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I've sometimes believed our finest sexual encounters outside our dreams take place in the realm of adolescence. Doesn't sexuality when it is so fully legitimized steal from us our tentative erotic wistfulness? I remember first thinking this when coming across a nude magazine in my father's shed: how it initiated my yearnings and perhaps alleviated my father's. I've probably been as successful as anyone else of modest appearance, adequate salary, and timidly effective social skills at getting women into my bed. Yet I can't pretend that most of these encounters were engineered from a place of much singular consciousness, or that the pleasures I have received from them could surpass my first wet dreams and my early teenage hopes, those moments where I would wonder about the intertwining possibilities available to those initiated into the sexual. By the age of thirty I had accumulated six or seven messily moist one-off situations involving less drink than both of us would claim to have imbibed, and where condoms interrupted a moment of foreplay all the better to stymie heightened arousal and modify the potential anxiety levels of an unwanted pregnancy. I had also managed three year-long relationships that ended with both of us better able to arouse ourselves than our partner, and so I decided to give up. I got married. All of this is not very important or interesting, but it has been ten years since I was wedlocked, emotionally landlocked. I have two children to show that we were excited enough on at least a couple of occasions to produce a child, but maybe my jaundiced perspective is all the more apparent now after a friend's recent disclosure.
I met Paul around seven years ago when we were both working at a call centre here in Edinburgh. It was down in Leith and he was a teleassistant and I was one of the supervisors. I had started as teleassistant myself, before quickly, and mysteriously, getting promoted. The work was for a number of charities and we would cold-call people trying to persuade them to set up a regular direct debit or at least offer a one-off donation. Paul and I would go along with a few others for a drink after work on Friday night, and I enjoyed his company without any evidence as to why that might be, except for our joint interest in music. That was until after a few months when we started discussing what he called the tantalizing audio dimension of the job. He offered the remark with a laugh, and I responded with a laugh as puzzled as his was complicit. Tell me more I insisted. He said that sometimes you would phone someone and the person answering indicated a whole world in their voice and in their remarks, and others would give very little of themselves away even if they were on the phone for several minutes. He then offered two recent examples of people who had what he called an audio openness. The first was a woman who owned a house in a part of the town (the Grange) where the houses were vast and the owners almost inevitably wealthy. It was one of the first calls of the day, shortly after nine in the morning. A man answered the phone and said he was awfully sorry but happened to be in a terrible hurry and off he had to go, but he would just get his wife. She answered the phone blurry-voiced, saying as her husband was leaving that he should take the Porsche, she would need the BWM, and could he pick up some fresh salmon for dinner – the Ramsays were coming round. As she asked Paul why he was calling, and Paul explained the purposes of the charity, so she would occasionally interrupt saying that she just had to feed the cat, that she needed to go upstairs to check that the window was closed since it had started raining, and at another moment caught herself in the mirror and insisted she really ought to get dressed. Usually a call gives us almost no presence beyond the person's voice, he said, but here was a woman whose house became a space he could probably have drawn with some accuracy, and he wondered also what the woman might have looked like. Her remark when she caught herself in the mirror could have been that of a beautiful woman who simply needed to get dressed, or a woman whose looks needed an hour of preparatory work before she could go out.
He admitted that he didn't get her to sign up for a direct debit that day, though she looked like she could have been persuaded; no, he said he would phone her again later in the week when she perhaps had more time. What he wanted to do, though, was play for time of his own: he wanted to talk to her again and thus gave himself the excuse to ring her once more. I looked at him momentarily with the stern regard of someone who was his boss, but replaced it promptly with the gaze of someone who was interested in hearing more about his anecdote. When I asked him whether he phoned her back I put my stern face back on, but my voice indicated curiosity more than admonishment. Bear with me a moment he said, reminding me that there were two people who had offered him this audio openness.
The other was a young woman he phoned around ten thirty in the morning a couple of days after phoning the wealthy wife. She answered the phone, said she had expected somebody else, and he guessed from the music playing in the background, the coffee machine schlurping nearby, and the tone evident when she first answered the phone, that she was waiting for a lover to return: presumably he had gone out to buy bread, milk, cigarettes. She had probably snatched at the phone without thinking. It was, Paul believed, a new affair, and he supposed she was content to keep him on the phone for however long it took for her lover to come back. It was as if she was even flirting with Paul while she waited. He could feel that her whole environment, even a person on the other end of the line cold-calling her, was part of this newly erotic universe. When he said he was campaigning for a particular charity, she said she knew it well: the work they were doing coincided with her degree in environmental science. She was in her final year, she said, and intended to get involved in the charity because it would be useful for her dissertation; and for the world she added, giggling. Paul heard a doorbell in the background, and the girl said she really needed to go, but thanked him for calling. He looked bashfully at me as he was aware that he should have got at least a donation.
Paul could offer these examples of professional laxity because he was usually successful in getting customers. He had a higher rate of sign-ups than any of the other call centre assistants, and the third highest rate for donations. I even wondered whether part of his success resided in his ability to muse over the lives of others. He didn't appear to view the people who phoned as anonymous; more as acoustic curiosities, a term he used that I quite liked. Though he had trained as an electrician after school, his main interest was music, and he had a voice that was an asset to the call centre. It had a nice grain to it: deep but not gravelly. He played mainly in experimental bands, and earned money by working in odd jobs: call centre work or electrical work, it was all the same to him. Since moving down to Edinburgh from Aberdeen he had taken the first job available, which was the call centre post.
I asked him again about the other woman he had spoken to. He said he phoned the wife at the beginning of that following week, saying that he had contacted her a few days earlier: would she be free to chat now. It was around mid-day, and she said that would be fine as he persuaded her to donate twenty pounds a month to the charity, and also give a one-off hundred pound donation. He smiled as he said this, seeing that he had fulfilled his professional duty all the while intriguing me with a story that had yet to conclude. While talking to her, he said, she took another call on her mobile, and the tone indicated that she wasn't talking to her husband but another man, a man Paul suspected had come to the house for an assignation not long after the husband had left the other day. Perhaps tomorrow, she said to him, perhaps in the morning – she was getting her hair done at twelve. It wouldn't do for him to mess it up. She presumably though that she had covered the mouthpiece on the landline, but clearly not well enough. He wasn't entirely sure if she had given such a generous donation as well as offering a direct debit because she suspected he had heard the exchange, felt guilty over cheating on her husband, and spent still more of his money alleviating that guilt, or whether she thought it was a cause she ought to support. Perhaps it was a combination of them all.
Now what he told me at the time didn't quite pass for a story, merely examples of the tantalizingly audio. Paul stayed in the job for another nine months; I am still there – now in a management capacity. I accepted the management post at the same time I got engaged, and with a young boy of three, a girl of one, and a wife who will not quite understandably return to work until the children are at nursery, the security and the wage are necessary. Paul now makes a living doing electrical work in a theatre, makes a little money from gigs, and more still from wiring up houses. He was once, briefly, almost famous. He was in a more commercial band than his inclination generally allowed, and the song was in the top ten. It wasn't a song he had written, but he sang it. We have remained friends and he tells me more exciting anecdotes than I tell him, but where the honesty and disclosure is equally dispersed. I talk about the dullness of work and home; he tells me about his adventures.
Speaking to him a few months ago he told me about a job he did while he was still an apprentice up in Aberdeen, and a more recent housewiring here in Edinburgh. He had always liked a girl in the year above him at school after seeing her on a Saturday at the swimming baths, and where all the other women in the pool were either very young or much older, Helen was the closest to his age that day and she was wearing a bikini where usually those in the pool would wear a swimsuit. There had been a couple of weeks of good weather, and she had a skin tone caramel that contrasted with her white bikini and the exclusively and very white people at the pool. What aroused him however was that as she got out of the water he could see the further contrast of a hint of bikini line pale against the rest of her flesh. This would have been when he was fourteen. Three years later he was working as an assistant to a senior electrician, and putting in a few more sockets into the rooms, when from the hallway he saw coming out of a bedroom and going into the bathroom the very girl from the baths.
He could hear from the hall the shower being turned on, and imagined Helen soaping that body he had seen several years earlier. It was perhaps his first memory of being excited by sounds in relation to images, and he sometimes wondered whether he took the job in the call centre out of a quiet eroticism. What he also noticed was that her mother looked like an older version of the daughter, and remained trim and neat in a royal purple skirt and jacket that resembled the attire of an air hostess. She rushed through the house hoping that she hadn't forgotten anything, told her daughter to hurry up or she would be late for school, and said goodbye to Paul.
I wondered as he told me this what look I would have given him years before if he had said when we were talking in the pub that his interest was sexual more than professional, and that each time he phoned a client he was hoping for some echo of an erotic reverie from his teen years. But as I mused about this so he was too involved in telling me about his latest erotic adventure to care too much what look I had on my face. I knew that his work in the band often led to sexual assignations, but these were encounters perhaps too much like my own from before I was married. He knew that they often took place because he was a musician and they could have slept with someone else in the group almost as easily as with him. He wished, he said, that this was not so: that they could respond to some aspect of the audio musical experience that would be be personally erotic and not socially predictable. As he continued he added that maybe what makes an experience properly erotic is that chance meets with singularity: that something unexpected meets the long anticipated. He reminded me of those two occasions at work where in the one week a couple of women managed to give a very strong sense of their presence through their voice and comments. I think he expected me to have forgotten, but instead I gave him a simple nod. I remembered not only because I had so little in my own life to recall, but also because Paul could make his personal experiences vivid enough to be remembered by anybody after a few years, and more especially because Paul's erotic encounters could speak to my own, often unspoken, thoughts on the subject.
One of those two women he believed he had met again recently. He was in the Grange, on the south side of the city, and drove up to a roomy driveway where a Porsche was parked. He was there to wire up a 10 metre indoor swimming pool at the back of the garden. The woman who answered the door and said hello, saying her name was Mrs Murray, was in her early to mid-forties, he assumed, and was dressed in a cream coloured skirt and matching jacket, white blouse and heels of a light brown: the ensemble worked well on this crisp early Autumn morning where there were no clouds, and where it hadn't rained for several days, but the suit would have seemed perhaps too emphatically bright for most Scottish mornings. She looked like a woman who took her time before going out, and never left the house until she was ready: whatever work she did he believed allowed her much flexibility. As she walked in front of him as they went along a thin path of concrete surrounded by a well attended garden full of primulas, hyacinths and tulips of red, blue, yellow and lavender, he couldn't imagine that she looked after the garden; that she wasn't a woman given to such practical earthiness. As if to confirm his prejudice, when they arrived at the wooden cabin she said she was sure her husband had briefed him on the work that needed to be done, and any questions he had to give him a ring. She then said she would be gone for a couple of hours but would be back not long after eleven. If he could wait, she would make him a cup of tea when he returned.
He started the job, and though he often found electrical work unexciting, with the usual problems announcing themselves and easily resolved, it had also always been work he could lose hours to without really noticing the time. When there was a chap on the door he was surprised to be told it was already eleven thirty as Mrs Murray asked if he would like to join her for a cup of tea in the kitchen. As she made the tea (black, no sugar) while he sat at the breakfast bar, in a high chair that made him feel like a child, he wondered whether this was the woman whom he had told me of years before, but it also brought back a memory of the mother whose house he had wired when an apprentice in Inverness. As they talked, she asked him for how long he had been an electrician and, as he explained it was work he had been doing since leaving school, but that he sometimes worked in other jobs to fund his music, she said that he had a good voice as he talked, and wasn't surprised that he was a musician. He said he was a guitarist who wrote most of the band's songs and sang a few of them. He asked her whether she worked: she owned a couple of hairdressing salons. She never cut anybody's hair now, she said, but it was her trade after leaving school. He noticed as she talked she started to play with her hair, but though it could have been flirtatious, he believed it was more that she was now thinking of her youth, and for some reason he wondered whether she never cut hair now because she couldn't so casually look at herself in the mirror any more. There was nothing casual or accidental about her appearance, and he suspected that extended to looking at her reflection very deliberately.
