I was just about to sit down and enjoy writing this new post when AJ landed me with a gutting blow to the stomach, demanding rent money off me, 400 smacker, and warning me I would need to find somewhere else pronto since Phil, also a mate of mine, has decided to rock up and there won't be enough room for the both of us. This is fine and all, as I've been feeling a little itchy on the feet, still living out of a suitcase, sleeping in their living room and I definitely wouldn't be sticking around to share the couch with Phil, but what about mates rates! 400 dollar is a lot of money and they made it out like I wouldn't have to pay any but I guess I politely suggested I would. This is an example of the calamitous effect when the warped logic of English propriety meets the Californian masked ways of saying yeah yeah yeah chill out yeah NO. Basically we both say what we don't mean, yet I am English and therefore find the English version of how things SHOULD proceed far more acceptable, than the exasperatingly phoney American vibe. In fact I am glad for this turn of events, perhaps all too hastily out of hurt pride, but seriously I was losing my sense of humour, choked in my inability to communicate along their standards of conversation. They are my mates of course but not the kind I can be rude to their face and still have a laugh with afterwards. But quickly back to the rent issue; so its not that I can't pay it and perhaps thats why they thought they could get away asking for it, believing me still to be hooked on to my parents drip feed. However I honestly offered to pay some money but at the same time genuinely felt they wouldn't ask for it, as you might assume of good friends, having told me their friends hadn't charged them rent when they first came to New York so they would only do the same for me. Do they genuinely think its fair to charge me that much or are they taking advantage of the fact I have a bit of money saved up. I can't get my head round it since I know if I was them I wouldn't have charged my mates anything at least for the first month and if I was really hard up I would have given them some warning like within the first week that they might have to contribute in some way. This is another classic example of a clash in communication between cultures which I am beginning to have lived and re-lived too many times. I said something to be polite, which I despise, these well-intended but meaningless iconic verses of high custom, that are ingrained far too and then the Californians take it literally "Oh so she said she would pay some money, so what is the most we can charge her then?" The stink behind this whole episode  is a choking, nauseating waft of personal gain valued over friendship. To paint the picture more clearly, as I see it, Aj would save his ass and run with the money, leaving me with the gun in my hand and a handcuff round my wrist. I'm sure many would agree its fair for them to charge me something and I believe so, but they could have told me they would start charging me the day I arrived and perhaps avoided telling me their respective friends hadn't charged them at all. Now I feel like shit, shit stepped in and mushed in to the pavement. What goes around comes around is all I can say to that!

The sad thing is that I feel this is a lesson I have to learn and bear the bruises of, in a world where money dictates the minds of most, from which I cannot even claim exemption, seeing as I just spent about 20 minutes writing about it. I knew this, being forever warned, but now I feel it like a chill in my bones and it scares me out here.