The ‘old-timers’ had memories of smoke-filled rooms, with big-bellied men, shirts dishevelled and slackened ties askew, shouting over each other as they jabbed the air making their point. Clay had no experience of that era but, even in the more civil times in which he had joined the local branch committee, he’d known some rough meetings. They wore suits now and there was no smoking in the back room of the sitting member’s electoral office. But there was always profanity and shouting, threats to resign, personal innuendo… It was never a civil gathering.
Clay leaned back from the laptop screen showing the tiled faces of his fellow committee men. In these separated times they met by Zoom, so the laptop on his kitchen table connected him with this badly behaved shouting match. It was worse that a face to face meeting: they kept talking over each other, angry not only with each other but with the limitations of the technology. Clay was no Puritan and, when provoked, had as good a line of profanity as any of them. But somehow, he was profoundly uneasy with the language pouring from the tinny laptop speaker, invading his home. He was alone in the house, but he had sat at this table with Sally and the kids over breakfast, just an hour ago. In this place—his home—you didn’t speak and behave like that.
He eased further from the screen. He was now out of the camera’s view and the sense of disengagement from the meeting came like a fresh breeze. A couple of the others had disappeared and reappeared during the meeting as from force of habit, they leaped to their feet to argue, then realised it was their midriff and not their face on-screen. But Clay felt like disappearing more permanently. If I shrink from this language and behaviour because it’s in my home, he mused, why is it OK elsewhere? Has the virus sensitised me to something?
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