Herd Immunity

What I learned about my fellow citizens when house-hunting in London.

The Swineherd by Paul Gauguin (1888)

The ordeal is over. Reader, whatever you do with your four-thousand weeks on this plane of absurdity, do not drain four precious weeks in putting a roof over your head in London.

This death march, or 'my struggle' as the publishers have cannily titled the forthcoming memoirs, began in earnest.

You would assume the arithmetic was kindergarten tier. Landlords have a room to rent. I want to rent a room. They want my money. I want to give them my money.

They'd prefer to live with a compos mentis chap who won't disinfect and reuse their floss sticks. I have never committed such Jeffrey Dahmer-like behaviour. Indeed, I am a victim—No, a survivor—of such lunacy. My old flatmate routinely cleansed my used floss sticks with Dettol. An interesting, though rather cheeseparing chap. The last I heard, they had tucked him away at Her Majesty's pleasure. Excuse my digression. Professional help is being sought. For him, too, one hopes.

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The London housing 'scene', as tiresome Adverb English speakers call it, is like that dystopian film, The Running Man. For the unquenchable pleasure of sadists, room-seekers dash across a post-neoliberal urban hellscape, whilst rapacious landlords and mercenary letting agents concoct cruel and unusual punishments.

These omnipotent beings shunned twenty-nine of my carefully crafted enquiries. One hopeful reply stood out. This excitable fellow asked whether a young man such as I would 'regularly bring home lovely young ladies.' Wink-Wink went the lewd emoji.

A hard pass on my behalf. I'm not keen on ending up a crime reference number, nor the subject of a Netflix true crime documentary. The worst thing about such a fate must be the blizzard of sugary clichés plastered to one's memory. For the record, I am not nor have ever been 'the life and soul of every party.' I don't have 'a heart of gold' or a 'smile that would light up every room.' Yes, I regard cats to be superior to humans, and I've never knowingly refused a drink or two. Put that on my headstone.

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So far, so perverse. My litany of ghosted messages weighed like a lead dunce hat on one's head. Suitable rooms would flash up on SpareRoom only to dissolve as if snowflakes hitting a lake. Every advert mentioned 'the vibes' as if a box room in Holborn were a French colonial mansion in Indochina staffed with cherubic servants who prepared intricate six-course banquets, followed by an evening pipe of the finest opium.

Desperation corrodes honesty. I clicked the 'non-smoker' box on my bio to placate the one-party state of prigs and Pharisees. Anti-smoking corrupts. Absolute anti-smoking corrupts absolutely.

My disobedience formed the type that Professor Stanley Milgram, of electric-shock study fame, called 'minimal compliance.' In Obedience to Authority, Milgram found that two-thirds of people would administer a deadly dose of electricity to another human being, if willed to do so by an authority figure. Amongst his subjects, Milgram observed a handful complied minimally, as I did with my smoking lie, whilst not truly challenging authority. The renegade professor dismissed such theatre as self-delusion.

Mercifully, I rescued my sense of autonomy in mid-air as it nosedived into the soup of total, degrading obedience. One helpful suggestion on SpareRoom would, in more bourgeois liberal times, contravene Article 16 of the Geneva Convention. No one, it states, shall be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Under 'Info and advice,' SpareRoom implores room-seekers to upload a video of themselves begging their prospective captors for the chance to funnel £1,400 a month into their tormentor's filthy bank account. Reader, recording one's own hostage video for the Islamic State has fewer pretensions.

Harried and submissive, I pointed the camera at my head and clicked 'record.' From my wibbling lips bubbled a profession of faith: I bear witness that there is no God but the Landlord and SpareRoom is the messenger of God.

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This pious submission proved too much. I want four walls and a roof in London; I thought. I'm not applying for Mi6 or for the affections of 72 paradisal virgins. Recalling Milgram's 'self-delusion' taunt, I turned off the camera, erased the seven seconds of footage, and bleached the abortive display of obedience from the recycle bin.

Later that evening, somewhere on the border between buzzy drunk and Dionysian drunk, my phone pinged.

"Hello, Christopher…" it went. "Why not check out this room available here?" No video required. No four-figure rent. Smoking permitted?! You mean that I—an adult and citizen of a liberal democracy—can do with my body what I so wish? You mean, too, that you have a room, and you'll exchange that room for a monthly rent? Who is this radical? John Stuart Mill?

My achingly generous room sits atop a three-storied Victorian home in a leafy enclave of West London. A serious and beauty-minded people built such homes during the happiest and most prosperous period of European civilisation. Better yet, I'm permitted to smoke inside the room I pay for.

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One problem, though. My estimation is that a frightful percentage of my fellow citizens may have videoed themselves begging for a room. Unmarked by a scarlet letter on their breast, these gleeful self-abasers wander the streets with abandon. They've submerged their worrying tendency to just follow orders. Who is on the psychic payroll of the housing 'scene' Stasi?

There's only one way to find out. Into conversation with suspicious persons, I'll splice the following:

"Yes. Ha-ha. Getting a room here in London was such a drama. Wasn't it? By the way, did you post a selfie video on SpareRoom? Ha. You… did? Oh. No, no. No judgement here! Has to be done, eh? Wait. Do excuse me. I'm just nipping to the bathroom. Back in five."

From there comes the tried-and-trusted Irish exit. That is, Uber hailed. Phone switched off. Sanity restored.

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