On Dirty Dishes and Clogged Arteries

I have lived on my own since I was 17 years old. I can take care of myself and I’ve done a pretty good job of doing it all these years. I am fairly neat but I think that anyone who has ever seen my apartment would vouch for the fact that I’m not some sort of obsessive neat freak. My apartment vacillates between stages that most people would term ‘fairly clean’ to other stages some might call ‘not entirely disgusting.’ Right now I would say that my place rates on the clean end of the scale.

After having said that let me now say that I just cleaned out the tray that holds my silverware. Yikes. I don’t want to gross you out by telling you how dirty it was but if you have eaten at my place in the past two years or so I don’t think that a tetanus shot would be a bad idea, either that or get your stomach pumped.

I’m just kidding around; it wasn’t that dirty. OK, so it was pretty dirty. I found something in my silverware tray that could have been either a plant or an animal, or maybe a little of both. It’s not like I waited around for the results to get back from the lab or anything. I didn’t make a pet out of it either. I chopped it up into three pieces with a meat cleaver and tossed it out my second story kitchen window. It’s not down there anymore. It may have mated with one of the stray cats in the alley.

I know what a lot of you are saying. You are saying, “Why don’t you hire a cleaning person? Instead you insist on living at the very edge of squalor. Is it because you are filthy and cheap?” I know I’m not exactly the clean guy from The Odd Couple, but name-calling isn’t going to make my place any more livable. I have thought about getting a maid, or a cleaning lady, or a cleaning person, or whatever you call it in this age of hyper political correctness. I have even thought of side-stepping the whole politically-charged man/woman thing by buying a cleaning robot. I have even come up with a great idea for a robot that automatically cleans your toilet. It’s called The Toilet Shark® or The Dump Shark®, but that is the subject for another essay.

The biggest reason why I don’t hire a man, or a woman, or a robot to help me clean my apartment is because I’m too embarrassed to have someone come into my apartment when it’s dirty. If I had a cleaning helper I’d feel compelled to clean my place before they came over. This is the same reason that I ride a bicycle so compulsively: I’d be ashamed to have a heart surgeon look inside me with the diet I follow. I don’t want a complete stranger rooting in my blood stream and have them see all of the pork and fried food floating around. I kid myself into thinking that cycling is like cleaning for my filthy cardio-vascular system. It’s either that or I go on some sort of diet. Either that or I die. If you’ll allow me to mix metaphors, or blend themes, I’d rather wash dishes than go on a diet, if you know what I mean. I don’t know what I mean so don’t worry if you’re confused.

I think what I am trying to accomplish with this essay is to justify the fact that I am a lazy slob when it comes to housekeeping and a human grease trap as far as my diet is concerned. I suffer an occasional paroxysm of cleanliness amidst my squalor and I clean out my silverware tray. After I have chased the vermin out of my kitchen I celebrate with Italian sausages with peppers and a brick of French cheese. I tell myself that this is healthy because I then ride my bike to the store for a bottle of wine. I’d invite you over but my apartment isn’t clean enough for company. I’ll have to straighten up a bit just in case the emergency medical technicians have to come in to restart my heart.