I Began to Consider My Options
Opening up our Whatsapp conversation, fingers poised at the keyboard, I thought about what to do next.
Twenty minutes into an argument with my boyfriend Janis about my missing purse, I discovered precisely where it was.
By that point, however, it was too late to back down and simply tell him the truth, for we had already gone past the “no-go zone”. Forbidden territory where we’d whip out words such as ‘always’ and ‘never’. Territory where we couldn’t resist starting sentences with the very useful pronoun, ‘you’.
We were in Stockholm in a new hotel, having rushed to leave the last one in the countryside for fear we’d be charged a late checkout fee or miss our pre-booked taxi.
It was the rushing part of the journey that was up for debate. My argument: I could have been told what time we were supposed to leave. His argument: I already knew and needed no further reminders of the fact.
We didn’t have enough time to figure out who was right though because what inevitably happened was we both woke up late and hungover, our friends were already waiting outside and we had to pack all our things and leave the hotel within ten minutes of getting up. (Which also meant we had to abandon our usual once-over of the room to see if we left anything.)
In the taxi, a few minutes on the road, I realised I couldn’t find my purse.
To turn back, stop at the hotel, ask the reception staff if we could quickly get in our old room, search for the purse, then come back to the taxi — would bulk up the price of the trip to a hefty €200.
Janis convinced me to wait until we arrived at the hotel in Stockholm to look in my luggage and I agreed. But then when we did get to the hotel and I still couldn’t find my purse, a hungover battle of wills on who could’ve prevented this and whether it was a mistake to not go back, ensued.
In the hotel room, Janis briefly stepped out to call the previous hotel about our dilemma. Holding my purse in hand, I began to consider my options.
A similar sense of deliberation came to me one night out a few years ago when my bag had just been stolen and I was on the phone to Janis.
It was 2am and he was in Poland for a company summer party.
That night, I had been with my friend Jasper at a bar called Borchardt in Mitte, an affluent neighbourhood in the centre of Berlin. This was the kind of bar where everyone living in Mitte knew each other — or that’s how it seemed to me.
Jasper, a seasoned Mitte resident, entered the bar and gave me a tour with such conviction I was sure he knew the person who owned the place. On the tour, he bumped into at least six people he knew and as we made our way back to the cloakroom, he saw a girl who seemed to work at Borchardt and gave her a warm hug.
‘Berlin is such a village,’ he told me (at least that’s what I imagine he said when I think about it now).
I don’t know if it was the novelty of being in this friendly Mitte bar or just pure idiocy on my part, but when Jasper, exhausted by the idea of queueing up, suggested we leave our things not in the cloakroom but in a discreet pile just next to it, I obliged. I figured, no one in this bar needed to steal my bag (and the purse and keys and tissues in it) anyway. So I took my phone with me and went on my merry way.
At 1.45am, ready to leave, I soon discovered the truth.
At 2am, I was walking on the streets of Berlin alone, waiting for Janis to pick up his phone as I held back tears. The problem was, after a few moments of telling him what happened, I was met with silence.
I asked him if he was there.
Janis whispered, ‘Yes’ and a good few seconds went by until he added, ‘I’m sorry this happened,’ and I started to suspect I wasn’t having a conversation with Janis but his drunk counterpart instead.
Regardless, I continued to talk about how there was money in the purse, bank cards, my keys — but I soon realised I was met with silence again.
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, I am here,’ slurred Janis.
‘I don’t know how I’m going to get home…’
‘I am here,’ he repeated emphatically — to me or vaguely to himself, I couldn’t tell — and I probably should’ve abandoned the conversation there and then but instead I asked if there’s anything else he’d like to say.
To this, Janis whispered anxiously, ‘I’m with someone in my room, I can’t talk now.’
‘What?’
He swiftly hung up.
Someone is in his hotel room. At 2am. After drinking at a company party. And he can’t talk right now.
Opening up our Whatsapp conversation, fingers poised at the keyboard, I began to consider my options.
Turns out the person in his room was Phil, a tall, beardy Australian man who also worked at the company. During our call, Phil was sleeping in a single bed in the corner of the same room, very much separated from Janis’ own single bed.
It was unfortunate phrasing on my boyfriend’s part, a non-native English speaker, and it reminded me of the way he and I often had moments of cultural misunderstandings, which I attributed to our different upbringings. Namely that my German boyfriend would often prioritise logic as the lens of choice and I, a Londoner who grew up with a South American mother, would often not: I’d prioritise emotion.
So one day when I found some socks of mine in a bin, you can imagine I was slightly perplexed.
‘Why are these in the bin?’ I asked Janis.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied absentmindedly, sitting on the sofa, looking at his phone.
I brought the bin closer to him for a more detailed inspection. ‘Did you throw these socks in the bin?’
Janis glanced up from his phone, peeked inside. ‘Ah, those,’ he said. ‘Yes, they have holes in them so I put them there.’
‘But…these are my socks…not yours.’
‘Yes, but they had holes in them. So I threw them away.’
This was our relationship all over. Neither one was ever really bad-intentioned, but neither one ever really swayed too far away from their own school of thought.
‘So,’ I asked. ‘If I hadn’t walked by and noticed they were in the bin, they would’ve been gone and I would never have known?’
‘But they are broken,’ said Janis. You can’t beat German logic.
‘But my dad gave them to me, I wanted to keep them as a memento,’
‘But they have holes in them,’ he repeated, this time a little more weary.
I wondered what a German girlfriend would say to a boyfriend who threw away her hole-ridden, sentimental socks.
‘Well done,’ she’d probably say. ‘Thank you,’ she’d probably add. ‘That makes sense.’
The conversation would be over right away and they’d be able to move on with their lives.
Finally I asked Janis, ‘So you don’t understand why I’d want to keep them?’
‘Not really.’
I realised then, as I realised in Stockholm when Janis came back into the room and I told him I had found my missing purse, distraction was likely the best way to deescalate and wrap things up in these kinds of situations.
‘Shall we move on?’ I asked.
‘Sounds good,’ he said.
And with that, we both backed out of our battle of wills feeling an intoxicating combination of victory and relief, like we’d solve all of our misunderstandings forever — and I considered buying a padlock for my sock drawer.
I loved. Congratulations Lauren! We wish you the best on your journey. ♥️
“ ‘Shall we move on?’ I asked. “
I love how this sentence is dropped and the tone it gives to the story. It made me smile ❤️