Bachelor Squalor

Are all men blind to rotten food and filth? That is my question, and here are the facts that bring the question to light.

I have been, temporarily, sharing a house with my ex. Yes, you read correctly. Ex-husband #3. I was awarded the house in Baytown in the divorce several years ago, but I have been residing in my mother’s home in Richmond while I cared for her during her losing battle with Alzheimer's. She recently went into a care facility, and I now have the Richmond house up for sale. (Ramon has been occupying the Baytown house since the tenants moved out. It was a reasonable answer to keep the house open while I was taking care of mom for the past five years.) I found myself in need of a cheap place to stay until my move to New Orleans. Staying with Ramon in the Baytown house sounded like a good idea. At the time. Until I got my first glimpse of the condition of the house, that is.

The house was pristine when I moved him into the property about a year and a-half ago. That was because I spent a week cleaning it after the tenants moved out. I set him up with dishes that matched, new stainless flatware, cookware and some utensils – not because I thought he would actually cook something other than heating a tortilla or nuking things in the microwave, but because of some OCD need of mine for everything and everyone to be just right. The fridge should have stayed clean because Miller Lite was about the only thing I knew he would be putting in there. I did not expect to discover that he was applying for the Good Housekeeping Kamikaze Award.

My first night was October 16th. It was almost my last. I lifted the lid of the toilet in the hall bath to discover a mold ring that Farmer’s Insurance remediation experts would not touch. He never used that toilet so he thought it was clean enough to bless that restroom for COMPANY and the likes of myself. I think I heard it growl at me. I went to the hardware store and asked for the strongest acid that would clean battery terminals on an M-1 Abrams tank. After dealing with the toilet that would have frightened children, I then vanquished spiders in one corner of that restroom. Please note that I did apologize to the Daddy Longlegs spider I squashed. I know they don’t bite people, but anything in the Arachnid family had to go if I was going to pee without squealing constantly. I didn’t slide back the shower curtain at that point in time – I had not yet had sufficient Canadian Hunter whiskey in me to be that brave. The sink was daunting enough. I actually asked when that hand towel had been washed and dried my hands on my work shirt still grimy from sweating in it all day from the moving process.

I am thankful I didn’t drink the coffee brewed the next morning. I brought my own little unit and had it prepared the night before. God’s hand was guiding me, because three hours after rising the next morning I decided to start cleaning. I cleaned for two hours and only succeeded in cleaning the kitchen sink, the dish drain, the dishwasher used to hide (not to clean) dirty dishes, the knives and their holder (more on this later) and the two counter sides of the sink. Not kidding you. You know how some people make coffee every day and think swishing water in the pot cleans it good enough. Yeah - not here. Clean water and swishing never happened. There was a coating of old coffee so hard I used OVEN CLEANER in the glass coffee pot and still had to scrub. Then I rinsed the water chamber. I think the same mold from the toilet had a family in there. I dumped the contents onto paper towels and called him into the kitchen. “Ramon! This could have killed you.” His answer? “No, Miller Lite kills bacteria.” Wrong answer. I sent him to Dollar General to buy a new unit. He argued. I took a knife and severed the cord from the unit. “Go to Dollar General NOW.” He went. Mind you, it is only four blocks from the house.

The knives appeared to have been used, rinsed A LITTLE and slid back into their housings. Rust, dried whatever and who knows what crusted them. I soaked them in hot water, scrubbed with steel wool pads and poured boiling water in the holder and left it to drain. Next we played the game show HOW THE HELL LONG HAS THIS BEEN IN THE FRIDGE? I was actually going to fix us a brunch because I knew I had brought over eggs, cheese and butter, and we had leftovers of a delicious pork chop and steak fries from the night before. I reached into the fridge and spotted something trying to converse with me in an inter-stellar language. It shimmied, glowed and moved like a chia pet come to life.
“Ramon, what the heck is this?”
“I dunno.”
“Throw it away.”
“Wait, it might still be good.”
“Throw it away or I will pour out the Miller Lite.”
I won.

My language and descriptions of the items became more colorful as the cleaning went on. I believe the F bomb was dropped a few times and pleonastic descriptions flowed from my tongue. Did you know that dried burritos have the consistency of those musical blocks played in the drum section? Did you know that old rice goes from green to pink? Pink is the final color in the nuclear stages of mold development, and it actually becomes valuable at that point. And who opens a pack of wieners, eats one and thinks rolling the bag a little will keep them fresh until the next time you have too much Miller Lite to desire another wiener straight from the fridge? And who eats wieners without buns, chili, cheese, mustard and onions? Oh yeah, those people consuming six or seven tall Miller Lites. . . .

I quickly removed the few good items I sent over days ago to store in his fridge. They went to live in my own fridge moved days later and now found standing (clean I might add) in the other corner of the kitchen. I did not want to trust anything from a refrigerator that had a language of its own. That’s how you get children who are a little odd…..like some royalty with really bad teeth and hair.

Alas, my day was at a point where I needed a shower. What’s that sound from the movie Psycho? Yeah. I put a bath towel down in the shower before I put my feet in there. Another job for oven cleaner. Mental note to put this on the growing list of cleaning supplies that do not seem to have ever existed in this house.

Sigh. I think my dogs are the only happy creatures in my life. Living with Ramon for a few weeks has been a bonus vacation for them. Whatever bad food he has dropped on the floor has been manna from heaven. If they grow a second head I will know they were drinking from that toilet.