Suffixgate

So there’s another scandal breaking in the media and surprise, surprise, the incident involved has been suffixed with the word ‘gate’. There are no shortage of examples of this phenomenon and if I’m honest, while I think it is somewhat lazy on the part of the journalists to add yet another media storm to the growing list of '-gates', I can appreciate why they do it. It’s often a catchy or memorable name, it removes the necessity for a longer title for the incident referred too and in some instances it can have an element of humour. However, while I understand why the media uses the suffix with such frequency, I’m less understanding of its use in everyday life. My tolerance for it was exhausted after living through ‘Milkgate’.

For those of you who have ever experienced communal living ‘Milkgate’ may bring back memories of incidents you’d sooner forget. It all started on 5 June. Truth be told it undoubtedly started before then, but this was the day that the half-empty carton of milk, that would come to form the centrepiece of ‘Milkgate’, past its expiration date. Nestled in the communal door area of the fridge its ownership was unclear to all but the person who returned it to that position. I’m not sure if this is universal, but certainly in any property I have shared the fridge is divided on a shelf per housemate basis while the storage in the door, albeit an occasional bone of contention, always remains a free-for-all. Thus, anything in the door of the fridge could belong to any member of the house.

In early August, a whole two months after the effects of pasteurisation had been exhausted, one of my housemates was leaving us and moving on to sunnier pastures. Before leaving the housemate in question cleaned her room, tidied the communal areas and, of course, cleared out her section of the fridge. In her vigorous attempts to get the fridge as clean as possible before our new housemate moved in she accidently disturbed the half-empty carton of, what no longer resembled, milk which proceeded to fall from its perch, hit the floor and expel its contents both into the fridge and onto the surrounding area.

I truly believed I had smelled some pretty foul things in my life, a teammate’s rugby kit that went a whole season without being washed, the toilets of a bar I worked in that almost exclusively sold Guinness to old men and many others beside. But nothing came close to the stench I encountered on entering the kitchen that day, and to be honest I didn’t need to reach the kitchen to smell it, it was there as soon as I opened the front door and as I think back now I’m not sure that I didn’t smell it outside and mistakenly think it was the bins that are stored near the front door.

Now the incident itself did not warrant its addition to the realm of ‘-gates’. However, the stand-off which ensued is what led to what will in the minds of the four housemates be forever remembered as ‘Milkgate’. The departing housemate was by the time I arrived home, out in the garden with the other housemates recovering from a bought of vomiting of Team America proportions and was categorically refusing to clean up the mess.

Thus the three of us that were more tolerant of lactose began to debate which of us would be careless enough to do such a thing and more importantly who was going to clean it up. After a couple of hours of heated debate it was clear we would never know for sure who was to blame and with such a horrible prospect facing the guilty party nobody was prepared to take one for the team to restore peace. So we did what seemed fairest. Deck of cards, lowest card cleans up.

I drew first… 10 of clubs. An occasional poker player I knew this offered me quite a few outs. Next to draw… king of diamonds. Queue fist pumping and shouts of joy from a much relieved housemate. I was envious, but I knew that I was still in a good position. When I saw the jack of clubs come out, my heart sank, the realisation of what lay ahead of me meant I completely tuned out the jubilant celebrations that were going on around me.

Three hours, a staggering quantity of bleach and a considerable amount of dry-retching later it was finally clean. But the scars remain. I swear I can still smell that putrid milk from time to time, it’s as if it has taken up a permanent residency in my nostrils, coming back to haunt me whenever it pleases. It’s my Vietnam.

‘Milkgate’ was debated in the house for a long time after and what was the accepted conclusion of these debates? That the milk had most likely been purchased by ‘she who spilled it’ for her dairy-loving boyfriend who had stayed with us the week before the milk expired and was later ignored by the three regular milk drinkers who knew it was not theirs.

So you’ll forgive me if the suffix ‘-gate’ leaves a bitter taste in my mouth… and vile smell in my nostrils.