Love and Squalor

My So-Called Life

I was talking to one of my girlfriends the other day (Pam), and at one point the conversation turned to my dream of being a SAHW. That stands for “stay-at-home-wife.” It’s like stay-at-home-mom, but with no children. In my dream, my husband would go to work; I would stay home, taking care of the house, making food for us, and looking after our menagerie. We have six cats, four ferrets, two hamsters, and a lizard. In my life as a SAHW, I would take over everything at home, except anything insect or carpentry related.

(This reminds me: sometimes, I like to think about silly things. “What-ifs,” usually. Here’s one: what if some Buddhists started a pest exterminator business? Wait, maybe it’s Jainists, actually—the ones that refuse to kill an insect, let alone a mouse, or a bat. “That’s right, my little termite friend: eat my house! It is as much yours as it is mine!” I love the Buddhists. Or Jainists. I am always mixing up my religions.)

So, as I was telling my girlfriend about my dream of being a SAHW, she tells me that, once, she was a SAHG—a stay-at-home-girlfriend. This, I learned, typically involves basically the same stuff as my SAHW dream, just without the pesky marriage vows—so, you know, going to hell for cohabitation and whatnot. Some of the SAHGs take care of pets (like I would); others take care of plants. Some just get high and watch telly all day, maybe do a load of laundry or two, and make sure they’re ready to, uh, attend to Matters, when their Better Half gets home. Now, I will admit that the SAHG does sound kind of weird to me, but I suppose SAHW is not too much different....

The only thing that gets me with this kind of arrangement—and mind you, the genders could very well be reversed, resulting in a SAHH or SAHB, and I know people who have done that, too—is that, sometimes one of them really is just a leech. But, as long as both parties are happy, I think it’s fine! If they are not happy, then I judge.

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged

Speaking of judging: my husband, Billy, and I have often been accused of being “too judgey.” Sometimes, I think they are half right; but I like to think of it more as “properly judgey,” which you have to admit sounds a lot nicer. We judge people, but only when it’s righteous judgement.

Now, don’t get me wrong: we don’t always go around giving our opinion to everyone, willy-nilly. Usually, we just tell each other our judgements, giggling quietly on our davenport, or right after we have gotten under the covers for the evening.

The best example of this I can think of, recently anyway, is the homeless guy that our neighbor was dating until just last week—that’s when the cops came to their house. Now he’s gone. It was really weird. (My girlfriend, Pam, says if she were a homeless guy, she would also try to date a chick who already owned a house...but that’s another story.)

For maybe a month or two, the guy who turned out to be homeless seemed like he was not allowed in the house if the neighbor wasn’t there; but since he had nothing to do, he would be on her front porch all day. Just sitting there, being idle, and staring at our house—maybe even coveting our house...we don’t know, not for sure. His chair was situated directly across from our kitchen window, such that—if Billy or I were doing the dishes—it was almost impossible not to make eye contact. Awkward, to say the least. Whether we happened to be standing in front of the window or not, he kept staring. I don’t know that he was intentionally staring at us, but it always looked like he was. Maybe he had a glass eye or something. You never know.

I’m just kidding: he did not have a glass eye, although he looked like he could have. I know for sure, because Billy met him up close one day, when the guy fell out of some truck he was working on in the driveway. It would have been almost as funny as a Three Stooges routine, except this was a real homeless guy, sitting on our neighbor’s front porch all day, staring into our kitchen window—and falling out of a truck. Anyway, Homeless Guy tells Billy he had a “substance problem,” although he did not specify which substance. (At this point, I’m thinking maybe the “substance” he had a problem with was just matter, generally; or perhaps a problem with the laws of matter—gravity, to be specific.) He goes on to tell Billy that he had a concussion from totalling a car, which is supposedly why he fell out of the truck.

So I’m telling all this to my girlfriend, like I was saying before. And she’s asking me: what next? Well, I’ll tell you what next: it gets even weirder.

On at least three separate occasions, while the homeless guy appeared to be home alone (he was apparently allowed inside the house, sometimes), he came outside. Mind you, he did not, as a normal person would, come outside by walking through the front door, across the porch, and down the front steps. Instead, he put up the garage door, walked to the end of the driveway, set off a single firework, put down the garage door and went back inside. (Pam wanted to know if he lost any digits. Pam is weird like that—one of the reasons I love her. [He did not.])

Billy saw him do the firework (yes, singular) routine the first two times, and I saw it the third time. On that third occasion, I saw him throw his arms up in the air after he set if off and yell: “Ohio!” (I guess you’ve got to admire having pride in your home state.) To this day, we have no clue why he would do that, by himself, at three random times.

Now, at this point, you’re probably thinking, like me: this story is so weird that it seems fake. But it’s not. Not only that, there is still more to tell!

Remember, I told you that this was a homeless guy who was dating our neighbor. Well, first let’s go back to before we realized they were dating. You will recall that our neighbor would not typically allow him in the house unless she was at home. So we thought: is he an estranged addict cousin or something, and they didn’t trust him not to steal all the silverware? (Pam helpfully pointed out: maybe the neighbor didn’t want him to get squatter’s rights; but we don’t live in California or New York.) Was she, perhaps, merely feeding him, like a stray cat—or feral human? Maybe.

But then one day we saw them kissing. That sealed the deal, as it were.

We still don’t know exactly how it all ended. The cops showed up two days after the last firework incident, although we don’t know whether said incident was related their being summoned. A few days after that, he showed up again with another man, and the two of them left with a duffel bag.

He has not been back since.

Afterword

In the very beginning, Billy had seen the guy around more than I had. He had observed that the guy only seemed to own two shirts, and that he would wear each one for several days before changing it. I pointed out that it was probably because he was homeless. When Billy had later seen him leave with the duffel bag, I said,“he actually had things?”

Whatever really happened, Billy and I had fun watching and wondering for those few months. We always have fun together.