given no credit
I lost my shit with Shobhit last night. Like, really, really lost my shit. He was remarkably calm, did not respond with yelling, and he even said so: "I'm not yelling." I replied, "I know you're not, but I feel like you've backed me into a corner. I don't know what else to do." And that was true. He's so unbelievably convinced that I missed something somewhere with this bullshit with American Express, can't even fathom that I really have done everything I can about it, that he literally kept saying and asking the same set of four or five questions in only slightly different ways, even though my answers were always the same. Trying to talk to him is literally like trying to rationalize with a legitimately crazy person.
I thought of an analogy this morning. A bit in the original 1993 Jurassic Park movie. The velociraptor cage -- the explanation that the raptors kept ramming themselves against the electric fences, but never in the same spot twice. "They were testing them for weaknesses."
That is precisely what it felt like Shobhit was doing. He has so little faith in my competence, he kept asking the same questions over and over, clearly trying to find a hole in my story, some break he could wedge into, to prove that I fucked up somehow, because, well, he thinks I'm a fucking moron.
He would not let up. He wanted to look at my American Express account online, even though I had already told him -- multiple times -- what it would show. He looked at it, saw that I was right, still wasn't satisfied. He wants explicit documentation that the $95 fee I was wrongly charged had been reversed, which I have explicitly explained to him -- multiple times -- does not happen automatically online. I told him they emailed me a confirmation that the account was closed. This was not good enough for him. I told him -- a minimum of three times -- that the rep on the phone told me this means I have nothing more to pay. That still didn't satisfy him. Then he looked for something else to criticize: why didn't I check to see if the website indicated the card was canceled before this week? I explained -- a minimum of three times -- that when I called to cancel on the phone on June 2, the rep then said the website would not indicate that until the current billing cycle was over. Shobhit was right there in the room and heard this on speakerphone, with his own ears. Conveniently, as of last night, he says, "I don't remember that." He insists now that my final bill should have been sent automatically: a new conviction, something he never mentioned before, conjured up solely to suit his own aims.
How the fuck does anyone ever engage in any effective communication with this man? Seriously? What other option is there in a scenario like this, but to start screaming? I can only endure answering the same god damned questions with the same fucking explicit information before I can't take it anymore. It was like an interrogation technique, designed to rattle me until I finally dropped a nugget of information that could be used against me.
It's a good thing incidents like this with Shobhit actually are rare. If this were common, I would absolutely not just live with it. I would leave him. It's outright, utter insanity. I truly have no idea what I could have told him last night that would satisfy him, because I told him everything there was to tell -- over, and over, and over again. The only rational way to read it, so far as I can tell, is that his only satisfaction would have been to discover inconsistency in my story, so he could then shove into my face what errors there had been in my own approach. That's all he was looking for.
Shobhit can have his own special brand of gaslighting. At one point he said, "I just don't trust them" -- meaning, American Express. I replied that I don't especially trust them either. But this extended exchange last night had far less to do with his distrust for them than his clear distrust for me. Why he doesn't understand that you can't always get what you want instantly, I'll never know. An online account taking 24-36 hours to update transaction information is not exactly unheard of.
And then he said, "If the account updates and it still has the charge, you need to call them back." Oh, you think? Now I wanted to blow my own fucking brains out. My husband thinks I'm twelve years old.
And this is the thing that gets me the most. Even if I made some huge mistake -- which I did not -- and caused this to go on longer than necessary; even if it adversely affects my credit score -- which it will not -- well, then, SO FUCKING WHAT? I'd literally rather deal with that than getting bombarded with the same line of questioning over and over again from my own husband. I'd rather just pay the god damned $95! Since when is $95 worth this complete and utter bullshit? It's ninety five dollars, who gives a fuck! I mean, I'm not saying $95 is nothing. But it's sure nothing compared to peace and well-being, which I got none of last night. I'm fighting this fee because of the principal of the matter, not because it's the end of the fucking world if I end up having to pay it (WHICH I WILL NOT).
