There are perks to living alone. For one thing, dishes. When you live by yourself, you never have to worry about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Because if you have roommates, no matter how unified a front you put up, you are not going to be able to agree who left that moldy meatloaf in the sink. It will forever be a point of contention, left defiantly to soak up tepid dishwater and rot for weeks, a silent battlecry that launches a siege.
But there are, naturally, drawbacks to solitude. Knowing that the dishes in the sink are undeniably yours does not get them washed any faster. And no matter how diligent, one might even say obsessive, you are about doing the dishes, there will inevitably be a day when you must dash out the door without scrubbing them. Perhaps you'll think that this is not a big deal. Maybe they are just pots you filled with water to prepare for the hurricane, because someone mentioned you might need them to fill the cistern. Perhaps you'll fill four whole pots before realizing you don't actually have a cistern. Then maybe you won't even spend the hurricane at home, but you'll leave the pots there in the bathroom on principle. That way if some kind of aquatic emergency arises at Nicole's place during the storm, you can say, "I know where there is water!" And when you return from your hurricane hideout two days later, the pots will have accumulated a spidery film of dust. You'll dump them into the sink.
Then you'll leave. You'll go out and attend to all your responsibilities and when you arrive home you'll know for certain you can hear a kind of rustling in the kitchen, and you'll pick up one of the pots and bang it down, bracing yourself for the scurrying that's bound to follow. But it won't. Frantically you'll yank open cabinets, wincing in preparation for a rabid mouse to come flying, talons out, at your face. Nothing will happen. The rustling will not cease, and with a sense of dread you will begin to systematically remove every item from the cabinets beneath the sink. You will find enough mouse droppings to make a whole new mouse, and a rather unsettling hole in the woodwork, but there will be no movement. This will be a relief and a cause for concern.
You will have just managed to convince yourself that there is something living in your wall when one dirty pot will move, just the slightest bit. You will see a brown head and you will at first think that it is a raccoon BECAUSE OF ITS SIZE. It is not a raccoon. It is the biggest cockroach that ever lived and it is rustling in your sink. You will scream like a little bitch and now here again you will find the trouble in living alone, because a) nobody will burst forth from a side bedroom to make sure you're okay and b) you will have to deal with this cockroach yourself. You and the cockroach will not break eye contact as you reach for a wad of paper towels, and then with a swift right hook coupled with another girly shriek you will scoop up the bug and run for the bathroom. You will scan the contents of the wad to ensure that you've ensnared your prey, and you will see the cockroach curl its fists and flex its massive quadriceps, kicking and thunderpunching and waving its slimy antennae, hissing your name.
Sometimes when you battle cockroaches you talk trash. "Oh, this is the last day of your life!" you've been known to say, or "Ha! Tell your friends!" as you listened to an entomological death rattle. Once after a particularly lengthy battle, you returned to the kitchen yelling, "Is there anyone else here who would like to be flushed down the toilet?" For this is also a hazard of living alone, the nonsensical babbling to the enemy troops, punctuated by awkward silence once you realize what you're doing. Today your wits will deaden. "Fuck!" you'll say. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" You'll hurl the monster into the toilet bowl and it will glare at you, cursing slowly through a cigarette like Clint Eastwood, grabbing the toilet seat and counting out a few chin-ups before it swings its body toward freedom. You'll scream again and flush, and the toilet, cistern or no, will swallow the entire bug along with eight paper towels, belching out a clean bowl of water when it's finished. You'll flush three more times for emphasis, then scrub the dusty pots with boiling water and douse the bathroom with bleach. You'll clean the kitchen from top to bottom, in- and outside all cabinets, and walk the trash bags out of the building and out of your life.
The next day you'll come home bearing steel wool and a can of Raid and some glue traps. You'll set to work booby-trapping your house. You'll drop a glue trap onto your thigh and treat yourself to an impromptu waxing in its removal. You'll stuff the hole beneath the sink with steel wool, then you'll pull too hard. Your forefinger will ooze purple, spattering the kitchen like a crime scene. You'll fashion yourself a makeshift bandage that comes down over your knuckle, then spend the ensuing evening with your index finger extended, looking as though you're perpetually on the verge of an epiphany. Once you've stopped the bleeding you will sweep up the shards of steel wool and flop down on the couch with a cup of peppermint tea. You'll exhale.
And when you're done, you'll wash the dishes.
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