He went back to work, ate no more than a few oatcakes and a banana for lunch, and shortly after three he received another knock on the door and Mrs Murray, now dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, asked him if he wanted another drink. He said he would be fine: he would finish at five and return early the next morning if that was okay. She said of course, but a few minutes later he heard a knock on the door and, after putting a wire in place, he went to the door and saw on the step was a cup of black tea. As he left at five he looked in to see if he could see her, intending to say thanks for the tea and to wish her goodbye, when instead he saw what must have been her daughter wearing white underwear that couldn't but remind him of the girl from many years earlier. Parked outside was no longer the Porsche, but a Smart car, a vehicle as high and squeezed as the Porsche was low and stretched.
The next morning was a Tuesday and when he arrived at the house the Porsche wasn't there but the Smart car was. He went straight to the cabin and started work, and around ten thirty he heard a knock on the door and there was what he assumed was the same young woman from yesterday, and presumably Mrs Murray's daughter. The accent however wasn't Scottish, but from Eastern or central Europe, with the words spoken hesitantly and yet firmly, as though it took her a while to find her words but that she had no doubt once choosing them they were the right ones. She said she was Mrs Murray's help – she did some gardening, housework, and would sometimes cook when the Murrays had guests. Mrs Murray said she should offer him a drink. Paul assumed that she must have been working in the garden the previous day while he he was in the cabin, and that she was probably changing out of her gardening gear when he saw her in her underwear. She was also older than he might have thought initially, and assumed she was about twenty five. They talked for about ten minutes in the kitchen – she was from Poland, had been in Scotland for nine months, and was saving money to travel: she had always wanted to go Mexico and Argentina. Her name was Dorota.
The weather was as sunny as the previous day, but several degrees warmer, and he took his time eating a more substantial lunch of egg sandwiches he had made that morning, and a chocolate bar he bought on the way to the house. As he sat there, he could see by the side of the building Dorota was trimming a hedge. He called up to her and asked if she had eaten. She shouted down that she was going to make a sandwich for herself in the kitchen, and did he want anything. He lifted the sandwich out of the box and into the air, as he shook his head, and a few minutes later she joined him with a cheese one.
Dorota had light brown hair, a round face, and a figure sitting inside baggy dungarees that nevertheless suggested a young woman comfortable in her body. As she lifted her arm to massage the back of her neck as if she had strained herself slightly while gardening, he noticed the skin just inside her bra was lighter than the tan she had obviously accumulated in the last few days of good weather. He looked at me as if to say that of course it again reminded him of the girl from his teen fantasies, but didn't mention it as though to allow for a certain type of subtext indicating Dorota had moved beyond a fantasy in his head to a significant reality. He asked her if she was would be at the house the next day. She said she would pop in late in the afternoon to do a bit of work in the garden; Paul said he would probably be finished by the end of the morning. He asked for her number; it would be nice if they could meet again. She gave it to him just as Mrs Murray drove up.
The next morning he arrived and the Porsche was in the driveway and Mrs Murray standing at the front door. She was dressed in a purple skirt and jacket not very different from the one Helen's mother was wearing years earlier, asked him if wanted a tea before starting work, and that she would pay him now since she wouldn't be at the house when he finished. She offered the invite within the practical as though to hide a more pressing reason, and sure enough once she handed him the cup of tea she said she was sure she knew his voice from somewhere. She asked as though she knew it intimately, and perhaps if he had said she might have heard his voice a couple of times through the phone when he persuaded her to sign up to help a charity years earlier, they may have moved towards the type of encounter that would have wonderfully brought together the contingent and the distant memory: would a brief affair with Mrs Murray have fulfilled one of those teenage yearnings which until that moment had gone unsatisfied? Or is sex itself a form of sublimation he wondered.
Instead he said that possibly she did know his voice. Five years ago he was in a band that had a bit of a hit. She asked him the title but looked blankly back, and as he started to hum it she hummed it too, saying that yes she recalled it now – it was very catchy. As always, when he talked about the song, he announced he hadn't written it, was happy to get some royalties from it, but his music was usually quite different. He wondered though as she continued humming it to herself whether she was one of those people who had heard the song and heard not only the all too familiar that was indebted to a couple of Beatles numbers and who knows how many songs since, but more singularly still the voice behind it that she may have heard cold-calling her on the phone. Was that voice, his voice, part of her continued sense of yearning, a voice that may have reminded her of an experience from years earlier, captured again on a cold-call and echoed numerous times on the radio? He offered me this not with arrogance, but with a certain type of modesty that insisted all our experiences are echoes of others, and yet within these we arrive at certain moments we can call our own. If he didn't much care for the song that was a hit it was because it was too obviously indebted to other bands; its refrain wasn't secretive enough.
I am not quite sure if I understood what he was saying, but this seemed less important to him than trying to be fair to his own thoughts and making sense of his own experiences. He said he did phone Dorota; that he had met her a few times since he had worked at the Murrays'. Many of the desires he possessed and that seemed so fragmentary were at the moment all contained in his desire for her, He didn't think this had ever happened before, and perhaps it wouldn't last very long, but he was present to his desires.
He knew from our conversations over the years that I had never been present to mine, and I admitted to him after I got married that I did so as if out of sexual defeat. It wasn't that I didn't love Susan, that I didn't enjoy having children, but that during my twenties I had hoped my youthful longings would be met by actual experiences. I know many people talk of dreams and hopes practically and materially: the success they will have in their career, the dream house they will build, the early retirement with the restaurant by the beach. I suppose I have those expectations too, and I would sometimes talk to Paul about remortgaging the flat and opening a cafe that would be more experimental in its musical tastes than most. As I've said, Paul and I first shared an interest in music as in those first few Friday nights we talked about bands none of the others had heard of or would have cared for. But this wish to have a cafe, if I can be crude about it, would be called a dry dream, and many of our hopes in the world are exactly that: meaningful, legitimized and public, but are Paul and I alone in seeing that our lives are just as motivated by wet dreams, by desires much more subterranean? Perhaps what we so often call love, seual love, is the meeting point between these external wishes and internal desires. Paul might have believed it was no more than hope meeting chance, but maybe it is the wet and the dry, the private and the public conjoined.
As I went home to Susan and the kids, I didn't feel they were strangers to me, didn't feel that this life I was leading was badly chosen, except for this lie in my loins. As I walked through the door and kissed her cheek, I felt no desire for her body, knowing that if we were to have sex later that evening I wouldn't be thinking of her. I would be thinking of my childhood fantasies, perhaps thinking of Mrs Murray or even Dorota, and didn't know whether to feel as if I were betraying my wife, betraying my friendship, or betraying a desire far more primal that most seem to sacrifice for the very things I have in my life. I recalled then my father's robust handshake on my wedding day and his announcement that now I was a man, and wondered at the time whether I was another human produced out of a communion that was one of diluted desire. Would Paul and Dorota's children, if they could turn this desire into a union, be different I mused as my own son and daughter came into the room and seemed so happy to see their daddy. It was a desire (but on their part, on mine, on society's?) I couldn't quite deny appeared to have been met. As they came to me for a hug, I heard Susan's voice from the kitchen, a cooing, sympathetic request for me to set the table, and a voice that possessed in its physical absence little hint of a sexual presence I wished for like a miracle.
I've sometimes believed our finest sexual encounters outside our dreams take place in the realm of adolescence. Doesn't sexuality when it is so fully legitimized steal from us our tentative erotic wistfulness? I remember first thinking this when coming across a nude magazine in my father's shed: how it initiated my yearnings and perhaps alleviated my father's. I've probably been as successful as anyone else of modest appearance, adequate salary, and timidly effective social skills at getting women into my bed. Yet I can't pretend that most of these encounters were engineered from a place of much singular consciousness, or that the pleasures I have received from them could surpass my first wet dreams and my early teenage hopes, those moments where I would wonder about the intertwining possibilities available to those initiated into the sexual. By the age of thirty I had accumulated six or seven messily moist one-off situations involving less drink than both of us would claim to have imbibed, and where condoms interrupted a moment of foreplay all the better to stymie heightened arousal and modify the potential anxiety levels of an unwanted pregnancy. I had also managed three year-long relationships that ended with both of us better able to arouse ourselves than our partner, and so I decided to give up. I got married. All of this is not very important or interesting, but it has been ten years since I was wedlocked, emotionally landlocked. I have two children to show that we were excited enough on at least a couple of occasions to produce a child, but maybe my jaundiced perspective is all the more apparent now after a friend's recent disclosure.
I met Paul around seven years ago when we were both working at a call centre here in Edinburgh. It was down in Leith and he was a teleassistant and I was one of the supervisors. I had started as teleassistant myself, before quickly, and mysteriously, getting promoted. The work was for a number of charities and we would cold-call people trying to persuade them to set up a regular direct debit or at least offer a one-off donation. Paul and I would go along with a few others for a drink after work on Friday night, and I enjoyed his company without any evidence as to why that might be, except for our joint interest in music. That was until after a few months when we started discussing what he called the tantalizing audio dimension of the job. He offered the remark with a laugh, and I responded with a laugh as puzzled as his was complicit. Tell me more I insisted. He said that sometimes you would phone someone and the person answering indicated a whole world in their voice and in their remarks, and others would give very little of themselves away even if they were on the phone for several minutes. He then offered two recent examples of people who had what he called an audio openness. The first was a woman who owned a house in a part of the town (the Grange) where the houses were vast and the owners almost inevitably wealthy. It was one of the first calls of the day, shortly after nine in the morning. A man answered the phone and said he was awfully sorry but happened to be in a terrible hurry and off he had to go, but he would just get his wife. She answered the phone blurry-voiced, saying as her husband was leaving that he should take the Porsche, she would need the BWM, and could he pick up some fresh salmon for dinner - the Ramsays were coming round. As she asked Paul why he was calling, and Paul explained the purposes of the charity, so she would occasionally interrupt saying that she just had to feed the cat, that she needed to go upstairs to check that the window was closed since it had started raining, and at another moment caught herself in the mirror and insisted she really ought to get dressed. Usually a call gives us almost no presence beyond the person's voice, he said, but here was a woman whose house became a space he could probably have drawn with some accuracy, and he wondered also what the woman might have looked like. Her remark when she caught herself in the mirror could have been that of a beautiful woman who simply needed to get dressed, or a woman whose looks needed an hour of preparatory work before she could go out.
He admitted that he didn't get her to sign up for a direct debit that day, though she looked like she could have been persuaded; no, he said he would phone her again later in the week when she perhaps had more time. What he wanted to do, though, was play for time of his own: he wanted to talk to her again and thus gave himself the excuse to ring her once more. I looked at him momentarily with the stern regard of someone who was his boss, but replaced it promptly with the gaze of someone who was interested in hearing more about his anecdote. When I asked him whether he phoned her back I put my stern face back on, but my voice indicated curiosity more than admonishment. Bear with me a moment he said, reminding me that there were two people who had offered him this audio openness.
Paul could offer these examples of professional laxity because he was usually successful in getting customers. He had a higher rate of sign-ups than any of the other call centre assistants, and the third highest rate for donations. I even wondered whether part of his success resided in his ability to muse over the lives of others. He didn't appear to view the people who phoned as anonymous; more as acoustic curiosities, a term he used that I quite liked. Though he had trained as an electrician after school, his main interest was music, and he had a voice that was an asset to the call centre. It had a nice grain to it: deep but not gravelly. He played mainly in experimental bands, and earned money by working in odd jobs: call centre work or electrical work, it was all the same to him. Since moving down to Edinburgh from Aberdeen he had taken the first job available, which was the call centre post.
