Doing Dishes

I dreamed once a person took a shit in the middle of a room and then left it there, and I just stood looking at it like, I’m supposed to clean this up?

I used to live in this apartment complex where a guy let his dog shit on the sidewalk in front of the building, right at the stairs going up. He also left cigarette butts everywhere. One day I put on a pair of gloves then picked up every piece of shit and cigarette butt I could find before delivering it all to his front door.

Some people are lazy. Some people are just stupid. But sometimes it’s more disturbing than that.

I worked in this office once where the top sales guy wouldn’t do his own dishes. He left coffee cups in the sink every day. They’d stack up. One morning, because he’d used all the available cups and wouldn’t wash the ones he’d left in the sink, he grabbed my Jim Morrison cup and used it. Yeah. When I arrived and saw him drinking from my cup I took it and said, “Wash the cups you left in the sink.”  And he said, “I don’t do dishes.”

Oh, this guy was arrogant: charming, cute, but arrogant. Lazy? Pompous? Infuriating? Yup. His cups remained in the sink until our boss’s wife washed them once a week, and why that was okay I don’t know. This woman had a full-time job and a toddler.

I’m wondering right now, batting it around, mulling it over: is my story an example of sexism or privilege or both? Sure, men enjoy certain privileges being male and all. So do people in positions of power and people with money. Human beings can, I’ve witnessed, obtain a certain status in which they leave dishes in the sink for some lesser than to wash and that’s okay. In my example, this young man had an impressive ability to make sales and hit the boss’s numbers, which therefore deemed him valuable, better than, too important to wash his own dishes. Let one of the “girls” do it.  Yeah. I once found the other woman in the office washing this guy’s coffee cups and I said, “What the hell are you doing?”  Seriously. Unless this is a case of I’ll do yours today and you’ll do mine tomorrow, unless we’re talking everyone’s equal and we all pitch in, forget it. I. Will. Not. Do. Your. Fucking. Dishes. I don’t care who you are. I ain’t your maid, I ain’t your wife, and I ain’t your bitch.

Mark my words. When I’m Queen of the World one day, I’ll do my own dishes. I’m turned off by Prima Donnas about as much as I’m turned off by Pricks.

Which reminds me, I met this writer I admired once and he was a Prick. A writer! How weird. I’ve also met writers who were blank as donuts in person. (I totally lifted that off someone: Loorie Moore, I think.) “He had a face as blank as a donut.” Is that Loorie Moore? Point is, it’s not mine. T.S. Elliott said, “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” How should we interpret that? Michael Cunningham, who wrote A Home At the End of the World and The Hours, is the most beautiful human being I’ve ever met. Aside from his talent, Michael exuded warmth and grace. He reminded me of my friend, Judy.  When Michael Cunningham spoke to me I thought, people are good; life is great. I’m not a peon. In fact, Michael Cunningham told me I’m brave. He wrote in my book, “All single mothers are brave.”  Thank you, Michael. I want to be like you when I grow up.

I’ve met lots of celebrities over the years, and you never know what to expect. Some are normal. The sweetest most down-to-earth guy I ever dated was a rock star. The rest of the rock stars I met were mostly drunk and horny. Sometimes drunk and horny and incoherent.  (Excluding Brian May who was the best example of a gentleman ever, and he’s in Queen, one of the biggest bands in the world.) Meanwhile, John Elway was a dick. Yeah. Do not flick quarters at me and think you’re funny. You’re a dick. Kiefer Sutherland serenaded me with Jim Croce. Jim Croce! And then there was Keanu Reeves. Oh, I’ve thought about you lately, Keanu. A man can look at me in such a way my nipples lift off.  Just so you know, I’m getting older. I dug how you looked at me. Do it again, Keanu, and I’ll write you a love story. I’ll do your dishes.

My boss’s life coach, Marcus Straub, said we should feel grateful for doing dishes. He said there’s something about the act of washing dishes that’s . . . humbling? Reaffirming? Peaceful? I can’t remember, but his point was every moment is an opportunity. Or a stroke of luck. Like what if you didn’t have hands and couldn’t do dishes?

Like what if every time I did dishes Keanu Reeves came up behind me and kissed my neck? Or he mowed my lawn or something? Both would be nice. Reciprocal, right?

Marcus Straub talks about gratitude often. We’re not grateful by nature. Not us. We’re programmed to complain. Take advantage. Look down upon. Judge. That’s us. I try to figure out why some people can be successful and such assholes while others remain so generous and down to earth? I don’t have an answer. Right now, Eminem is rapping on my I-Tunes and telling me I’m nothing but a slut-bitch-hoe and he hates his mother. “Bend over and take it like a slut, Ma.” I finished a story last week in which one of my characters confesses he began to twitch as a child, and the girl he falls in love with says, “Amazing how much starts then.”