And, lest you think I'm exaggerating or paranoid regarding Shobhit's motivation being the simple chance to criticize: As soon as there was a chance for the subject to change, he asked me if I were still paying for subscriptions to either the Washington Post or the New York Times. First of all, he knows good and well that I haven't been paying for the New York Times for many, many months. He just wants to be able to tell me some other way in which I'm wasting money. Which, incidentally, he attempted to tell me was exactly what I was doing by planning to continue with my Washington Post subscription once the six-month free trial is over -- at which point it will cost me a whopping $7 or $8 a month, whatever it is; I forget exactly but it was around that amount. He then started to lay into me about how that was a waste. I was just like, "You're going to have to deal. Live with it. It's happening."
. . . Well, this is interesting. I know for a fact that when I signed up for the Amazon Prime free trial for Washington Post it said the trial was for six months and then I would start getting billed. I just signed into Amazon to check this, and it indicates I subscribed on January 8. I even wrote about this at the time, and guess what? I remembered the subsequently monthly subscription fee wrong. It's not $7 or $8, but fucking $3.99. This means the monthly charge should begin, actually . . . next month. At first I was thinking something got missed somewhere because I should have been billed by now, but I finally did the math and we're in June now, and that means January was only five months ago. Six months in, actually, will be July 8.
Shobhit doesn't think I should pay for the subscription because you don't have to sign in to do the Washington Post crossword. He doesn't get that the crossword is not my primary reason for switching from the New York Times. It's because the Times's news coverage disgusted me one last time and so I canceled, and now all of my news article subscriptions are at the Post. I read either all or part of multiple Post articles daily, and I much prefer their coverage now. Also, even if $3.99 a month is very little to them, I want to support at least one actual newspaper. This isn't just about personal preferences for me, which is what's so difficult to get Shobhit to understand. My subscription to the Washington Post actually has a moral element to it. Part of it is about getting objective news from a reliable source. Part of it is about doing what's right.
After this he brought up yet another thing, I can't even remember what now, and it was the same sort of thing: to check that I had done it correctly. By now he was finally sort of acknowledging that it's what he was doing. I said, "You're just desperate to find some way to criticize." And he responded, "I don't know," or something like that. He finally started backing off. We got into bed and he gave me a kiss. I'm not certain he felt bad about his behavior, exactly, but I could tell he was feeling uncertainty about it, if nothing else.
Do I feel bad about losing my shit? Honestly -- I don't think I do. I won't say that it was constructive behavior on my part; it clearly was not. Shobhit even said, "People around can probably hear you," and that's true. If Alexia was home next door, she probably heard me raving like a lunatic. That makes me a little uncomfortable, but . . . only a little. Because the thing is, even if my behavior wasn't necessarily justifiable, I still feel it was understandable. Shobhit's incessant digging for flaws left me feeling like I had no options left. I emotionally short circuited.
. . . And, guess what? After writing all of the above, I signed into my account this morning. Looked at the canceled card's statement. The balance shows as $0. It has an "ADJUST MEMBERSHIP FEE" and "-$95" as the most recent line item. The website, as promised by American Express, now explicitly reflects the fee refund.
So what utility was there in getting berated about it for half an hour last night, exactly?
So, anyway. All that was just a small slice of my evening last night, right before bed -- as I said, half an hour, if even that. I spent the evening prior to all that either seeing a movie or watching television.
I left work 10 minutes early to go to Pacific Place and take myself to see The Seagull -- which, frankly, was not even worth MoviePass's money. I did have a somewhat interesting interaction with the young man at the ticket window, though. He recognizes me every time I come now, and brings up other movies coming up, and even gave me a business card advertising AMC's own new subscription service.
Until now I have not looked into the details, but for the time being at least, as I already mentioned to Shobhit a few days ago when I first heard about AMC's subscription service, it hardly matters. I probably would still save money on the AMC pass as well, but I would never save as much as I currently save using MoviePass -- and the MoviePass I currently have is good for a full year. I got it several months ago through Costco at a 10% discount, so while everyone else currently signing up has to pay $9.95 a month, my cost works out to closer to $7.50 a month. And I easily see at least one or two movies using MoviePass per week (I can use it at Regal or AMC theatres; it's not accepted at SIFF Cinemas, where I am intent on being more monetarily supportive anyway . . . granted, as a SIFF member where my $55 annual membership still gets me a $5 discount on all movie tickets).