I asked him again about the other woman he had spoken to. He said he phoned the wife at the beginning of that following week, saying that he had contacted her a few days earlier: would she be free to chat now. It was around mid-day, and she said that would be fine as he persuaded her to donate twenty pounds a month to the charity, and also give a one-off hundred pound donation. He smiled as he said this, seeing that he had fulfilled his professional duty all the while intriguing me with a story that had yet to conclude. While talking to her, he said, she took another call on her mobile, and the tone indicated that she wasn't talking to her husband but another man, a man Paul suspected had come to the house for an assignation not long after the husband had left the other day. Perhaps tomorrow, she said to him, perhaps in the morning - she was getting her hair done at twelve. It wouldn't do for him to mess it up. She presumably though that she had covered the mouthpiece on the landline, but clearly not well enough. He wasn't entirely sure if she had given such a generous donation as well as offering a direct debit because she suspected he had heard the exchange, felt guilty over cheating on her husband, and spent still more of his money alleviating that guilt, or whether she thought it was a cause she ought to support. Perhaps it was a combination of them all.
Now what he told me at the time didn't quite pass for a story, merely examples of the tantalizingly audio. Paul stayed in the job for another nine months; I am still there - now in a management capacity. I accepted the management post at the same time I got engaged, and with a young boy of three, a girl of one, and a wife who will not quite understandably return to work until the children are at nursery, the security and the wage are necessary. Paul now makes a living doing electrical work in a theatre, makes a little money from gigs, and more still from wiring up houses. He was once, briefly, almost famous. He was in a more commercial band than his inclination generally allowed, and the song was in the top ten. It wasn't a song he had written, but he sang it. We have remained friends and he tells me more exciting anecdotes than I tell him, but where the honesty and disclosure is equally dispersed. I talk about the dullness of work and home; he tells me about his adventures.
He could hear from the hall the shower being turned on, and imagined Helen soaping that body he had seen several years earlier. It was perhaps his first memory of being excited by sounds in relation to images, and he sometimes wondered whether he took the job in the call centre out of a quiet eroticism. What he also noticed was that her mother looked like an older version of the daughter, and remained trim and neat in a royal purple skirt and jacket that resembled the attire of an air hostess. She rushed through the house hoping that she hadn't forgotten anything, told her daughter to hurry up or she would be late for school, and said goodbye to Paul.
I wondered as he told me this what look I would have given him years before if he had said when we were talking in the pub that his interest was sexual more than professional, and that each time he phoned a client he was hoping for some echo of an erotic reverie from his teen years. But as I mused about this so he was too involved in telling me about his latest erotic adventure to care too much what look I had on my face. I knew that his work in the band often led to sexual assignations, but these were encounters perhaps too much like my own from before I was married. He knew that they often took place because he was a musician and they could have slept with someone else in the group almost as easily as with him. He wished, he said, that this was not so: that they could respond to some aspect of the audio musical experience that would be be personally erotic and not socially predictable. As he continued he added that maybe what makes an experience properly erotic is that chance meets with singularity: that something unexpected meets the long anticipated. He reminded me of those two occasions at work where in the one week a couple of women managed to give a very strong sense of their presence through their voice and comments. I think he expected me to have forgotten, but instead I gave him a simple nod. I remembered not only because I had so little in my own life to recall, but also because Paul could make his personal experiences vivid enough to be remembered by anybody after a few years, and more especially because Paul's erotic encounters could speak to my own, often unspoken, thoughts on the subject.
One of those two women he believed he had met again recently. He was in the Grange, on the south side of the city, and drove up to a roomy driveway where a Porsche was parked. He was there to wire up a 10 metre indoor swimming pool at the back of the garden. The woman who answered the door and said hello, saying her name was Mrs Murray, was in her early to mid-forties, he assumed, and was dressed in a cream coloured skirt and matching jacket, white blouse and heels of a light brown: the ensemble worked well on this crisp early Autumn morning where there were no clouds, and where it hadn't rained for several days, but the suit would have seemed perhaps too emphatically bright for most Scottish mornings. She looked like a woman who took her time before going out, and never left the house until she was ready: whatever work she did he believed allowed her much flexibility. As she walked in front of him as they went along a thin path of concrete surrounded by a well attended garden full of primulas, hyacinths and tulips of red, blue, yellow and lavender, he couldn't imagine that she looked after the garden; that she wasn't a woman given to such practical earthiness. As if to confirm his prejudice, when they arrived at the wooden cabin she said she was sure her husband had briefed him on the work that needed to be done, and any questions he had to give him a ring. She then said she would be gone for a couple of hours but would be back not long after eleven. If he could wait, she would make him a cup of tea when he returned.
He started the job, and though he often found electrical work unexciting, with the usual problems announcing themselves and easily resolved, it had also always been work he could lose hours to without really noticing the time. When there was a chap on the door he was surprised to be told it was already eleven thirty as Mrs Murray asked if he would like to join her for a cup of tea in the kitchen. As she made the tea (black, no sugar) while he sat at the breakfast bar, in a high chair that made him feel like a child, he wondered whether this was the woman whom he had told me of years before, but it also brought back a memory of the mother whose house he had wired when an apprentice in Inverness. As they talked, she asked him for how long he had been an electrician and, as he explained it was work he had been doing since leaving school, but that he sometimes worked in other jobs to fund his music, she said that he had a good voice as he talked, and wasn't surprised that he was a musician. He said he was a guitarist who wrote most of the band's songs and sang a few of them. He asked her whether she worked: she owned a couple of hairdressing salons. She never cut anybody's hair now, she said, but it was her trade after leaving school. He noticed as she talked she started to play with her hair, but though it could have been flirtatious, he believed it was more that she was now thinking of her youth, and for some reason he wondered whether she never cut hair now because she couldn't so casually look at herself in the mirror any more. There was nothing casual or accidental about her appearance, and he suspected that extended to looking at her reflection very deliberately.
He went back to work, ate no more than a few oatcakes and a banana for lunch, and shortly after three he received another knock on the door and Mrs Murray, now dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, asked him if he wanted another drink. He said he would be fine: he would finish at five and return early the next morning if that was okay. She said of course, but a few minutes later he heard a knock on the door and, after putting a wire in place, he went to the door and saw on the step was a cup of black tea. As he left at five he looked in to see if he could see her, intending to say thanks for the tea and to wish her goodbye, when instead he saw what must have been her daughter wearing white underwear that couldn't but remind him of the girl from many years earlier. Parked outside was no longer the Porsche, but a Smart car, a vehicle as high and squeezed as the Porsche was low and stretched.
The next morning was a Tuesday and when he arrived at the house the Porsche wasn't there but the Smart car was. He went straight to the cabin and started work, and around ten thirty he heard a knock on the door and there was what he assumed was the same young woman from yesterday, and presumably Mrs Murray's daughter. The accent however wasn't Scottish, but from Eastern or central Europe, with the words spoken hesitantly and yet firmly, as though it took her a while to find her words but that she had no doubt once choosing them they were the right ones. She said she was Mrs Murray's help - she did some gardening, housework, and would sometimes cook when the Murrays had guests. Mrs Murray said she should offer him a drink. Paul assumed that she must have been working in the garden the previous day while he he was in the cabin, and that she was probably changing out of her gardening gear when he saw her in her underwear. She was also older than he might have thought initially, and assumed she was about twenty five. They talked for about ten minutes in the kitchen - she was from Poland, had been in Scotland for nine months, and was saving money to travel: she had always wanted to go Mexico and Argentina. Her name was Dorota.
Dorota had light brown hair, a round face, and a figure sitting inside baggy dungarees that nevertheless suggested a young woman comfortable in her body. As she lifted her arm to massage the back of her neck as if she had strained herself slightly while gardening, he noticed the skin just inside her bra was lighter than the tan she had obviously accumulated in the last few days of good weather. He looked at me as if to say that of course it again reminded him of the girl from his teen fantasies, but didn't mention it as though to allow for a certain type of subtext indicating Dorota had moved beyond a fantasy in his head to a significant reality. He asked her if she was would be at the house the next day. She said she would pop in late in the afternoon to do a bit of work in the garden; Paul said he would probably be finished by the end of the morning. He asked for her number; it would be nice if they could meet again. She gave it to him just as Mrs Murray drove up.
The next morning he arrived and the Porsche was in the driveway and Mrs Murray standing at the front door. She was dressed in a purple skirt and jacket not very different from the one Helen's mother was wearing years earlier, asked him if wanted a tea before starting work, and that she would pay him now since she wouldn't be at the house when he finished. She offered the invite within the practical as though to hide a more pressing reason, and sure enough once she handed him the cup of tea she said she was sure she knew his voice from somewhere. She asked as though she knew it intimately, and perhaps if he had said she might have heard his voice a couple of times through the phone when he persuaded her to sign up to help a charity years earlier, they may have moved towards the type of encounter that would have wonderfully brought together the contingent and the distant memory: would a brief affair with Mrs Murray have fulfilled one of those teenage yearnings which until that moment had gone unsatisfied? Or is sex itself a form of sublimation he wondered.
Instead he said that possibly she did know his voice. Five years ago he was in a band that had a bit of a hit. She asked him the title but looked blankly back, and as he started to hum it she hummed it too, saying that yes she recalled it now - it was very catchy. As always, when he talked about the song, he announced he hadn't written it, was happy to get some royalties from it, but his music was usually quite different. He wondered though as she continued humming it to herself whether she was one of those people who had heard the song and heard not only the all too familiar that was indebted to a couple of Beatles numbers and who knows how many songs since, but more singularly still the voice behind it that she may have heard cold-calling her on the phone. Was that voice, his voice, part of her continued sense of yearning, a voice that may have reminded her of an experience from years earlier, captured again on a cold-call and echoed numerous times on the radio? He offered me this not with arrogance, but with a certain type of modesty that insisted all our experiences are echoes of others, and yet within these we arrive at certain moments we can call our own. If he didn't much care for the song that was a hit it was because it was too obviously indebted to other bands; its refrain wasn't secretive enough.
I am not quite sure if I understood what he was saying, but this seemed less important to him than trying to be fair to his own thoughts and making sense of his own experiences. He said he did phone Dorota; that he had met her a few times since he had worked at the Murrays'. Many of the desires he possessed and that seemed so fragmentary were at the moment all contained in his desire for her, He didn't think this had ever happened before, and perhaps it wouldn't last very long, but he was present to his desires.
He knew from our conversations over the years that I had never been present to mine, and I admitted to him after I got married that I did so as if out of sexual defeat. It wasn't that I didn't love Susan, that I didn't enjoy having children, but that during my twenties I had hoped my youthful longings would be met by actual experiences. I know many people talk of dreams and hopes practically and materially: the success they will have in their career, the dream house they will build, the early retirement with the restaurant by the beach. I suppose I have those expectations too, and I would sometimes talk to Paul about remortgaging the flat and opening a cafe that would be more experimental in its musical tastes than most. As I've said, Paul and I first shared an interest in music as in those first few Friday nights we talked about bands none of the others had heard of or would have cared for. But this wish to have a cafe, if I can be crude about it, would be called a dry dream, and many of our hopes in the world are exactly that: meaningful, legitimized and public, but are Paul and I alone in seeing that our lives are just as motivated by wet dreams, by desires much more subterranean? Perhaps what we so often call love, seual love, is the meeting point between these external wishes and internal desires. Paul might have believed it was no more than hope meeting chance, but maybe it is the wet and the dry, the private and the public conjoined.
As I went home to Susan and the kids, I didn't feel they were strangers to me, didn't feel that this life I was leading was badly chosen, except for this lie in my loins. As I walked through the door and kissed her cheek, I felt no desire for her body, knowing that if we were to have sex later that evening I wouldn't be thinking of her. I would be thinking of my childhood fantasies, perhaps thinking of Mrs Murray or even Dorota, and didn't know whether to feel as if I were betraying my wife, betraying my friendship, or betraying a desire far more primal that most seem to sacrifice for the very things I have in my life. I recalled then my father's robust handshake on my wedding day and his announcement that now I was a man, and wondered at the time whether I was another human produced out of a communion that was one of diluted desire. Would Paul and Dorota's children, if they could turn this desire into a union, be different I mused as my own son and daughter came into the room and seemed so happy to see their daddy. It was a desire (but on their part, on mine, on society's?) I couldn't quite deny appeared to have been met. As they came to me for a hug, I heard Susan's voice from the kitchen, a cooing, sympathetic request for me to set the table, and a voice that possessed in its physical absence little hint of a sexual presence I wished for like a miracle.


