One morning, not that long ago, I answered the door in my dressing gown to the sight of a man from the energy company. He came to ask me why I had chosen to switch suppliers. As I explained that I preferred one with a better environmental policy, I slowly realised that not only did this guy have gorgeous eyes, he was watching me closely. I went on to say, performing a bit for this beautiful man, “Of course all corporations and really capitalism in general is bad for the environment”. He agreed, his eyes glowing with excitement. But, what could he do? He had a mortgage to pay. I’m not quite sure why, maybe I was scared of the intensity of my attraction, but suddenly I found myself channeling some broken record of anarchist propaganda and said, “We need resistance on the inside, too.” That was it. His beautiful eyes looked away and the connection was lost.
I feel grief remembering that morning; I would have liked to have listened with empathy to both his desire for change and for security, to maintained that beautiful sense of connection. Instead, I tried to recruit him. When I replay the incident in my mind, it has a different ending. I ask him, “What would you like to do?”