Middle-class takeaways
The secret druggy, the sex-obsessed dinner guest, and the porridge-brained priest
Like many millennials, I was the first generation of my family to go to university, except for one uncle who went as a mature student. I was also the first to study an arts subject, and throughout the degree it became increasingly obvious that the better I became at the subject, the less I would fit in back home.
Moreover, unlike with previous generations, when a much smaller percentage of the population were going, universities were no longer the gatekeepers of the best jobs. An arts degree from a less prestigious university, which was what I got, was widely derided throughout the media as a ‘mickey mouse’ qualification.
One of the reasons that governments cited for massively expanding the number of graduates in the UK was that most menial jobs would be outsourced or become non-existent. In other words, there would be a massive expansion of the middle class. In English, that term is too loaded to accurately translate into other languages, and hard to fully explain even to people from other Anglophone countries.
The deeper I got into my studies, the more I was struck by the conflict between being culturally middle-class (well-read, knowledgeable, refined) and economically middle-class (the good kind of middle-class). I enjoyed every minute of being able to wander through libraries and attend lectures, but the more I did, the more unemployable I seemed to become.
Three Vignettes from Suburbia
My understanding of what it is to be middle-class and respectable largely comes from three encounters I had between ages 18 and 22. They involved a druggy scumbag, a sex-obsessed dinner guest, and a porridge-brained priest.
December 2002 – The Druggy Scumbag
On the evening of December 27th, 2002, Saïd (not real name), a 22-year-old who was known throughout our street for being ‘nice’ was high on drugs. An incident happened that showed him to be a cruel, cowardly, mean-spirited moron. To this day, I am left speechless by the way he sucked up to the local parents, then acted like a total scumbag in their houses when they were not around.
The following day, I planned to confront Saïd, but I just stood there staring at him. There was nothing going on in his head. His mind was as non-existent as his spine. I subsequently learned that stand-up arguments and sassy confrontations mostly just happen in the movies. In reality what happens is relationships with the people you feel betrayed by just get shitter and shitter and shitter. My post-traumatic stress lasted until at least mid-2004.
To describe Saïd as a coward doesn’t even come into it. Seventeen years later I read this quote in the novel ‘Shantaram’: ‘Cruel laughter is the way cowards cry … causing pain is how they grieve.’
Middle-class takeaway 1 - Saïd doesn’t just live in the suburbs. He is the suburbs, superficially charming, obsequious, and secretly a morally bankrupt fuckwit.
Middle-class takeaway 2 – Scummy behaviour isn’t scummy behaviour if you don’t get caught. That’s not what I think, but it is a commonly held attitude in the real world.
Middle-class takeaway 3 – How was I supposed to follow in the footsteps of my heroes if I associated with such utter low-lives? Why even bother developing disciplines like knowledge, insight, and creativity when so many people succeed in the real world without them?
December 2005 – The Sex-Obsessed Dinner Guest
By the summer of 2005, it was obvious that I had to try something totally out of leftfield to help bridge the massive gap between being a model student and a functional member of the real world. So, I took a summer job selling door-to-door in the United States.
We were discouraged from telling ‘war stories’ about the experience, but naturally some people were interested in hearing about what it was like. At a dinner party during Christmas 2005, one family friend (aged in her late fifties) said she thought it would have been a sexual experience.
After a peculiar line of questioning, she directly asked me (aged 21) “did you have sex in America?” By this time I was taking a Master’s degree at Sussex University. The Master’s itself was not much of a qualification, and my classmates were all either mid-career professionals or retirees. When I told some of them about this exchange, they were shocked.
One said: “Can you imagine the thickest, most pig-ignorant people, even they would know better…”
I thought to myself, what exactly is wrong with being thick and pig-ignorant? I had no money and no earning prospects. The thickest and most pig-ignorant people I knew were doing much better.
Middle-class takeaway 4: My fondest memory of a dinner party involved being sexually harassed. I think it’s the lifting of the façade that I appreciated.
Middle-class takeaway 5: My Master’s degree thesis was a novella titled ‘Beyond the Wings’. Writing dialogue is hard, because the way ordinary everyday people make ordinary everyday conversation is in fact incredibly sophisticated. A good creative writer listens, observes, and unpicks.
September 2006 – The Porridge-Brained Priest
My Master’s ended on September 1st, 2006. That month, I was due to meet Father Fairyhouse (not real name), a family friend who I had long been told was a great intellectual.
I disciplined myself not to get my hopes up, but even then I was shocked by how vacuous he was. The average barroom bore is Clive James compared to this cretin:
When my mum mentioned that my brother lived with his girlfriend, Father Fairyhouse said “I’m glad he lives with his girlfriend and not his boyfriend.” In his defence, he was born in Ireland in the 1930s, but still, I was put off by his bigotry…the massive puff.
Middle-class Takeaway No. 6 – Father Fairyhouse is a member of the professions, has bed and board for the rest of his life, and rubs shoulders with the great and the good. He works on what is then known as the QE2, as Irish rebel heroes are so prone to do. None of this is in spite of the fact that everything he says is ignorant nonsense. It’s directly because of it.
Nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
Striking a Balance
With the cost-of-living crisis, being middle-class is no longer necessarily associated with being comfortable. After finishing university, I became painfully aware of the difference between being knowledgeable and being employable. During my mid-twenties, I did low-status jobs while teaching myself new skills. In 2007, I was struck by this quote from Herman Hesse’s ‘The Glass Bead Game’:
"Doesn't the history of thought, of culture and the arts, have some kind of connection with the rest of history?"
"Absolutely not," his friend exclaimed."That is exactly what I am denying. World history is a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures. What counts is who has the strength, luck or vulgarity not to miss his opportunity. The achievements of thought, of culture, of art, are just the opposite. They are always an escape from the serfdom of time, man crawling out of the muck of his instincts and out of his sluggishness, and climbing to a higher plane, to timelessness, liberation from time, divinity. They are utterly unhistorical and antihistorical."
The things that are necessary to sustain life, such as going to work, attending meetings, reading quarterly reports, are seldom enjoyable, but must be done. Love can take you far, duty can take you further.
The things that make life worth living, including music, poetry, and comedy are usually impossible to monetise. And if you were to monetise them, you would most likely have to give up many of the things that made them enjoyable in the first place.
Studying the humanities gave me a huge respect for the achievements of thought, and culture, and the arts. The one thing I have no respect for is respectability.