I'm not really interested in subscription services for every single separate movie theatre chain. The clear benefit of MoviePass is its acceptance at nearly all major theatre chains -- in my case, Regal and AMC; it also works at the Varsity Theatre in the U District, which I almost never go to anymore; also at both Northwest Film Forum on Capitol Hill and Central Cinema in the Central District, which I either rarely or almost never go to. (I still have three punches on a 10-movie punch card left that I purchased long ago for Central Cinema.)
I have to admit that some of the benefits the AMC subscription allows are appealing, such as the ability to reserve tickets in advance, which MoviePass does not allow. That, of course, is only relevant at theatres with that setup, and as of now, Pacific Place still has only open seating. A comparative limitation is AMC only allows up to three movies a week whereas MoviePass is one movie per day, but I very rarely see more than three movies in any given week, and even when I do, it's never, ever all at an AMC theatre. I kind of like their model of no physical card, but that's not exactly a big deal. So, clearly, as long as MoviePass still exists and it can be used at AMC theatres, for me it's the far better deal. I still have no idea how their current business model is sustainable, but I'll keep taking advantage of it while I can.
Anyway, back to the guy at the Pacific Place ticket window. He clearly loves all kinds of movies, and told me two or three coming up; The Ant-Man and the Wasp is not one I'm interested in. It may surprise some that I am interested in Mission: Impossible -- Fallout; I've grown to rather like those movies.
I thought about that kid later and how he can't possibly be more than 20 years old. The Pacific Place building was just finishing its construction when I moved to Seattle in 1998. It occurred to me later last night that I have likely been going to movies, specifically at that very theatre, literally since before he was born. It's a very strange thing to realize something like that. The margin in cases like that only gets wider as time goes on.
I'm old enough now that I've had multiple years where I consistently remembered my own age wrong. Something I thought about the other day, about a young man I hooked up with on Thursday last week, who was 22 years old. I kept thinking that meant I was 19 when he was born. But then I remembered later -- oh yeah, I'm not 41 anymore. I turned 42 this year. I was twenty when he was born.
Anyway, I came home and wrote the movie review, and then Shobhit and I watched two episodes of Billions. Two takes on the first few episodes of season two: 1) God, I hate Chuck Rhodes's dad; 2) so far at least, I do love Taylor, the gender non-binary character. It's also fascinating to see how the other characters around them respond to Taylor, especially given the bro-y nature of the world these characters inhabit. And I love it when Axelrod says to Taylor: "You see things differently. That gives you an edge." It made me look in a new way at the way I myself look at the world. Also: Axelrod is an objective criminal, but he's pragmatic rather than judgmental regarding Taylor's gender identity. Why? Because he understands how Taylor's perspective can be harnessed to make him more money. It's always astonishing to me when people allow prejudice to get in the way of seeing how people who are different can actually be a competitive advantage -- and that's not a problem Bobby Axelrod has. Bias, maybe (as in his relationship with Wendy) -- but not prejudice.
I just got back from lunch with Karen down at the Six-Seven Restaurant at the Edgewater Hotel -- our first lunch since June 1, actually; we had to reschedule our usual second and fourth Thursday lunches due to our respective travel schedules this month. (Similar thing is happening next month.) So, it had been a while -- one day short of four weeks, in fact. It was really nice to get to hang out with her again after an unusually long break.
We split the gyro. I decided to skip the truffle macaroni & cheese since I made macaroni & cheese for lunch at work yesterday and have the second half of that saved for tomorrow. I think that's enough macaroni & cheese for one week.
The waitress did take much longer than usual -- to serve us, and to get us our bill, and then to return our checks for signing. Regardless, we had thoroughly engaging and stimulating conversation. Mostly interestingly, a coincidence whose probability is off-the-charts low: she was listening to an audio book at the same time that she received my email photo digest of Yellowstone National Park, in which a main character who is a wheelchair user (as Karen herself is) takes a road trip from Seattle to Salt Lake City -- but makes a stop at Yellowstone National Park along the way. To have such parallels to both her and to me at the same time is incredible to me.
[posted 1:37 pm]