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  • Mossy Brackets: Why you don’t fuck your flatmate: Part 2

Politics

Mossy Brackets: Why you don’t fuck your flatmate: Part 2

Mossy returns with part two of her flatmate-fucking saga. After settling in with her former flame-turned-current crush, she's forced to confront the two Big Issues: sex and poop.

Image for Mossy Brackets: Why you don't fuck your flatmate: Part 2
Photo by Jim (Wikimedia Commons)

STOP! If you haven’t read Part I of this sordid saga, do so first!

I’d already planned weeks’ worth of outfits, including sleep and leisure wear, and exactly which succulents and Gestalten books I would be strategically placing around the apartment when Freunde von Freunden did a Berlin feature-couple spread on us. Especially because the apartment had began as a Pärchenwohnung – I’d moved in originally with my boyfriend and it was a smug-couple-bliss-bubble for ages before it became just another eccentric, dysfunctional Berliner WG. Even if the place is haunted by a failed love ghost, I was still happy to get the apartment in the divorce. And now the ersatz boyfriend.

Very unfortunately for me, even if the apartment itself is a piece of Berlin real estate porn, the toilet is a highly traumatising hole of terror that amplifies its acoustics perfectly, like you’re actually shitting into a megaphone. And no, I am not going to do the whole ‘turning on the radio’ trick. That would be ridiculous.

Even when I lived there with a real boyfriend who actually did love me, I suffered for the daily urge: I’d either nag at him to go out for an Apfelschorle or I’d skulk off to the gym. Neurosis-free poo with bonus exercise. But now I was still using the bike accident as an excuse for everything, and so my gym membership had long expired. The most budget friendly poo-venue became the internet cafe. Luckily the guy who worked there gave me the impression that there was not a lot I couldn’t do in there and not be sexy.

“Oh he’s German, don’t worry about it;” my friend comforted me after I’d pooped around on my way home at hers one day. “German guys don’t care about stuff like that.”

I grew up an only child, so of course I have poo issues. While y’all with siblings got to practice prepubescent 2 Girls 1 Cup with each other, I had a terrifying grandma teaching me to wipe front-to-back and a Greek babysitter screaming “Kaka!” at me every time I pooped myself. Being 13, the memories still burn as if it were yesterday. As you can imagine, Germany with its shit-inspecting toilet shelves has been nothing but abject horror for Mossy. 

The next plan would be how to have a sex life without, you know, jeopardising the future of our marriage. How long could I really keep up this coy, kept woman thing up? Like every girl in Berlin, I like to think of myself as bisexual so maybe this would be time to put the Muschi where my mouth is. Would bringing women home be the answer to satisfying my libidinous appetite whilst remaining chaste enough for my housemate? Well, perhaps yes, until I ended up in bed with a man. 

“Sshhh,” I told him, “I don’t want my housemate to hear that you’re here.”

“Why?” 

“Because I slept with him and I kinda want him to fall in love with me.” 

Well, guess who never called me again. Pretending not to have sex and not to poo would all come to an end when I was introduced to a hot black chef whose thick London accent and propensity to call late couldn’t be hidden from my housemate, who was not falling in love with me. The Rapunzel act could no longer suspend disbelief during the sensual evenings with the chef accompanied not just by fancy food and booze, but also unmistakable noises emanating from my room. Then one night he brought me Entelebermousse left over from his work. And thus my illusions of feminine grace and non-existing bowels were forever shattered. I had Durchfall for an entire week. Berlin Belly, as it’s called. Needless to say, Mossy just didn’t have time to get to the internet cafe. 

Coping with a shattered fantasy was hard. Him seeing me in a period-stained muumuu was even harder. The worst was when he told me that he didn’t want to have cats with me… but he does use my ex’s favourite Al-Jazeera coffee mug as an ashtray. Every cloud, eh?

XOX Mossy Brackets XOX 

REMEMBER: You’re a unicorn, and unicorns never regret things. But if something terrible happens, a month’s supply of Tramadol in three days does the job.