Saturday, November 3, 2012

Small Mercies

I have been depressed lately. There really aren’t any two ways about it. It does not surprise me at all that my last post is from five months ago. It is dated nine days after I had moved into my new place. It’s not really a place, though, and it is definitely not mine. I am renting a room. I have become sort of a de facto maid here, cleaning up after people whose general tidiness level falls well below my own. Let it be known that I am not some kind of neat freak, far from it, in fact. But things do gross me out. I like to be able to walk across a floor bare-foot without anything sticking to the soles of my feet. I enjoy a clean kitchen before and after I cook and eat. And I believe whole-heartedly that one should never, ever clip their toenails anywhere but in the bathroom, and that anyone with half a conscience would clean up any stray shrapnel that may have shot off.

Springtime fresh...
 
These views are not shared by any of my current house mates. I should note that I am related to these people, though at times I shudder to think of this. The elder of the two is the owner of the house, so I feel that I have no right to really broach any of these issues. If he wants to live in such a shoddy manner, so be it. I am the one who agreed to this; I visited before moving in, and though I really have no place else to go and no money to uproot myself, I did say okay. I knew what I was getting into, I saw how far things had been allowed to fall prior to my moving in, and I have no one to blame but myself. Disgust is really the only way to describe what I feel on most days when I come home. In my eyes, it boils down to self respect. How much you value yourself really shines through in your home. You can shower and shave and put on a clean shirt, but that’s all fronting for the world. If someone sees your house cold and their first thought is “I wonder how many rats are living off of this?” you have a problem. The state of affairs here is best summed up by the bag of water hanging over the back door. For those of you who don’t have to deal with this kind of backward mentality, it’s an old redneck remedy for house flies. You hang a bag of water over a door, and (supposedly) flies are less likely to come around. Never mind cleaning, or washing the dishes regularly, moving the litter box to a different room, throwing out old food or wiping down a counter; just bag up some water. It is literally the least you can do.

Though I am frustrated by all of this, I haven’t even gotten into the real meat of my problem. It is not with my elder relative. (Quick aside -- I almost felt bad about using the word ‘elder,’ until I remembered that the thermostat keeps creeping up into the mid to high 80s when I don’t keep my eye on it. As Sarah Silverman sang, “It’s not cold in here, you’re just dying.”) My real problem here begins and ends with his son. During the first few weeks here, I thought I was annoyed by him because I saw some of my younger self in him. They say such things are common, and I am nothing these days if not a commoner. But the longer I stick around, the more I realize that he is the living embodiment of all that I find reprehensible. This all began with the drumming.

I should explain that he, the younger relative, is the sort of neo hippie that fancies himself a jack of all instruments, but master of none. I constantly hear guitar, organ or drum ‘music’ coming from the basement. Two of them are easy to block out, but the drumming is loud and pervasive and just plain bad. Arrhythmically pounding away, but never practicing a song or keeping a beat for longer than twenty seconds, just beating on the skins like a monkey full of pixy sticks. It is truly awful. A few days into my stint here, my elder relative turned to me and stated, “I think it sounds good.” Making such a statement aloud shatters all credibility now and forever. Nothing has ever sounded further from good. Sometimes he is joined by his worthless stoner buddies to ‘jam,’ although I have never heard them come anywhere near an actual song. I guess they’re above such petty concerns. Even terrible wastes of space like Phish produce recognizable tunes or melodies every now and again. He has one friend who comes over, consumes drugs, then screams and pounds on the walls. This is the closest to music they have ever gotten.

I could forgive all of that. I really could. But it gets worse. You see, as the elder’s son, he is immune to earthly problems such as paying rent, or buying his own food. He has even been consuming my food, which is low grade and often purchased with my meager allotment of food stamps. I should note that the son is fully grown, and at least four years past what any society would consider an adult. Instead of spending his money on food or shelter, it all seems to go to marijuana, vacationing from his taxing life, and buying crystals off of the internet. This man-child has never once washed a single dish in the five months I have been living here. He has never swept a floor, or vacuumed a rug. He has never wiped down the copious albumen goop he leaves behind on the counters of the kitchen or the stovetop. He even places his garbage near the garbage can, never in it. The only thing I have observed him do on his own is the occasional load of laundry. I should ambush him in the laundry room one day, giving him a muted golf clap for actually cutting the apron strings and accomplishing one single solitary thing.

My hatred grows by the day. Lately I cannot even stand to hear him speak, as he has the affected whine that Louis C.K. mocked so well - that flat drone of someone who cannot even be bothered to fully form their words or to articulate beyond an unimpressed monotone. Most puzzling of all, though, is that the useless one has a brother; a brother who came up through the exact same home, but who is not a carbuncle upon society.

...and winter white. What could be better?
 
I begin a job in a few days and school in a few weeks. I am excited for these changes, and if you’ve read this far, you can see that clearly I need to be out of the house more often. But I am also nervous about the prospect of what my being here less really means. Neither of these ‘men’ are going to take up the slack in keeping up this home. I saw all too well what this place looks like without my influence. So I fear that I will be coming home from sixteen-hour days to a total shit hole. I really just want to be able to clean up and have it stay clean for maybe one day. Just one day to be able to stand back and feel any sort of pride in accomplishment, but they both seem to possess an evil form of radar concerning cleaning - anything clean must be immediately sullied. I keep telling myself that I only have eighteen months left here. It saddens me that I have to count this down as though it were a prison sentence, although if there were any way on Earth that I could get out sooner, any sort of parole board I could plea my case to, god knows that I would. Money has been tight lately and it’s only going to get worse. The job I have taken is only part-time, and I will be making about half of what I was taking in on unemployment. The other day, Halloween morning to be exact, I fainted twice at the WorkSource building waiting to be evaluated as to whether or not I was still eligible for unemployment insurance and keeping up with the required job search logs. I just passed out, my knees giving out from underneath me, straight down on the concrete steps. It happened again inside of the hour long class they had me taking for the third time in as many months. I was sitting the second time, so it was easier to disguise the fact that I was no longer conscious, but the layers of sweat covering my entire body surely gave me away. I must have looked like a junkie. At best I have a sinus infection; at worst an abscessed tooth - either way I cannot afford to do anything about it. And as I am being shaken-down for my rent money, it is hard for me not to think that just a few feet away, an entitled little shit is getting everything handed to him. I kind of hope that my elder relative reads this blog, as he should know what a great disservice he is doing his son. In the end, it is the struggle that makes the man.

No comments:

Post a Comment