text:
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However the club may provide full or partial refunds at our discretion, with deductions for fees already incurred and administrative costs.
A player's total registration fee is made up of a number of components. These being:
1. Football Federation Australia (FFA) National Registration Fee (NRF);
2. Football NSW (FNSW) Capitation, including Insurance;
3. Association Fee; and
4. Club Fee.
Leichhardt Saints has no control over the amount set as the FFA NRF, FNSW Capitation or the Association fee.
The FFA NRF and FNSW Capitation once paid is non-refundable to the player upon a deregistration. (Refer to the Terms & Conditions in Play Football when registering to play.)
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


SEAMUS COLEMAN has defended Declan Rice - insisting he'd welcome him back to the Republic of Ireland set-up with open arms after he withdrew from the latest squad.
The West Ham defender has made three appearance for Martin O'Neill's men to date, but is now considering switching allegiances after learning of England's interest.
That led to the 19-year-old controversially sitting out of Ireland's upcoming games against Wales and Poland while he mulls over his international future.
While Rice has been criticised for that decision, Everton defender Coleman has lend his support to the youngster.
He told Sky Sports: "He's 19 years old, he's only kid at the end of the day.
"I've heard some comments from ex-players saying they knew what they were and all of the rest, but to be fair to Declan he was born and brought up in England.
"I'll tell you one thing, I saw him after the Turkey game where he got man of the match.
"I saw him embrace his Dad in the tunnel, there's no doubt about it, Declan has been proud playing for Ireland."
The move would utilise the current loophole whereby players who have only earned senior caps outside competitive games can switch allegiances.
And for Rice that would allow him to represent the country of his birth.
Coleman, who will captain Ireland in their Uefa Nations League opener in Wales tonight, says whatever decision Rice makes he shouldn't be judged for it.
He added: "It's very easy for us and people on the outside to judge the situation.
"At the end of the day he may have got his head turned by England wanting him, which all of a sudden puts a decision in his mind which he didn't have six months or a year ago.
"I think we've got to take a step back. I'll welcome him back with open arms, because I've seen first-hand that when he's worn the jersey he has been very proud.
"The three games that he played for us, he was our best player."


