I used to be desperate to change jobs. I thought, without an ounce of irony, that my new white-collar job would be given to me on a silver platter as soon as I finished my degree. I have been angry, nervous, anxious and exhausted most of this year. I still am, but I hide it better because I understand that things take time. I won’t get a writing job anytime soon. Things take time, but gay things take even more time, and trying to get a job as a writer in London with a continental accent in a fucked-up economy, takes even more time. I will probably hit critical mass soon and I will lose my mind again, but for now, I am taking it all philosophically, like a lovely mix of nihilism and absurdism.

Trying to network when I am working is always horribly difficult. I feel like pink-collar jobs exist for the sole purpose of humiliating their workers. When I am serving, there is always something else going on, so I need to interject the pitch of who I am, and why I am the best while I am asking if they want pinto beans or jalapeños with their vegan taquitos. Sometimes, I take some extra time with someone who genuinely seems interested in me, and right when I feel like my point is getting across one of my team members yells my name because they need more ketchup or chips. I do plug myself shamelessly, but in a sense, I have given up on doing it too often. Now I filter my victims, and I try to create an intimate moment before fully bothering them into oblivion.

Apparently, I really need to start speaking their language, by asking them to have a coffee or a tea and to pick their brains. I will reluctantly do so. On Friday I was working at a club—a techno club, full of goths, semi-naked people, rituals and strobe lights. Yes, I need a second job because I live in London. And when you live in London and are trying to change careers, sometimes you will find yourself in a networking event. Could be anything, a birthday, a housewarming moment, or a dinner because someone is leaving (or visiting). The middle class speaks in riddles. I, as a techno person, as someone who has fought in the brightest mornings and dirtiest raves, struggle to call these things parties. This is why I call them networking events. And as much as I loathe them, I need to learn to survivee in them, I need to get my foot in the door.

Networking events are weird because everyone has a hidden agenda, and the motivation is unclear at the beginning. They are also odd due to the lack of curation. There is music, but is far too low to enjoy it in any shape or form, so no one can really dance to it. Also, the music usually sucks. People are always talking (it is a networking event), but you are going to be surrounded by multiple groups of people having conversations, so you kind of need to shout into the ear of your speaker. And your speaker shall, of course, reciprocate. To make it even more difficult, everyone looks very similar. All the boys will have bright teeth, wear chinos, and a name starting with ‘J’, and the girls will have infantilised nicknames finishing with ‘y’, natural make up and nonchalant outfits.

Middle-class people in networking events speak the language of money. Two things;

A) The answer to ‘So… What do you do?’ is key. Everything depends on it. It will define what can they get from you or if you are an interesting player for their motivation.

People in a networking event have the need to put you in a box. They need an approximation of how your bank account looks like and if you can be useful in the short or long term. Jobs will give them all this information.

B) EVERYTHING MUST HAVE SURNAMES AND DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVES.

Avoid saying I went on holiday to my family’s house.

Instead try I went on holidays to California, to the house my parents have in Napa.

Always say the prices of the things you buy, and the brands. Tackiness is a construct and no one has time for elegance or decorum. Always elaborate, particularly if is about yourself and your mental health journey.

I will never be able to speak this language and I am poor, therefore, when I say that I work in a canteen for an office, people write me off as a loser immediately and they forget I exist. They forget I exist because in this kind of rendezvous, people usually have two motivations, that appear only when they are drunk enough on prosecco.

People who are single and more than thirty are desperate to belong to a couple. They will bounce around the room with their belly and Adidas samba, sniffing into other single people, calibrating eternally if anyone is good enough for their standards. Patriarchy is still king, and having a significant other is still the highest proof of success.

People who are already in a couple will mingle more calmly, and their intentions will show after a long chat after they vomit a monologue about a startup or how their current job is not challenging enough.

I have nothing for any of these people.  

Someone might find me hot enough that my ‘poor’ status gets overrun, but that’s highly unlikely.

I have been waking up early to serve coffee and to clean other people’s shit for far too long. When I talk, they don’t listen. They hear, but they don’t listen. Because they know I am the guy who is called to fry chips or top up the ketchup. They can feel it.

Sometimes I think about how messed up is that to get where I want to be I need to fabricate and dance verbally with people that do not intrigue or interest me. Their moustaches will only last while moustaches are trendy, and they will ask things like ‘Are you political?’ as if it was a choice. Girls will laugh hysterically with their plank skirts and trainers. Red lipsticks are back like in 2015, and the colour looks awful on their crooked teeth.

These people are constantly surrounded by people who can help them. They live in a world where a call means a job, and someone knows someone who’s a producer in a show or an editor in a magazine. I remember someone joking about not being able to work and with the same breath, stating that she won’t write if she doesn’t get paid, regardless of her anxiety or depression, even if her last column was published months ago.

I have lost years of building a powerful network. All my life, I have been surrounded by people who cannot help me to move anywhere else. Even if I have proven myself several times, I have been doing it to the wrong demographic. This sudden realisation of how the system is indeed built with the sole purpose of protecting itself makes me sad. Because I am exhausted.

But also because I really don’t want to laugh at Claudia’s horrible joke while she’s fuelled by a line of coke and three proseccos on her only fun afternoon at 7 pm, surrounded by people that are exactly like her: boring, untalented and privileged.

How can I compete with people who are organically linked into (you see what I did there) a network of common interests?

How can I stop being behind?

But more importantly, How can a girl clean the red lipstick from their teeth?