her knees and sobbing quietly, terrified that they might make it into the flat and too scared to move toward the phone in case the three figures, which she guessed to be all male, noticed the movement through the frosted glass and intensified their attack on the door.
Finally, they gave up after realising that they weren’t going to get through or that there really was nobody home. It was about 15 minutes after they left until my ex finally felt that it was safe to move. She got to her feet, double checked the locks on the door were still secure and then ran to the bedroom, where she fell to the floor beside the bed and sobbed uncontrollably until I came home little over an hour later.
Initially, I was furious that someone would attack my home, although I had no idea who had done this or why. I banged on my neighbour’s door until they answered and demanded to know why they hadn’t seen fit to call the police when they could hear the commotion outside. All I got was apology after apology as the young lady I was speaking to stood crying at her door asking if my partner was OK. Sadly, this was an area of the city where incidents like that happened all the time, and the residents who weren’t drug dealers, prostitutes or junkies were too scared to report any crime in case the criminals found out it was them and targeted them next.
I was furious. Almost blind with rage, I stormed out into the street, my ex-partner pleading for me not to leave her in the flat alone. I stood in the road furious, yelling out for whoever it was that attacked my home to come and get me, but apart from curtains being twitched all along the road by concerned neighbours, nobody responded to my call. There was nothing else I could do that night except go back into the flat and reassure my partner. Over the next few days, I put out feelers all round the city trying to find out who the lads were, and it wasn’t until the following weekend that the information I wanted came my way.
One of my good friends who worked at another venue had found out that the three lads had come looking for me to give me a beating. It seemed that I had thrown one of them out of the club I worked in because he was drunk, and in doing so I had embarrassed him in front of the lady he was with. In an attempt to save face, he had orchestrated the attack on my home when he knew that I would be at work so that the two friends he’d roped in to help him out would think that he was some kind of hard bastard when they beat up on my door.
The lad had taken the simple act of me throwing him out of a bar as such an insult to his manhood that he attacked my home and terrified the woman I lived with. My good friend supplied me with the young man’s address, and he and I enjoyed a good talk over tea and biscuits. Well, that’s maybe a slight simplification of what happened, but I’ll leave you to do the colouring in.
This was one of the few times that nearly killed my love for the door and almost wiped out any fondness I had for my profession and nearly poisoned me against ever stepping foot on the door again. I can deal with a lot in my life and have a very long fuse when it comes to people attacking me either verbally or physically on the door, but when it arrives at your home it’s a different matter entirely. Luckily, with the support of those around me, I put my anger behind me and got back to doing what I love.
However, like any love, it’s constantly tested. Time can pick holes in it and start to blur the parts that encouraged your affection. Time erodes things that in the past seemed new and vibrant, and outside influences spread a cancer in the thing you love that force it to die in front of your eyes. I’ve tried looking through rose-tinted glasses as the job evolves around me, with promises from those in power that things are changing for the better and that what will emerge out the other side will be a more controlled, regulated, professional and better industry
Finally, they gave up after realising that they weren’t going to get through or that there really was nobody home. It was about 15 minutes after they left until my ex finally felt that it was safe to move. She got to her feet, double checked the locks on the door were still secure and then ran to the bedroom, where she fell to the floor beside the bed and sobbed uncontrollably until I came home little over an hour later.
Initially, I was furious that someone would attack my home, although I had no idea who had done this or why. I banged on my neighbour’s door until they answered and demanded to know why they hadn’t seen fit to call the police when they could hear the commotion outside. All I got was apology after apology as the young lady I was speaking to stood crying at her door asking if my partner was OK. Sadly, this was an area of the city where incidents like that happened all the time, and the residents who weren’t drug dealers, prostitutes or junkies were too scared to report any crime in case the criminals found out it was them and targeted them next.
I was furious. Almost blind with rage, I stormed out into the street, my ex-partner pleading for me not to leave her in the flat alone. I stood in the road furious, yelling out for whoever it was that attacked my home to come and get me, but apart from curtains being twitched all along the road by concerned neighbours, nobody responded to my call. There was nothing else I could do that night except go back into the flat and reassure my partner. Over the next few days, I put out feelers all round the city trying to find out who the lads were, and it wasn’t until the following weekend that the information I wanted came my way.
One of my good friends who worked at another venue had found out that the three lads had come looking for me to give me a beating. It seemed that I had thrown one of them out of the club I worked in because he was drunk, and in doing so I had embarrassed him in front of the lady he was with. In an attempt to save face, he had orchestrated the attack on my home when he knew that I would be at work so that the two friends he’d roped in to help him out would think that he was some kind of hard bastard when they beat up on my door.
The lad had taken the simple act of me throwing him out of a bar as such an insult to his manhood that he attacked my home and terrified the woman I lived with. My good friend supplied me with the young man’s address, and he and I enjoyed a good talk over tea and biscuits. Well, that’s maybe a slight simplification of what happened, but I’ll leave you to do the colouring in.
This was one of the few times that nearly killed my love for the door and almost wiped out any fondness I had for my profession and nearly poisoned me against ever stepping foot on the door again. I can deal with a lot in my life and have a very long fuse when it comes to people attacking me either verbally or physically on the door, but when it arrives at your home it’s a different matter entirely. Luckily, with the support of those around me, I put my anger behind me and got back to doing what I love.
However, like any love, it’s constantly tested. Time can pick holes in it and start to blur the parts that encouraged your affection. Time erodes things that in the past seemed new and vibrant, and outside influences spread a cancer in the thing you love that force it to die in front of your eyes. I’ve tried looking through rose-tinted glasses as the job evolves around me, with promises from those in power that things are changing for the better and that what will emerge out the other side will be a more controlled, regulated, professional and better industry
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