What men do

As it happens, I and my Australian co-tenant are soon in need of a new housemate, and in order to find one we must post a message about it. Writing that message has proven much more complicated than I was expecting, because this is a boys' flat, we want to keep it that way and there apparently is no easy way to spell it out.

When I was under ten years old, I and some other boys of the neighbourhood used to build huts in that dark and exciting forest that had cut us and our families from the civilisation. They were built of pine branches and twigs, they were hidden extremely carefully from the adult eye and by their entrance they always had a sign that they were huts where "no girls" were allowed. "Ei tytöille!" It may strike very few of you as a surprise, though I have to admit that I have severely degenerated from that age of innocence: nowadays I just can't come up with an announcement that would carry the same message but wouldn't come across as gay. Male gender is the most significant requirement that we have for the new housemate, and I've tried to state it at the beginning and at the end, explicitly and implicitly, bluntly and politely, but my efforts have not actually got me very far. Please believe me, dear brothers, when I tell you that being a man can sometimes be a frustratingly complex business.

I try to articulate my point through an example. Last night we hosted a small dinner party in our living room. The food was tasty and the drinks were plenty, but in course of the evening my general merry mood experienced a serious minority report when I noticed that our chef had left the window of his room open. I couldn't tell whether it had been in that state for days, hours or minutes, though perceived it as nonetheless absolutely outrageous nonetheless - with these gas prices.

So I forced everyone present to witness one of these fairly common intoxicated-Aapo-lectures-an-Italian-in-several-languages moments ("Ei jätkä perkele, ei kuule näillä kaasun hinnoilla. Eikä ainakaan mun kämpillä.") and marched to the window, pulling it somewhat theatrically. Either I was too strong or the latch was too weak - we shall never know - but as I tried to shut it, I ended up with the handle of the latch in my right hand. British windows obviously are too effeminate for Finnish men to shut them safely.

We happen to live on the ground floor, so one of the first things we agreed on in the morning was to shut and lock the window in some sustainable manner. I initially suggested calling a locksmith but my housemates - and in this they are allowed to take full pride - opinioned that we should try and sort it ourselves: we are men, anyway. And that is exactly what we did.

Repairing window latches in hangover does certainly not belong to my favourite pastimes, but retrospectively thinking it definitely was quite fun. We disarmed the living room window of its latch and used that latch for amending the broken bedroom window. The process was fairly straightforward: the Aussie took his Swiss army knife, the Italian took his camera and myself I took my shoes and went to press the window from outside. It was raining and I had a headache. Then we rotated so that everyone was let to use the knife and its screwdriver feature, as well as to stand outside in rain. When we had finished the job, we went to the pub to watch football.


All this would have involved so much more fuss and so much less enthusiasm, had there been women around.