text:
/*
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
 * in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License
 * is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express
 * or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
 * the License.
 */
/*
 * This code was generated by https://github.com/googleapis/google-api-java-client-services/
 * Modify at your own risk.
 */

package com.google.api.services.documentai.v1beta3.model;

/**
 * The dataset validation information. This includes any and all errors with documents and the
 * dataset.
 *
 *
 This is the Java data model class that specifies how to parse/serialize into the JSON that is
 * transmitted over HTTP when working with the Cloud Document AI API. For a detailed explanation
 * see:
 * https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/java/google-http-java-client/json
 *

 *
 * @author Google, Inc.
 */
@SuppressWarnings("javadoc")
public final class GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation extends com.google.api.client.json.GenericJson {

  /**
   * The total number of dataset errors.
   * The value may be {@code null}.
   */
  @com.google.api.client.util.Key
  private java.lang.Integer datasetErrorCount;

  /**
   * Error information for the dataset as a whole. A maximum of 10 dataset errors will be returned.
   * A single dataset error is terminal for training.
   * The value may be {@code null}.
   */
  @com.google.api.client.util.Key
  private java.util.List<GoogleRpcStatus> datasetErrors;

  /**
   * The total number of document errors.
   * The value may be {@code null}.
   */
  @com.google.api.client.util.Key
  private java.lang.Integer documentErrorCount;

  /**
   * Error information pertaining to specific documents. A maximum of 10 document errors will be
   * returned. Any document with errors will not be used throughout training.
   * The value may be {@code null}.
   */
  @com.google.api.client.util.Key
  private java.util.List<GoogleRpcStatus> documentErrors;

  /**
   * The total number of dataset errors.
   * @return value or {@code null} for none
   */
  public java.lang.Integer getDatasetErrorCount() {
    return datasetErrorCount;
  }

  /**
   * The total number of dataset errors.
   * @param datasetErrorCount datasetErrorCount or {@code null} for none
   */
  public GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation setDatasetErrorCount(java.lang.Integer datasetErrorCount) {
    this.datasetErrorCount = datasetErrorCount;
    return this;
  }

  /**
   * Error information for the dataset as a whole. A maximum of 10 dataset errors will be returned.
   * A single dataset error is terminal for training.
   * @return value or {@code null} for none
   */
  public java.util.List<GoogleRpcStatus> getDatasetErrors() {
    return datasetErrors;
  }

  /**
   * Error information for the dataset as a whole. A maximum of 10 dataset errors will be returned.
   * A single dataset error is terminal for training.
   * @param datasetErrors datasetErrors or {@code null} for none
   */
  public GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation setDatasetErrors(java.util.List<GoogleRpcStatus> datasetErrors) {
    this.datasetErrors = datasetErrors;
    return this;
  }

  /**
   * The total number of document errors.
   * @return value or {@code null} for none
   */
  public java.lang.Integer getDocumentErrorCount() {
    return documentErrorCount;
  }

  /**
   * The total number of document errors.
   * @param documentErrorCount documentErrorCount or {@code null} for none
   */
  public GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation setDocumentErrorCount(java.lang.Integer documentErrorCount) {
    this.documentErrorCount = documentErrorCount;
    return this;
  }

  /**
   * Error information pertaining to specific documents. A maximum of 10 document errors will be
   * returned. Any document with errors will not be used throughout training.
   * @return value or {@code null} for none
   */
  public java.util.List<GoogleRpcStatus> getDocumentErrors() {
    return documentErrors;
  }

  /**
   * Error information pertaining to specific documents. A maximum of 10 document errors will be
   * returned. Any document with errors will not be used throughout training.
   * @param documentErrors documentErrors or {@code null} for none
   */
  public GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation setDocumentErrors(java.util.List<GoogleRpcStatus> documentErrors) {
    this.documentErrors = documentErrors;
    return this;
  }

  @Override
  public GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation set(String fieldName, Object value) {
    return (GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation) super.set(fieldName, value);
  }

  @Override
  public GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation clone() {
    return (GoogleCloudDocumentaiUiv1beta3TrainProcessorVersionMetadataDatasetValidation) super.clone();
  }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Most often, we plant trees to provide shade and beauty for our landscapes. These are great benefits, but trees also provide other less obvious benefits.
Trees are often planted as living memorials or reminders of loved ones or to commemorate events in our lives.
Even though you may own the trees on your property, your neighbors benefit from them as well. Through careful planning, trees can be an asset to your entire community.
Tree-lined streets have a "traffic calming" effect. Traffic moves more slowly and safely.
Well-placed trees can reduce cooling costs in the summer by shading the south and west sides of your home. If deciduous trees are used they will allow the sun to pass through in the winter.
Evergreen trees on the north side of your home and shrubs around the foundation of your home can act as a windbreaker to reduce the cooling effect of winter winds.
The value of a well landscaped home with mature, healthy trees can be as much as 20% higher than a home with no or little landscaping.


