must have, because I remember being surprised by her tone of voice. It was deep and clear and well-spoken, not at all anguished.
After she had told me something about Sylvie – a teacher who hated her job, was married to an Italian man twenty years older than herself and was contemplating an affair with someone at work – I started on my list of questions. I was pleased to find that my Skype suggestion was vindicated. It was far more efficient than email. When Tess drifted, I could direct her back onto the topic.
That first session lasted twenty minutes before Tess became tired and lost focus. We arranged to Skype again the next evening at the same time, and she was more vocal that night. Too vocal, in fact: she went off on tangents all the time, hardly editing her thoughts. I asked her about her job at Threads, a vintage clothes shop in Bethnal Green that she managed for four months, and she segued into a long account of a festival she went to where everyone dressed up in vintage clothes and slid down a helter-skelter, which led to a story about how her mother had saved her lots of her designer clothes from when she was younger, but had been very disappointed when Tess couldn’t fit into them: ‘You’ve inherited your father’s shoulders.’
The third occasion we spoke, she was in an upset state. She had been to the matinee of a play that afternoon and a woman sitting in the row in front had been rude to her. She couldn’t stop talking about it. Ranting, I’d say. When she was in a certain mood these sorts of small things bothered her greatly: even when I thought I’d steered her off the subject she’d return to it repeatedly. Any perceived act of thoughtlessness or rudeness would do it (although, ironically, Tess could be very thoughtless and rude herself). For instance, she hated it when people walked past her on the tube platform to get a good spot next to where the doors would open. ‘I hate the sound of their clackety heels as they look after number one,’ she said. She got offended if, when waiting at a pedestrian crossing, other people would join her and press the button – did they not think she would have pressed it? That she was stupid?
Transcribing the tapes afterwards, I was listening to one of these tiresome deviations when she mentioned some detail that I hadn’t known: Jonathan had once lived in Singapore. It occurred to me then that actually, even though these ramblings of hers were not directly answering my questions, and my natural tendency was to filter out everything she said except the facts, they might be quite useful. Not only in the accidental details they might provide, but because they revealed something of her character.
In other words, I realized that the digressions might be as important to note as the actual facts I was gathering. If I was going to ‘be’ Tess, I needed to record all aspects of her character.
On our next session, Tess’s mood changed yet again. This time she was reflective and, for the first time, asked me questions about myself. She asked me about how old I was, where I lived and why I was doing this for her. I wasn’t very comfortable talking about myself, conscious that every minute we spent on me would mean less time for her to answer questions. But I replied, telling her that I was doing it because I believed in self-ownership and her right to control her own death. She asked me what I thought about Adrian and I replied he was a great man, and that Red Pill had opened up my mind to new ways of thinking. To that, she said something that surprised me.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I really must look at it one day.’
I had presumed, you see, that she knew Adrian from the site. Of course, in retrospect, I can see she would not have lasted a minute on Red Pill with her fuzzy, illogical thinking, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she had met him elsewhere, in a different context.
‘So how do you know Adrian, if not from the site?’ I asked.
Her answer
After she had told me something about Sylvie – a teacher who hated her job, was married to an Italian man twenty years older than herself and was contemplating an affair with someone at work – I started on my list of questions. I was pleased to find that my Skype suggestion was vindicated. It was far more efficient than email. When Tess drifted, I could direct her back onto the topic.
That first session lasted twenty minutes before Tess became tired and lost focus. We arranged to Skype again the next evening at the same time, and she was more vocal that night. Too vocal, in fact: she went off on tangents all the time, hardly editing her thoughts. I asked her about her job at Threads, a vintage clothes shop in Bethnal Green that she managed for four months, and she segued into a long account of a festival she went to where everyone dressed up in vintage clothes and slid down a helter-skelter, which led to a story about how her mother had saved her lots of her designer clothes from when she was younger, but had been very disappointed when Tess couldn’t fit into them: ‘You’ve inherited your father’s shoulders.’
The third occasion we spoke, she was in an upset state. She had been to the matinee of a play that afternoon and a woman sitting in the row in front had been rude to her. She couldn’t stop talking about it. Ranting, I’d say. When she was in a certain mood these sorts of small things bothered her greatly: even when I thought I’d steered her off the subject she’d return to it repeatedly. Any perceived act of thoughtlessness or rudeness would do it (although, ironically, Tess could be very thoughtless and rude herself). For instance, she hated it when people walked past her on the tube platform to get a good spot next to where the doors would open. ‘I hate the sound of their clackety heels as they look after number one,’ she said. She got offended if, when waiting at a pedestrian crossing, other people would join her and press the button – did they not think she would have pressed it? That she was stupid?
Transcribing the tapes afterwards, I was listening to one of these tiresome deviations when she mentioned some detail that I hadn’t known: Jonathan had once lived in Singapore. It occurred to me then that actually, even though these ramblings of hers were not directly answering my questions, and my natural tendency was to filter out everything she said except the facts, they might be quite useful. Not only in the accidental details they might provide, but because they revealed something of her character.
In other words, I realized that the digressions might be as important to note as the actual facts I was gathering. If I was going to ‘be’ Tess, I needed to record all aspects of her character.
On our next session, Tess’s mood changed yet again. This time she was reflective and, for the first time, asked me questions about myself. She asked me about how old I was, where I lived and why I was doing this for her. I wasn’t very comfortable talking about myself, conscious that every minute we spent on me would mean less time for her to answer questions. But I replied, telling her that I was doing it because I believed in self-ownership and her right to control her own death. She asked me what I thought about Adrian and I replied he was a great man, and that Red Pill had opened up my mind to new ways of thinking. To that, she said something that surprised me.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I really must look at it one day.’
I had presumed, you see, that she knew Adrian from the site. Of course, in retrospect, I can see she would not have lasted a minute on Red Pill with her fuzzy, illogical thinking, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she had met him elsewhere, in a different context.
‘So how do you know Adrian, if not from the site?’ I asked.
Her answer
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