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name: will baker blogrollin' other sites: |
My Gay Agenda
I have a bunch of comp time built up, and I�ll lose it if I don�t take it this month, so I took today off. Waking up at 10am, I experienced a brief moment of terror before coming to my senses and realizing that I wasn�t late. That I had nothing to be late for. I straightened up my wretched apartment a bit. The dishes are yet to be done. What I�m telling myself at the moment is that I�ll do them tonight. The relationship between a bachelor and his dirty dishes is a funny thing. Dirty dishes aren�t like other tasks, which can be set aside and done at leisure, because they�well, they rot. Eventually, the kitchen becomes a horrible and fearsome place, befouled with the stink of the souring remains of whatever mess one cooked up last week. So why do I always set them aside as if someone else � the magical Dish Fairy, perhaps � will sneak in a clandestinely wash them while I�m at work? I haven�t spotted the Dish Fairy, Dear Reader, though I have spotted what seem to be a number of small flies hovering over the loathsome heap of crockery fermenting in the sink. The moral of the story is: the longer you wait, the worse it gets. Dishes make me want to be heterosexual. They make me want a wife. An old-fashioned wife who derives personal satisfaction from an orderly home, free of tiny flies. A wife who believes that cleanliness really is next to godliness. I realize that such musings will probably bring the Women�s Studies Committee to my door to strip me of my minor in Women & Gender Studies, my pleading that housework trumps ideology not withstanding. Then again, a minor in Women & Gender Studies has a cash value of approximately 68 cents in the labor market, so�oh well. So anyway�dishes tonight. In the mean time, I emptied out my briefcase, which was beginning to resemble a dumpster, and sorted its detritus into piles by genus and species. Most of it was crap, and headed straight for the trash. Speaking of trash, I took that out to the dumpster. Then I packed up all my laundry and crammed it in the trunk. Pretty much everything is dirty, and that�s how I know it�s time to do the wash. First, however, I need to change my oil. Like 2,000 miles ago. So here I am at Jiffy Lube, waiting for them to tell me that they need not only to change the oil, but also to remove and disassemble the transmission, and then lovingly massage its six million tiny parts with lemon verbena-scented oil while burning candles and playing Yani. The always try to screw you at these places, and the screw always has to do with your transmission. Which is pretty hilarious, since an automatic transmission is only slightly less complicated than a human brain. If, on the off chance, something actually were wrong with my transmission, Jiffy Lube would be the last place in the universe I would go to have it fixed. That would be like having a quadruple cardiac bypass operation done at a Texas MedClinic. I could change the oil myself in my old truck, since it sat about six feet off the ground. My current car, however, resembling as it does the sort of cars driven by federal agents or employees of the Housing Authority, has far less clearance underneath. I�m fat, and I don�t have a hydraulic lift handy, so I won�t be getting under that bad boy anytime soon. Once the car is sufficient lubed and filtered and whatnot, I�m off the HEB to pick up some bleach and laundry detergent. I loathe trips to the grocery store for one or two items. Somehow, navigating into a crowded shopping center, inching through pedestrians toward the nearest available non-handicapped, non-expectant-mother parking spot (invariably 4 miles from the store itself), then wandering around in some spanking-new and ridiculously oversized store, then checking myself out (yes, Dear Reader, HEB now makes you check and bag your own groceries) and fighting my way back out�well, it just seems innately retarded. But then, so much of contemporary American life is innately retarded, and it�s probably better to just not think about that. After hunting and gathering my cleaning supplies, I will stop by my office to pick up some bills that I left laying on my desk. I need to mail off my car�s registration renewal today. Nothing fucks up my serenity like being pulled over by an SAPD flunky because the little sticker on my windshield is the wrong color. With bleach and detergent in hand, I�ll be off to the laundromat, which is always a super-special experience. People who frequent the laundromat seem very�fertile. They have, on average, 74 young children. 74 very young, very loud, and very poorly-behaved children. They also have lots of towels, and none of them match. I have been wondering about this ever since I started going to the laundromat. Go sometime, Dear Reader, and check this out. Look at the dryers. Find a few loads of towels. None of them match. How does one acquire a giant pile of non-matching towels? Am I missing out on something. I mean, when I first needed towels, I went to Target and bought them. Eight white towels. White because I personally believe that the good Lord intended for bath and bed linens to be clean, snowy white. But that�s beside the point; they could be any color. The point is, I bought eight matching towels. And when one gets ruined (as frequently happened back when I lived with my best friend, Stephanie, who would often engage in hair-dying and nail-polishing behaviors), I go buy another white towel. Now, they wouldn�t all have to necessarily be the same color. My mom has three colors of bath linens, but they�re matching colors, some Martha Stewart color scheme or something. But they match. So how does one end up with 648 totally mismatched towels? Do you steal them from other people�s laundry at the laundromat? This is the most viable hypothesis I�ve come up with so far. After the laundry is done, I�m headed back to the apartment complex, to talk to the manager about moving into a smaller apartment. Since my brother and his girlfriend moved out (sweet solitude!), the combined rent and utilities on a two-bedroom apartment have become something of a burden. I can afford it, but I would far rather have a couple hundred dollars extra cash in my pocket than an extra bedroom that I use to store the ironing board and my dirty laundry. So my plan is to move into a one-bedroom, or maybe even an efficiency, at the end of the month. It�s not like I do a lot of entertaining, and at this point in my life, extra cash is pretty much my primary consideration in such matters. So there you have it, a day (off) in the life of a bachelor. Pretty glamorous, huh? I wanted to take Friday off, but this Friday is our monthly staff meeting at work. So no long weekend for me, but at least I won�t have to take care of all this domestic drudgery over the weekend. Perhaps that will free me up to engage in some thrilling and dangerous fast living. If that happens, I will be sure to let you know.
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