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Should Stapleton Be Renamed? The community debates the question. Plus Ballot Q&A and Letters to the Editor
July 1, 2019 / Community Issues, Elections, Politics, Stapleton / 3 Comments
Rename St*pleton for All Board Chair Liz Stalnaker (left), at the June MCA Board meeting, along with Rename supporter Rebekah Henderson, respond to Delegate Amanda Tompkins Dorotik (right): "This is an issue of inequity…When someone says a vote to keep the name is racist, [they're saying] it's upholding a status quo that is inequitable. When people have read Rebekah's comments, they're seeing it like a personal attack or accusation, but it's [about] structural systemic racism." Henderson: "I'm not talking about bigotry and prejudice, I'm talking
about things that are in place that make our country the way that it is."
Delegate Amanda Tompkins Dorotik: "I am not on either side. I just want the community to vote. But speaking of being respectful of your opinion, and I am getting this from the Facebook posts…Why is it like everyone's focused on, 'Don't get mad at the people who want to change the name,' but it doesn't feel like that goes both ways? It seems like the message is, 'If you don't vote to change it, you're a racist.' Why isn't it a little more mutual? Just curious. Don't you think people are going to be offended by the message that if you don't vote for the name change, you're a racist?"
The Front Porch gathered opposing reasons through conversations, letters and social media (all social media names are used with permission). Rename St*pleton for All submitted the reasons to vote in favor of changing the name.
Rename St*pleton for All – We are not asking people to erase history, but to acknowledge it. The DSST students who studied Mayor Stapleton's legacy chose to change the name of their school that bore his name. Their example inspires us.
Historians know there has always been opposition to the KKK in Denver. We stand with those who opposed the Klan with the values of their day, in the 1920s, 1990s, and today. In the 1920s, Denver's major newspapers and several public figures—including the district attorney and some members of City Council—fought the Klan's oppression.
In the 1990s, even before developers broke ground, many who knew the history behind the name "Stapleton" objected to its use. In response, in 2001, the Stapleton Development Corporation (SDC) Naming Committee recommended that places and neighborhoods in the community have other names, and that while "Stapleton" could be used for marketing purposes, it would eventually be dropped.
Eighteen years later, however, we see the name "Stapleton" everywhere because Forest City ignored the spirit of this policy by incorporating the word "Stapleton" as its brand. Voting to remove this name from a place of honor in our community is a way for us to correct course and honor the original vision of those who established the foundational values of our community.
Jamie Hodgkins – A very small number of people ever have places named after them. The people who get that honor have "pride of place" in our society for posterity. Should Ben Stapleton's actions give him "pride of place" in our community? How are we supposed to hold current leaders accountable if we as a city/community have decided that someone who actively worked with the Klan—and who never made amends for it, despite some people's claims—is the right guy to name our community after?
Rob LeBouef – While Benjamin Stapleton, for whom the former airport was named, was a savvy businessman and brought some positive changes to Denver, his involvement with, and loyalty to the KKK, is undeniable and makes inclusion a difficult concept to demonstrate as long as our community bears his name. As a resident and business leader in this community, I cannot turn a blind eye to history.
KEEP NAME
Harold Scramstad – I was trained as a historian. If we start holding everybody in the past to the almost unreasonable standards that we'd set for ourselves, almost nobody is going to measure up. We should keep the name and invest it with all the qualities that we want a community to be—that 100 years from now, people will say, "Stapleton, that was the experimental community that really worked very hard to get it right." Not, "There's a community that in a smug or self-satisfied way thought it was solving its problems of the future by changing its name, because that didn't really change anything."
Bert Singleton – Stapleton did a lot for Denver while mayor, including building Red Rocks amphitheater and the airport. He grew up in a racist community and to go against all that takes courage.…he went from being a KKK member to inviting the NAACP to hold their national convention in Denver. Respecting Stapleton for making that change is a positive example for all our children. Do you forever condemn people for something from their past and ignore anything they do to improve the community?
Richard Caldwell – For an entire generation, Stapleton was an airport—it did not cause racial issues. It was the place the Space Shuttle landed on a 747; the Beatles, Nixon & The Rolling Stones landed. We all lined the fences to watch planes come and go, people from all backgrounds and races—and we got along fine!
Melinda Howlett – When I was 10 years old I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp Museum, there was a sign there to the effect of "So we never forget." It was probably the most moving, profound thing I have ever seen even 50 years later, the message being, if we do not keep these things, how do we learn from them?
Peggy Baack – Hundreds of thousands of place names would get the ax if some historical person did not measure up to today's standards. Anything named Washington or Jefferson would be just the start as both were slave owners. Besides that, this community is called Stapleton because this is where Stapleton Airport used to be, not because the developers wanted to honor Mayor Stapleton.
Dana Steidtman – Before moving to the neighborhood, the name conjured up memories from when I had flown out of the airport as a child. However, after moving here as an adult, I learned more about the history of the airport's namesake, Benjamin Stapleton. As I learned about his involvement with the Ku Klux Klan, I came to understand how hurtful the neighborhood name is, especially for people of color.
Now that we know better, let's do better! … I wholeheartedly agree that we define our community. With that power, let us vote to let go of a name that is painful to so many and look forward to finding a name that ALL residents can celebrate.
City Councilman Chris Herndon – Today, the name is associated with the neighborhood's history as an airport and the vibrant community that has grown in its place. In my experience here as an African American man, Stapleton is a community that embraces and celebrates the diversity of the people who call it home.
Brittany I. – Nobody is refuting that racism still exists, but…small minds will not be changed by changing the name, nor does the name Stapleton hold any power to cause racism. Look at what has come out of this racist's name…a beautiful, multi-cultural, diverse neighborhood.
Bob Moore – Names don't make the community. People make the community. Names/words change meaning through the ages…Make it mean a 21st century community dedicated to diversity, initiative, kindness, and caring for ALL.
Shannon Collins – Dismantling a legacy of racism is complex and challenging, and I think this name change is something we can do to acknowledge the painful history of the community, while making a commitment to a more just future….Any community is [built upon] the decisions that we make and the priorities that we have. For me, this is an opportunity for us to make the community that we want to live in…I have a priority to invest in this community.
Dan Oltersdorf – I believe a bold move like this would make a statement that reflects the progressive approach most residents value and have a ripple effect in our community, bringing hope and taking steps to move us all in a more positive direction. Equally important to the outcome of this vote are the conversations and actions that have the potential to move us forward.
Rename St*pleton for All – Many of us who are devoting our energy to this problem also devote ourselves to other ways of making our communities, schools, families, and earth stronger. This issue is not a distraction, but is a natural part of our values.
People of color were the first to raise the outcry about applying the "Stapleton" name to this development more than 20 years ago. Many of our own members are people of color, in addition addition to white and mixed-roots allies. Listening to our neighbors' concerns, taking them seriously, and acting accordingly are the first requirements of achieving the truly inclusive and equitable community we all want.
O'Neil Rudolph – Why don't we try to work towards fixing the core issue of institutional racism first? Why are people so focused on something so superficial? Changing the name of Stapleton is not going to do anything for people of color. All it's doing is making white people feel proud of themselves for doing what they see as charity work in the community.
Terry Whitney – It is the right kind of action that's important. I'd prefer to see people spending their time helping at schools where students really need the extra support.
Karin Harris – Why not focus on treating one another with respect? Volunteer. Help your neighbors.
Paul Fisher – It takes resources away from much more important neighborhood initiatives.
Melinda Howlett – The cost will be upwards of $300,000, not to mention what it will cost businesses. If we are going to spend this kind of money, I would love to see us pull together as a community and do something that could really make a difference in people's lives.
Bert Singleton – When I look at our nation today, we are facing really serious issues that will affect us and our children and grandchildren, including damage to the environment because of rollback of environmental rules, rollback on the rule of law—that should be our focus. Why focus on this when there is so much else?
Danny Brown – I will choose to save the funds to do real things to help our community. With a special assessment to make the changes….hundreds of thousands of dollars…I think we can creatively find better places to spend our money!
Rename St*pleton for All: Opinion is indeed divided, but the division is not new. It traces back decades. However, we are proud that tolerance and inclusivity are foundational ideals of this community. Actively working toward those ideals can sometimes be uncomfortable, and it takes honesty and courage to move forward.
Today, we all want all voices to be heard. There are a number of reasons people oppose the name change. Thankfully, deliberate racial exclusion is not a common one. Our goal is to unite the community behind a new name that is unburdened by links to the overt bigotry of the past.
Brooke Lee: To my friends and neighbors who have made an effort to learn about experiences other than their own with an open heart and mind, I thank you. Our conversations about diversity and what real inclusion looks like have helped us understand each other more deeply and intimately. This has been the silver lining of the debate thus far.… We have more work to do beyond the name change. But today, we can right this wrong together.
Ron Adams – I am most disturbed by the tactics of the group "Rename Stapleton for All (RSFA)." Their goal is to accomplish the renaming of our community by any means necessary. They have been pushing the delegates to vote for a name change without input from residents. Did you know they vigorously fought this very ballot process that gives you your voice?
Bert Singleton – I live in an income-qualified townhouse and there are many others, as well as a lot of middle class people. They're trying to paint us in the worst possible light as wealthy White racists, intentionally trying to keep Blacks out. I am concerned that the decision on eliminating the Stapleton name from our community is being controlled by a small group of individuals, including some who don't reside in Stapleton.
Brittany I – It seems that Rename Stapleton planned a hostile take over to force their beliefs and wants/needs on everyone in this community. That's just not the way things should be done or the way good people should think. That's bully mentality.
Richard Caldwell – Sounds like rename is an effort by a few to impose their ideals, and if you disagree they call you intolerant.
We only got one ballot and our household disagrees on how to vote. How can our ballot be counted?
State statutes apply to the governing documents of planned urban developments like Stapleton and those statutes give one vote per property owner. When results of the property owners' vote is determined (ballots due July 31), the delegates will vote on a recommendation to the MCA Board. The delegates are obligated to cast their vote in proportion to the votes cast in their district IF a quorum of 10% of the ballots in that district is met. If your household disagrees and leaves a question blank, your ballot will still be counted toward the quorum in your district. If a quorum of 10% is not met, the delegate can choose how to cast their vote. You received a stamped self-addressed envelope with your ballot to encourage wide participation in this vote.
