Who knew? We were elated, giddy,
spun. Until Nupur, always the more pragmatic
and useful one between us, asked, “how much?”
They hemmed and hawed, trying valiantly to bring us back to the
transformative magic of light. How much? she demanded.
They slipped us an invoice. 10
k. These are the things that make you go
“hmmm”. Suddenly, I felt dirty.
While we couldn’t afford the
Caribbean morning or the POP, Nupur
and I agreed that it wasn’t a total waste of time. We felt like we had just been on a double date,
and as dates go, we’d both been on much, much worse.
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