I heard my signature would be on the ballot—where should I put it?
At one point in setting up the ballot it was thought signatures would be included. However, it was decided to instead assign a number to each ballot and envelope so no signature is required either place. Ballots with signatures will be valid, but anyone can request to review ballots, so those with signatures would not be secret.
Please explain the three questions.
Question #1 – This asks whether to legally remove the name Stapleton or retain it. This question is being asked to determine if the community wants to embark on a process to find and agree on an alternative name.
Question #2 – This is a vote on whether the MCA should or should not impose a one-time assessment, not to exceed the current monthly cost ($43/property), to cover costs of a name change, including engaging the community to find an alternative name. Community delegate Tom Downey and Rename supporter believes finding a new name and making the legal and other changes could be done without great expense by enlisting City support and letting the rebranding take place gradually. Delegate Yuri Tavbin asks, "If we just get rid of the name legally without changing signs and some sort of education what is the point? On the other hand the MCA could spend a lot of money providing education, updating signs and so forth."
Question #3 – If you think the community name should only be changed by a vote of the community, vote in favor of amending the MCA governing document. If you think the community delegates and board should retain the right to change the name, vote against amending the document. The name change article in the MCA's governing document is the only article that can be changed without a vote of the property owners. The developer, Brookfield, has said they will not veto a board recommendation. On October 4, 2021, the developer control period ends and after that the name can only be changed by a majority vote of property owners.
How was it decided that Stapleton property owners would vote now on whether to rename the community?
Last fall, Rename St*pleton For All (RSFA) put a slate of their supporters on the delegate ballot and two Rename supporters were elected as delegates. Since then, the MCA delegates and Board have had ongoing, sometimes contentious discussions on changing the name.
Stapleton is the largest neighborhood in Denver, and the airport was named Stapleton 75 years ago. The majority of community delegates and board decided property owners, not the delegates and board, should decide whether the community moves forward with a name change. If the vote is in favor of a change, a process for finding agreement on a new name would then commence. RSFA's preference would have been to have more community discussions and education before having a vote.
How is this different than the vote last year?
The vote that took place a year ago, in May 2018, asked if the name of Stapleton United Neighbors (SUN) should be changed to Central Park United Neighbors. Voting was in person only at the SUN meeting, and open to all owning or renting a home in Stapleton, Denver. The number of ballots cast was 452, out of over 8,000 households. To pass, per SUN bylaws, it needed 66% in favor. The outcome was 58% in favor, so SUN's name remained the same. This MCA vote will differ from last year's SUN vote and past MCA delegate votes in that it will be a secret ballot but numbered to represent the property.
An article about this vote in the June Front Porch included a graphic showing the MCA governance structure. To view past Front Porch articles on Renaming Stapleton visit: FrontPorchNE.com > News > Stapleton Articles. To contact your community delegate, visit StapletonCommunity.com/MCA-info/community-delegates.
Brooke Lee – Change the Name
Participating in the Stapleton name change debate has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life. When I first learned about the legacy behind the name Stapleton, I was shocked that the neighborhood that I had come to love so much could be associated with the KKK. I attended a SUN meeting in September 2015 to learn more, and was moved by the words of Jewish resident Bob Segal, who recalled the KKK marching down Colfax Avenue every Friday on Shabbat. I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to witness the cross burnings, bombings, mobs, and harassment with no one to turn to because Mayor Ben Stapleton appointed a klansman as the cheif of police.
Learning that Denver residents had voiced their opposition to the use of the name Stapleton long before the development had ever begun construction was another gut punch. They were assured that the use of the name Stapleton was temporary, but there appears to be no intention on the part of the developer to keep that promise.
What has genuinely shaken me even more is the dismissive and derisive way in which my neighbors have engaged in the debate about the name change. I have witnessed supporters of the name change being called stupid, idiots, out of touch with reality, and told to move somewhere else if we don't like the name Stapleton. We've been characterized as shady outsiders, asked what country we come from, and told to please just go away. In an impressive display of mental gymnastics, these same neighbors claim that Stapleton the community is welcoming and inclusive, and have denied that any racism or white privilege exists in our neighborhood. While children have been called the N-word in our schools. While Isabella Bird Community School was vandalized with swastikas. While Spanish-speaking nannies were frequently commanded to speak English at the Cottonwood Gallery playground or leave. While a resident followed home a Korean-American family and told them to leave, that they don't belong here, and later hurled racial slurs at construction workers. While another resident told a young black man to remove his hoodie because it made her uncomfortable. Our neighbors are being racially profiled, subjected to micro-aggressions, and outright aggression. These are actual experiences that are happening to our neighbors.
"Get over it," they say. How can anyone get over something that is still happening? For me, the name "Stapleton" will forever call to mind the harassment that my husband endured at the hands of Klansmen in his childhood in Louisiana, and the terror that the KKK inflicted in Denver in the 1920s and throughout our country over the last century. But because of this debate, the name "Stapleton" will also remind me of my present-day neighbors who defend the honor of a Klansman while remaining oblivious to or denying the difficult realities that are lived by many of their neighbors. Who, intentionally or not, belittle and marginalize those of us who are hurt by the continued use of the name Stapleton in a place of honor in our community. Who feel that our opposition and pain simply do not matter.
To my friends and neighbors who have made an effort to learn about experiences other than their own with an open heart and mind, I thank you. Our conversations about diversity and what real inclusion looks like have helped us understand each other more deeply and intimately. This has been the silver lining of the debate thus far. So many of you have even spoken up for us in solidarity – words cannot express how much that means to me. You are the reason I fell in love with this neighborhood and why I am still here. Our children will benefit from the work we are doing together. Please, show up for us and submit your vote to change the name of this neighborhood. We have more work to do beyond the name change. But today, we can right this wrong together.
Bert Singleton – Keep the Name
Stapleton did a lot for Denver while mayor; including building Red Rocks amphitheater and the airport; he also invited the NAACP to hold their national convention in Denver, not the actions of a racist. I think the Rename people…have no idea how hard it must have been for him to change. I'm sure he grew up in a racist family and community and to go against all that takes courage.
Once again, in spite of multiple rejections by the residents of the community of their efforts to rename our community, the Rename Stapleton group is back at it again. – insisting that the residents of Stapleton bend to their will. In that effort they have decided to portray Stapleton residents as wealthy white racists who intentionally try to keep Blacks from moving into Stapleton. On their website they misrepresent all of us through statements including:
The "neighborhood is exclusive to higher income levels"- I am sure this will come as a surprise to all the families living in income qualified housing and those who are middle class.
Stapleton "feels like a gated community" – they aren't referring to physical gates but to attitudes and actions that tell Blacks they aren't welcome in Stapleton
A video renaming Stapleton as KKKpleton – mocking everyone who lives in Stapleton as supporters of the Ku Klux Klan
Rather than tell the full story about Ben Stapleton and trusting the residents of Stapleton to make informed decisions, they only present the part of the story that meets their agenda –that Stapleton was a member of the klan. They leave out that he resigned from the klan, fired the chief of police and other klans men in the police force, and in turn was denounced by the klan. To his credit, Stapleton was the driving force in establishing the airport (making Denver the center for air travel in the Rocky Mountain region), while also building Red Rocks amphitheater and promoting an extensive network of parks throughout the city.
I trust the residents of Stapleton to make the right decision once they have all the facts, not a one sided smear campaign
Dan Oltersdorf – Change the name
In 1995, Denver's biggest Fix and Flip began. The city had a now-defunct 4,700 acre airport site.
Nearly 25 years later, the neighborhood of Stapleton is a thriving model of urban redevelopment that is largely completed, but an ugly scar keeps coming to the surface.
Over the years, there have been conversations, protests and initiatives surrounding the name of the Stapleton Neighborhood due to the KKK affiliation and actions of the former airport's namesake, a man who served a total of 20 years as Denver's mayor, starting in the 1920's. With some exceptions, such as the recent student-led name change of DSST Stapleton to DSST Montview, not much has come from these discussions. This time, however, there is a very real opportunity to make a change that will benefit residents, our children and countless others.
As with previous times when this conversation has come to the fore, resulting commentary on Stapleton's social media groups has been swift, with reactions ranging from intrigued to dismissive. Many are angry and defensive at the suggestions the name should be changed. Still others debate about whether Stapleton is the 'inclusive and progressive' neighborhood concept it has touted itself to be. Some commenters write passionate pleas to take this discussion seriously, and they lament the tone of many of the posts as lacking civility, empathy and understanding.
I, for one, believe this is an opportunity we as a community should make the most of. This is an opportunity to look honestly at who we are and what we can and should be doing to make a positive impact. I am hoping we figure out how to do as a community is to move forward in a positive and productive direction not only with the decision, but also the process before and after the vote is done.
It's worth putting some perspective around where my thoughts are coming from. I "look" a lot like much of Stapleton. I am a 40-something year old straight, married, white guy with 3 kids and a couple SUVs. While I'm a first generation college student who came from a family that didn't have much, I am still the picture of privilege in many ways. I'm not ashamed of who I am, but I believe acknowledging where our perspectives come from is a part of the conversation.
Given where I am coming from, I know I can't begin to pretend to understand the visceral emotion that has been sparked by this issue, particularly for historically (and currently) oppressed groups who see the name Stapleton as a slap in the face, representing not just the dark shadows of America's past, but of a very flawed present that is marred by daily incidents stemming from ignorance and inequality. I am not personally "hurt" or "offended" by the name, but I know others who are. Others who have a very different lens and set of experiences than I do. Others who I care about enough to think this through more carefully. I also think of my 3 daughters, one of whom was involved in the discussions around the DSST name change, and came through it with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for other perspectives. I want to do the right thing for them.
In many ways, Stapleton is a snapshot of our nation's reality. We have a lot of good going on in this neighborhood. We have some amazing people. We have an intentionally developed community that was envisioned cater to a wide spectrum of residents, ultimately leading to a rich, vibrant and sustainable community.
We also have some significant division. Based on the latest census data, this neighborhood (the bubble as some have described it) is strikingly homogenous when it comes to race and socio-economic status (SES). Stapleton is predominately white and has a median income that is double the City of Denver's average. It is surrounded by neighborhoods that are much more racially diverse and range widely in SES. This largely due to the fact this is a newer development in the middle of a city, and the diversity of the neighborhood is slowly improving. The demographics of Stapleton are not something that should be seen as bad, per se, but should be acknowledged as a part of this discussion.
This is the reality. So what do we do now? Where do we go from here?
I don't have the answers, but I believe this is an opportunity to get into the bigger issues and create something better…. To continue the Fix and Flip
This is bigger than the name Stapleton. Much bigger.
This is about making the future better than the past.
This is about acknowledging wrongs.
This is about the future.
This is about history.
This is about continuing to make Denver's Biggest Fix and Flip a success story.
Should the name be changed? I believe it should. I believe a bold move like this would make a statement that reflects the progressive approach most residents value and have a ripple effect in our community, bringing hope and taking steps to move us all in a more positive direction.
Equally important to the outcome of this vote is the conversations and actions that have the potential to move us forward.
We must be honest. We must have respect. We must be open.
This resident of "the bubble" hopes we can find ways, big and small to engage in open discussion… and we can take a step in the right direction by voting for this change.
Let's keep doing this fix and flip thing. I advocate for a name change, but regardless of your feelings on a name change, don't dismiss the bigger opportunities for growth here.
Ron Adams – Keep the Name
I am opposed to the name change. Current residents and businesses are being asked to bear the financial burden of the name change (in other words, being punished) for Mr. Stapleton's poor decision almost 100 years ago.
I am most disturbed by the group "Rename Stapleton for All" tactics. Their goal is to accomplish the renaming of our community by any means necessary and they don't care what it costs(current estimates are at $300,000, and that figure does not include private businesses). If they can they will try to get the name changed even if the vote of the residents of Stapleton is to keep the name. Did you know the following facts:
1.) that the RFSA group tried to take over the MCA board and defeat every incumbent by running their slate of candidates in every district in Stapleton?
2.) that they succeeded in getting two of their candidates elected to the MCA board (District 5 & 9), one of which (District 5) has been an active participant while the delegate from District 9 has showed up to at most one meeting leaving the residents of District 9 essentially without representation on the MCA Board? A question was at the 6/19/19 MCA board meeting about the process for replacing her as District 9 residents are unhappy and feel that they are not represented.
3.) that their goal in taking over the MCA board was to autocratically vote to change the name, have been pushing the delegates to vote for a name change without input from residents, and they vigorously fought this very ballot process which gives you your voice?
4.) that RSFA has been using up valuable meeting time of several boards in Stapleton, prolonging meetings and short shrifting discussion due to time constraints of several other important community issues, such as parks, pools, landscaping, diversity and promoting affordable housing?
5.) that they get people to support their cause by creating divisiveness through the spread of negative emotions in people, by making them ANGRY (over something that happened almost 100 years ago) FEARFUL they scared school children at DSST: Stapleton to the point that they are fearful of the very name Stapleton ( from a Front Porch article, hence the name change to DSST: Montview), and GUILTY (by taking responsibility for something someone else did almost 100 years ago)? By the way, they call this propagation of anger, fear and guilt "educating" people.
6.) that some of the members of RSFA have called people that don't believe the way they do racists on social media and in person? (It happened during the MCA board meeting on 6/19/19 where one member called everyone in the room a racist). By the way, if you are not in favor of a name change, you are NOT a racist.
We need to focus on current residents and businesses of our community. No proven institutional or systemic racial discrimination exists in our community, and in fact a real estate transfer fee is collected at every Stapleton real estate closing, which is transferred to the Stapleton Foundation (now called the Foundation for Sustainable Communities). The funds from this fee is used to further the goal of affordable housing in Stapleton by buying expiring FIQH housing units to continue the program. The real estate transfer fee is based on the value of the home closed. Stapleton residents generous financial support of the FFSC should be promoted as a way that Stapleton residents advocate for housing affordablity in our community.
We need to move on from this renaming issue. While those against the name change will move on if the vote results in favor of a name change, if the vote doesn't go their way the RSFA group has vowed to try to defeat the generous volunteer delegates on the board that oppose them, so that they can change the name against the will of the residents. Their delegate from District 5 even stated, "well, in some cases, leaders make the change against the will of the people and then after a time people accept it". This is autocracy at best.
The only way to end this so that we can move on is to cast your vote as follows:
Question #1: The name STAPLETON SHOULD BE RETAINED as the legal name of the community
Question #2: The MCA SHOULD NOT enact a special assessment and;
Question #3: VOTE IN FAVOR and approve the proposed amendment
Question #3 is important. This will prevent the RSFA group from changing the name against the will of the residents by taking over the MCA board and having the delegates vote their way. This amendment will require 51% of all the residents in the community to approve a name change, making it much harder to change the name against the will of the residents.
Sandra Burroughs – Change the name
You had me at KKK.
The KKK was and is a terrorist hate group. Whether or not Ben Stapleton remained a member for the sake of politics is irrelevant. He did the thing. His membership automatically disqualifies him from earning a place of honor, then and now. No excuses, no exceptions. This is just one of many reasons I support a name change and will vote YES on ballot question #1. Stapleton's KKK membership alone is enough.
Forest City faced opposition to the name Stapleton from bordering community members, from the very beginning of this new neighborhood development. Forest City plowed ahead with the name anyway, knowing Stapleton's KKK history. Because of Forest City's continued disregard for the voices of those closest to the new development, Forest City should be held financially responsible for all neighborhood renaming and be accountable for all the rebranding of small businesses in the community for those that choose to drop the name Stapleton from their business names. For this, I will vote NO on ballot question #2. The residents of the community should not have to foot the bill for Forest City's indifference.
As far as ballot question #3, I'm voting NO. The changes being proposed now are going to happen anyway in 2021. Whether this change happens now or later, it is undemocratic and dilutes the voting power of residents. Any new vote will require turnout from 51% of residences AND 51% of commercial votes AND 51% of apartment votes. Historically less than 10% of eligible voters participate in these MCA votes.
Ultimately, I believe renaming our community can rebuild the foundation for an even more welcoming, inclusive future. I've read more than a few comments in the various community Facebook pages claiming that changing the name will not make those who are affected by the name feel any better or secure in their own neighborhood. They are wrong. A name change can do a lot more for the mental health of your neighbors than you can even imagine. As someone who has been living with a knot in my chest over this issue, I can tell you it affects one's mental health. My vote in favor of a name change is like putting a premium on and valuing the quality of life for my neighbors and myself.
Rob LeBoeuf – Change the Name
Stapleton began planning its transition from airport to residential community in 1990 with the intent to develop an inclusive community; embracing a socioeconomically diverse population, with an eye toward conservation and sustainability. As such, it imagined itself as a progressive community, thoughtfully designed to provide housing and services for people from all ethnicities, backgrounds, and lifestyles. A quick look around Stapleton affirms the goal of various housing price points and green spaces.
While Benjamin Stapleton, for whom the former airport was named, was a savvy business man and brought some positive changes to Denver, his involvement with, and loyalty to the KKK is undeniable and makes inclusion a difficult concept to demonstrate as long as our community bares his name.
As a resident and business leader in this community, I cannot turn a blind eye to history. It's hard to imagine any of our neighbors who have become aware of Ben Stapleton's KKK associated words and actions, wanting to call their home by his name.
The simplest first step we can take to harmonize the DNA of our community is to change its name to one that doesn't continue to divide our community or tie us by name to the part of our city's past that was opposed to equality and inclusion.
Our community is diverse, and we say we are inclusive so let's use our voices by voting to dissociate our community from the name "Stapleton" as a clear and distinct statement of who we are not.
Dana Steidtmann – Change the Name
Changing the name is consistent with our community's values.
I am writing to urge my neighbors to vote in favor of changing the name of the Stapleton neighborhood. In the time I have lived in the Stapleton community, I have been so grateful for the kindness that emanates daily from people who live here. We are a community that values equality, tolerance and inclusivity. Before moving to the neighborhood, the name conjured up memories from when I had flown out of the airport as a child. However, after moving here as an adult, I learned more about the history of the airport's namesake, Benjamin Stapleton. As I learned about his involvement with the Ku Klux Klan, I came to understand how hurtful the neighborhood name is, especially for people of color.
Now that we know better, let's do better! Voting to rename the neighborhood is an important chance for us to demonstrate our value of inclusivity and show compassion to those who are harmed by the name. In the June issue of the Front Porch, an argument opposing the effort to rename stated, "An airport or even a mayor do not define what this community is today; we do." I wholeheartedly agree that we define our community. With that power, let us vote to let go of a name that is painful to so many and look forward to finding a name that ALL residents can celebrate.
3 comments on "Should Stapleton Be Renamed? The community debates the question. Plus Ballot Q&A and Letters to the Editor"
Charles Duby says:
Hey! Let's change the name of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC because, after all, he owned slaves.
Christy Powell says:
The names of our public spaces and communities matter. What we choose to recognize as a society shows what we value. And thankfully, the criteria by which we determined good leadership in previous generations has changed and we have the ability to change the names where appropriate. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know about Benjamin Stapleton's klan roots when I moved here. I understood that the community is named for the airport that used to be here and didn't think more of it. But then I learned more about the history of the klan and racism in Colorado and I became embarrassed for a much different reason. Ashamed, even. I don't want to perpetuate our terrible racist history by leaving in place vestiges of the perpetrators and beneficiaries in places of honor in our 2019 lives. There is so much in this world that is unjust and that we cannot change. We can change raising our kids in a neighborhood named for a dead klansman. We can and we should.
Genevieve Swift says:
Please share any statements of support to change the name here: http://renameforall.com/get-involved/share-your-story/
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